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Sessions

Morning Plenary Session - 10am to 12:30pm

The Open Source Cycle of Life

Facilitated by Mark Surman, Biella Coleman, Michelle Murrain, and Peter Trudelle

Open source is not a straight line. It is wild roller roaster, undulating ecosystem and spiralling cycle of life all rolled into one. This workshop will explore the lifecycles of open source initiatives, looking at both software development projects and broader open source communities from a variety of perspectives. The first half of the session will offer the true confessions of open source veterans about the challenges and victories that they experienced at different steps along the way. The second half will provide an opportunity for participants to dig deep into some of the key issues facing the open source world including usability, financing, community building and the evolution of code. The ultimate aim of this workshop is help all Penguin Day participants see where they fit into the diverse and ever shifting world of open source.

Birds-of-a-Feather Lunch Session

Open Source by Women for Women

Facilitated by Stacy Gildenston

This session will explore current strategies in the implementation of Open Source in ITCs particularly revolving around gender equity concerns both here and abroad. Anyone with ideas, strategies, projects, or just an interest in the development of Open Source by and for women that wants to participate is sincerely invited to attend and explore how we can cohesively work together...men included!

Afternoon Sessions I - 2pm to 3:45

For eRiders: What do we need from open source software developers and why don't they just know?

Facilitated by Amanda Hickman

Open source software developers are building tools that eRiders could be using, but often their work doesn't meet our needs, or at least doesn't reflect our understanding of how the non-profit groups we are assisting structure their work as activists, agitators and organizers. During this session we will look at how developers make decisions about what the software they are building should look like, how they expect people will use that software, and how eRiders can have a voice in that process.

For Developers: Connecting with a crucial resource for your NP project: the eRider

Facilitated by Dirk Slater

The non-profit community has been a focus of a concerted effort to use technology more effectively since the mid-90's. Part of this effort has been the development of intermediaries, known more commonly as eRiders, that act as a shared resource among a group of non-profits to find appropriate hardware and software solutions. eRiders have intimate knowledge of the needs of non-profits and software. During this session we will examine how eRiders work with non-profits to guide them and look at ways that developers can tap into the eRider community to get feedback or ideas for software projects. Using Use Cases to drive the Project Lifecycle.

Mapping the F/OSS Landscape for NGO’s

Facilitated by Mark Bucciarelli

What are the applications that you really wish you had? Is there something simple that would make a huge difference? What is problematic about the software you use now? At this informal roundtable, we will identify the top two or three needs and then discuss those in detail. This is an opportunity to influence the direction of tomorrow's non profit free software; we will visualize the NPO/NGO F/OSS field via a collective collaborative brain dump of organizations, projects, tools and people.

Overcoming the challenges of low-resource and low-skills environments

Facilitated by Tobias Eigen, Teresa Crawford, Ryan Jacobs, Taya Kharitonashvili, and Melissa Pailthorp

This session is dedicated to Penguin Day participants interested in serving nonprofits in "low-resource" and "low-skills" environments. It is hoped that participants will gain an appreciation for the technical challenges these organizations face, methods they employ to cope with and overcome them, and how we might be able to help them as we develop new software and resources using F/OSS. Tea Kharitonashvili (Taya), an eRider who works for the Open Society in Georgia, will be in the session. Ryan Jacobs will also be there. Ryan is from Ungana-Afrika, which has beeen working with nonprofits in Southern Africa for the last year. We hope some F/OSS developers will also decide to join us, as well as other eRiders who can share their knowledge with working in other low resource and low skills environments.

User Needs Evaluation

Facilitated by Usha Venkatachallam

Usha will discuss User Needs Evaluation, which forms an essential but, for a variety of reasons, often overlooked component of a technical implementation project, small or large. In this session we will discuss various approaches and strategies to put the users and their needs at the front and center of all development. This includes identifying and gathering user needs or requirements, methods for analysis and understanding, and strategies for implementation. Given the lack of a universally accepted process and framework for needs evaluations, practitioners generally use their own preferred 'framework' to conduct the User Needs Evaluation portion of a project. The remainder of the session will be devoted to drafting a usable framework for User Needs Evaluation, a framework that is based on the collective knowledge and experience of the attendees.

