Czajkowski

Thanks to Lukas Blakk for putting together this great short clip from someone of the women who attended FOSDEM. I was rather shy as I have a loathing of cameras but felt it was a good thing to get out there. It would be great to get more of these clips done from events to highlight women attendees.

I’m pretty amazed at how well the clip has turned out, considering it’s a mixture of the questions all put together so we all answer the same question one after the other.

Thank you. Here’s the link to  Lukas Blakk  blog and video

I sat down on one of the quiet evenings this week and went through all of the Gobby documents from UDS and marked off where I had items actioned to me and made a list. Now I’m checking it twice and going to start working through things and crossing them off or adding to them if I need more detail. ( I like lists)

LoCo Directory – Event Feature
* ”’OBJECTIVE”’: Implement an event handing feature.
* ”’SUCCESS CRITERIA”’: LoCo teams can add events to be displayed on their LoCo directory page and view event information.
* ”’ACTIONS”’:
* Ability to add an event with the following attributes:
* Event type (Jam, Presentation, Tutorial, Release Party, Installfest, Other)
* Time
* Location
* Description
* Name
* Events are visible on LoCo pages and a master list of events.

While I don’t have anything assigned to this I am following this as I worked on this last May at UDS Karmic and this week I’m seeing more developments in the progress of this. With LoCos getting involved asking how they can help.  I think this kind of feature would help more LoCos organise their events and keep track of them for approval and for re approval if they can see what has been organised at a glance.

The reason behind this feature is, it’s very hard to keep track of attendance, I can say 8 people came and it could have been 12 or 6, if the feature of replying and adding your name to it, like you do for attending UDS then you can see who came to the event.  It’s also a way of see all LoCo events across the board on the one directory.

Ubuntu NGO

ACTIONs:
- Liaising with NGOs: – I’m working on finding more NGOs for Interviews, and also this week I’ve had people mail me saying they are doing some with their Local NGOs and will mail me the interviews, so we can get these back up and running.
• document painpoints, transform into papercuts: file as bug reports, tag with ‘ngo’ (laura) -  Worked on this during the week and sent mail to the NGO mailing list.
• Advocacy (need leader for this role) - I’ve added my name to this since UDS as has Penelope Stowe
-  list of existing foundations, other organisations that already work with NGOs
- list of conferences that NGOs attend specific to gathering technical assistance
- talk to docs team about help.ubuntu.com export (and other loco documentation) (Laura talk to Jim Campbell, Milo Casagrande) – Need to start on this
- talk to Server team about PHP packaging  ( laura to go talk to ask) – this is going to come under paper jams

Ubuntu Women

* ”’OBJECTIVE”’: Clarify the purpose of the #ubuntu-women channel.
* ”’SUCCESS CRITERIA”’: A set of channel guidelines clearly communicated to #ubuntu-women participants.
* ”’ACTIONS”’:
* Discuss a set of guidelines for general discussion channel about the Ubuntu Women project (Laura Czajkowski). – This will be taken to the mailing list due to time constraints from meeting held on the 8th December followed by another meeting.
* Document the agreed set of guidelines (Laura Czajkowski). – Going to work on a draft so we can work against something to discuss, as no point in just waffling without having somewhere as a base line to work from.
* Communicate guidelines outwards (Jono Bacon, Amber Graner, Laura Czajkowski). – Can only do this when the above is done

* ”’OBJECTIVE”’: Appoint a leader of the Ubuntu Women team, complete with codified expectations around the role. – Well this was discussed at the Ubuntu women meeting held. And we’ve come up with a process.
* ”’SUCCESS CRITERIA”’: A delegated leader in place for a set term length, complete with documented expectations around the role.
* ”’ACTIONS”’:
* Documenting expectations of the role (Amber / Laura). – This has been done on the wiki and with input in from the team during the meeting.

LoCo Council

I was elected to the LoCo Council, and during UDS I said I’d look into drafting a document with outlining the re approval process. Working on that today, once I read some of the email archives  as this is all new to me.

So the above is keeping me very quiet and busy at the moment, but loving it all the same!

After a short hiatus I’m back with the NGO interviews.  This time I spoke with Michael and Michelle Hall of Qimo 4 kids.

LC:  Can you tell me about your organisation?

MH: QuinnCo is a very small not for profit located in Central Florida.  In fact, it’s just the two of us, Michelle and I, operating out of our house and garage.  We take in second hand computers, fix them up if they aren’t working, then put Ubuntu or Qimo on them and give them out to kids and families in need.  We given out approx. 50 computers this year.

LC: What is the mission of your organisation?

MH: We believe that every child, regardless of physical, mental or financial abilities, deserves the same access to technology and education.  A child with a computer has a much better chance of success in school, and knowledge of computers is a requirement for almost any job these days. Our mission is to provide a computer for those children in our community who wouldn’t otherwise have access to one.

LC:  So what made you get involved in this?

