Re: Growing FSFE Re: [Fsfe-uk] BBC's DRM Iplayer windows only

[Alex Hudson]

On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 11:43 +0100, Shane Martin Coughlan wrote:
> > Related question: is AFFS forwarding FSFE donations at the mo?
> 
> I don't know the answer to this one.  Alex, can you pick it up?

I guess there are a couple of parts to this answer. 

The original agreement with the FSFE was that we would collect
donations, but only forward them once they reached a certain level - I
imagine to save on transfer fees and exchange fees. Last time we looked,
we hadn't reached that level, but that was sometime last Autumn IIRC, so
it may well be that we're past that level.

The slightly wider question of what we should do with the AFFS is
something I've been meaning to bring up on this list for a while, but
for various reasons - mostly my "urgent" priorities outweighing my
"important" priorities for a little while - haven't been able to. This
is something that we should discuss, though, particularly since I know
of at least one set of people who want to re-invent that wheel.

> >> 3. People to purchase FTF training courses:
> >>    http://fsfeurope.org/projects/ftf/trainingcourse.en.html
> > 
> > What's needed to bring these to the UK?
> 
> We need to establish a relationship or a series of relationships with
> local training suppliers.  We would like to target area of large
> technology usage and growth if possible.  It would be very useful to
> have local knowledge about geographic areas to target, training
> providers who might be interested in co-delivering courses, and
> suggestions about what's required in the UK marketplace.

We deliver training in the UK, both in London and at our offices in
Chesterfield, and I can say that it's not something we work very hard at
because it doesn't really "bring in the beef" so to speak.

For FSFE, I would suggest that a larger audience seminar style product
would be much more suitable, because the economies of scale would help
make it a profitable proposition. I think smaller groups would be
viable, but I'm not sure that you'd do much better than break-even
(particularly if you're flying people in to speak, etc.)

I'm not sure I can speak for other companies too much, but my impression
is that training in the UK for anything related to free software is
pretty much very quiet. For programming language training it seems to be
viable, and for some specific web apps, but aside from that it's pretty
tough - I'm pretty sure one UK org. found it couldn't even give training
away if it was offered for free in many instances.

How good an idea do you have of your target audience?

Cheers,

Alex.