Using Use Cases to drive the Project Lifecycle

Facilitated by Dan Robinson

Use Cases can be a great tool to use for all stakeholders throughout the Software Project Lifecycle. This workshop will discuss what a Use Case is and how you can use them to create a basic structure for your software project lifecycle. The session will be highly interactive and will include "role-playing" and plenty of Q and A and collaborative learning. Dan will use Use Cases developed for a project he is working on the "AdvoKit" a free software implementation of a friend-to-friend Voter I.D., Get Out The Vote software package.

Afternoon Sessions II - 4:15 to 5:40

Appropriate Design and Usability

Facilitated by Peter Trudelle

A informal workshop on why user-centered design and usability engineering should be a primary development concern, and how to make it the focus of building your system without breaking your budget or your schedule. Bring your horror stories, and the most vexing issues your developers are currently arguing about; we'll attack them together!

Sustainability? Making the link to open source business models

Facilitated by Mark Surman and Jeff Herron

The value of open source for non-profits is clear free, malleable software that embodies concepts like community, collaboration and sharing. Yet a big question remains about how the people who provide this value eRiders, developers, support people put food on the table? This workshop explores the question of sustainability for people and organizations doing open source work in the non profit sector. Participants will have an opportunity to map and discuss a variety of open source business models and financing mechanisms. They will also get to ask hard questions like 'have any of these models worked in the profit sector?' and 'where is the line between making a living and serving community?' The ultimate aim of the workshop is to give participants practical tools and ideas that they can use to sustain their open source endeavours.

Lessons learned: A Real-Life Open Source Development Project

Facilitated by Scott Lamberton and Marc Bucciarelli

This session will present lessons learned from a variety of open source development projects from both that of the participants and the facilitator(s). The session will start from the faciliator's experience in NGO project management of proprietary and open source development projects and how to avoid similar near disasters ;-) but also provide "lessons learned" from Linux Professional Institute's (LPI) development of "t7e"--an open source website translation system. Potential discussion subjects include the variety of FOSS licensing systems, chosing and recruiting technology partners, and finding project resources. Outcomes from the session include "best practices" in NPO FOSS development, ideas for collaborative project development, and LPI's WSIS resource CD which includes the "t7e" source code, Debian tutorials, and a variety of white papers on FOSS.

Emerging technologies and how to leverage them for F/OSS projects

Facilitated by Todd Koym and Thomas Panzarella

Todd will discuss RDF and the Semantic Web: From a Web of Links to a Web of Meaning. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) only became an official recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in February, but it is already being employed by projects like Mozilla browser, OSAF's Chandler, and is the basis for the RDF Site Summary (RSS) 1.0 specification. RDF provides for the expression of meaning (semantics) in a way computers can "understand", and is first step toward the semantic web - making it rich with possibilities. Join us in a conversation about this emerging technology and how it might help nonprofits manage knowledge, share content, and strengthen networks.

Tom will discuss Open Sourcing Java.Traditionally, Java has been percieved as a proprietary technology ultimately owned and controlled by Sun Microsystems. To an extent, one could argue that this is still true. Over the years Java has built up a very strong user community and an extremely vibrant open source developer community. The dedication and passion that open source developers have for Java is a testament to Java's technical elegance, flexibility, and promise for innovation. A recent development in the Java world has Sun working with its community to entertain the prospect of open sourcing the Java platform.

Free Geek and F/OSS

Facilitated by Ron Braithwaite and Oso Martin

Oso Martin and Ron Braithwaite will talk about how Open Source Software makes Free Geek possible and about how Free Geek uses a combination of volunteer and paid professionals to serve local non-profits. Issues discussed will include managing the dynamics of introducing paid work into the volunteer pool, maintaining schedules and containing budgets with part-time workers, and other issues around serving the community with Open Source Software.

Resources for F/OSS development you can work with: Savannah and the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory.

Facilitated by Peter Brown

This introduction to the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory will start with a tour of projects and resources in the directory before shifting to discussion of new development ideas and participant feedback. In addition, the Savannah system will be introduced, including a brief history, a description of projects hosted and discussion on how developers use Savannah. The primary goal of the session will be to describe these resources and try to illicit feedback and an understanding of how these projects can better meet the needs of F/OSS developers in the NGO sector.

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