MH : When our son Quinn was 4, he was already showing an interest in our computers.  I had an old tower that I wasn’t using, so I installed Ubuntu on it for him along with some OSS games, and he took to it like a fish to water, teaching himself how to do things I never showed him. Because of that, I bought another computer from a yard sale, set it up the same way, and gave it to his daycare facility.  About 3 months later, I had one of the kids from his class run up to me out of the blue and thank me for their computer.  Talking about it to Michelle that night, she convinced me that we should start up a charity to do this on a larger scale, and QuinnCo was born.

LC : Can you give us a few examples of what you have done? Have some pictures you can share? (Dholbach likes pictures )

MH: We recently held a community build day, where we had members of the Ubuntu Florida LoCo and several local LUGs come out to a local children’s home to help fix up our backlog of broken computers.  We had as many kids there as adults, learning how to fix up computers and installing Ubuntu and Qimo on them.  Pictures of the event can be found on our website:

QIZMO 4 KIDS

LC: Perhaps you can explain to use the issues you’ve come up against?

MH : Our initial problem was two-fold.  First we needed an operating system that was easy for very young kids, most of whom would not be reading yet, to navigate and learn to use on their own.  There were educational distros like Edubuntu already available, but their interfaces required navigating menus, and being able to read.

Second, all of our donated computers at that point were Pentium 3′s or older, with less than 256 MB of memory.  We needed an operating system that would be responsive enough on this older hardware, so that the kids wouldn’t get impatient waiting on their games to load.

Xubuntu met the second half of our needs, it ran quite well on the hardware that we had.  But we still needed an easy to use interface.  Luckily, being open source meant
that I could change that.  So I took an Xubuntu LiveCD, and following instructions on the Ubuntu Wiki, created Qimo: http://www.qimo4kids.com

LC: What are the challenges you’ve faced within this project?

MH: Our biggest task has been managing inventory.  We get lots of computers in, most are missing parts of have bad parts.  We also get a lot of boxes of parts.  We need a good way of tracking what equipment we have.  However, most of those kinds of applications are implemented as web-based server solutions.  Well we’re not that big, we don’t have an internal server for these purposes, so to use them we would have to install and run a webserver on one of our laptops.  For organizations as small as ours, desktop solutions are easier to get setup and use.

LC:  What kind of solution did you come up with to make this all happen?

MH: Aside from donated computers, we use Ubuntu Server to host our websites www.quinncoincorporated and www.growingupfree.org I use Ubuntu on my personal laptop, which is the one I used to make Qimo, and Michelle has it on her netbook.  We use them when giving presentations on QuinnCo and Qimo, but for the most part they are for personal use.

LC: Do you use any proprietary software now ?

MH: We were given a tablet PC, which is running Windows XP.  It is very useful for taking hand-written notes while away from home.  It was heavily used to track
things during our children’s home build day.  I don’t know of any good tablet note-taking applications for Linux, so I haven’t tried installing it on there.

LC: What would you like to see improved in Ubuntu resources like documentation?

MH: We desperately need some good new-user documentation we can give out with our donations.  I have been including the PDF version of the Ubuntu Pocket Guide, but an intro/tour type documentation would help us.

LC: So what is your experience of this good or bad , have you picked up any nice tips?

MH: Explaining to the people we’re donating computers too that they don’t have Windows on them. How to create a custom distro!

LC: What would you suggest to our readers that are interested in an initiative like yours?

MH: Just do it.  There is no barrier to entry, you probably have or know somebody who has an old computer that isn’t being used.  You probably also know a family, school or daycare that can’t afford to buy computers.  It takes literally an hour of your time, at most, and will have a life-long impact on those you donate too.

LC: How can interested readers help your organisation?

MH: If you’re in central Florida, send us an email and we’ll let you know when we are holding build events.  If you have Pentium 4 or newer computers, we will arrange to pick them up from you.

If you’re not in central Florida, visit http://www.growingupfree.org/wiki/index.php/Orgs_By_Location and find one that is near you.  If there isn’t one near you, then get one started! Again, the barrier to entry is non-existant.

LC: Finally, any good or funny stories, best lessons that you would like to tell to the world.

MH: Don’t worry about starting small.  As soon as people hear about what you are doing, they will want to help.  We went from having 3 computers to having almost 30 in about 2 week’s time.  We put out a call for volunteers to help us fix them, and our last event had 75 people come out.  Start with a single
computer, and go from there.

Thank you for taking part, it’s been very interesting!

I’m enjoying these interviews, and I hope folks are too.  There is some great feedback with these interviews and already we have had an organisation mail us asking for advice, suggestions and help to move to an Open Source environment. Which is in fact GREAT!  Other news is that people are trying to help with the issues raised to work out where they can help, and offer solutions.

This interview is with Brett Adams from the Belize Botanic Gardens.

Native Orchid House

Czajkowski, Brett can you tell me a little about the Botanic Garden?

Belize Botanic Gardens is an organization based just outside of San Ignacio, Belize. The missions of Belize Botanic Gardens is to protect the floral biodiversity of Belize by existing as an information resource for the community, government, industry and science and to be a place of beauty for all visitors to enjoy. The missions of Belize Botanic Gardens is to protect the floral biodiversity of Belize by existing as an information resource for the community, government, industry and science and to be a place of beauty for all visitors to enjoy. We are a 45-acre botanic garden with a small staff in a beautiful location.

Czajkowski, so how did you get involved in such a project? The area is very pretty.

I had a short computer programming career after finishing university in Texas.  After our company went out of business I was looking for something different to do. So I came to Belize to volunteer at the botanic gardens. After 8 years I am now the Foreman of the Gardens and am in charge of all the plant collections and gardens.for a month.

Czajkowski, so tell me about some of the work you’ve done there.

The land where the gardens now lie were purchased in 1993. At that time the land had been mostly bulldozered for a citrus plantation. Since then we have worked on improving our plant collections and displays to be as educational, attractive and useful to the greater botanical community as possible.  Specifically we have constructed a several ornamental displays including a Native Orchid House to show off our collection of native orchids and other plant from Belize,  amassed an impressive collection of native and exotic tropical plants, hold horticultural workshops in Belize and regularly provide educational tours to school children about the importance of plants and their conservation.

Specifically we have constructed a several ornamental displays including a Native Orchid House to show off our collection of native orchids and other plant from  Belize,  amassed an impressive collection of native and exotic tropical plants, hold horticultural workshops in Belize and regularly provide educational tours to school children about the importance of plants and their conservation. We work with the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin in Dublin quite a lot. In the middle of the house is a small thatched building that I organized and built.

Czajkowski so how do Open Source fit into this very green and pretty picture?

I developed a software application for managing plant collections called Bauble.  Bauble is now used by a couple other gardens around the world to manage their plant collections. Bauble is open source. After reviewing the existing software I decided to create Bauble. The existing software for managing plant collections was proprietary and very expensive. So Bauble makes it easier for smaller gardens and especially those in poorer countries to manage their plant collections effectively. It is an application for managing what plants you have in the garden, where they are, where they came from, their status (living, dead, etc) among other things. It helps you maintain the data about your collections like wild collections info and relationships between botanic concepts like families and genera.

Czajkowski so what other software do you use?

Although the other 7 desktops in the office use Windows, I use Ubuntu everyday. We also have a an Ubuntu server which uses Samba for the Windows clients to authenticate against and for a file server. Of course the usual culprits, OpenOffice, Gimp, Inkscape, Emacs.

Czajkowski, do you think the other 7 machines will switch over at some point to Ubuntu?

We share an office with the adjacent duPlooy’s Jungle Lodge(www.duplooys.com) and they mostly require Window for accounting and payroll. Old habits die hard and with all of my other work with the gardens I don’t have the time to switch over and train people. If there was a good open source alternative to Quickbooks then I think there would be parades in the street.

Czajkowski, so have you any other issues with switching over fully?

The accounting is the main issues and payroll requires MS-Access. Hardware compatibility is always an issue as well. Particulary with printers. n Belize we don’t have the selection of computer accessories that other larger and more industrialized countries might have. Its also expensive to ship packages and import duties are high. This means that we are often stuck with a small selection of hardware we might need, particularly printers.  What would help us would be to improve hardware compatibility with as many devices as possible. We also seem to have fewer computer technicians and particularly those that are well trained in using, configuring and administrating Linux.

We are a small organization with very few resources so everything we do has be considered against the cost and benefits.  This often means that we get sub par or non-existent
Linux support.  Having a good web based administration tool would be great, especially one that made Samba administration easy and automated.  And of course to make the documentation as accessible and extensive as possible. good source of centralized documentation from all the disparate sources across the Internet and cross references would be helpful.

Czajkowski is there an Ubuntu community for you, do you use IRC/Forums/Mailing lists for help?

I don’t know anyone else in Belize that uses Linux at all. I use all the available resources I can find to troubleshoot. One of the main reasons I use Ubuntu is that there seems to be more people using Ubuntu than most other distros so you can almost always find answers to your questions in the forums, mailing lists, IRC, etc. Its very rare for me to encounter a problem that someone else hasn’t already written about somewhere.

Czajkowski how can Ubuntu better match your needs?

Like I said before, hardware compatibility, Window interoperability, web based admin, extensive cross-referenced docs…With those things I think Ubuntu would sell itself and convincing others to mover over would be alot easier. Well, getting Samba setup just right always requires a couple aspirin and a stiff drink. And the video regressions in 9.04 were a pain in the neck. Those are specific issues. I’m not in university anymore, I don’t have time to tinker. I just want things to work.

The only thing left would really be to have the ability to expect any printer to work without hassle.We go through quite a few printers around here. Other than that I think its feasible. Especially if we had a technician besides me that could do the work. We accept volunteers. We also have a wish list.

Thanks to Brett for taking time out to tell me about his really cool project. If anyone knows of a LoCo near him please let us know!

The 3rd interview in the NGO series, was with Mark Hershberger (MH), Jeff Strope (JS) from IntraHealth International. I’m really learning a lot from these and someone asked me the point in them. Well, a lot of NGOs are using Open Source where they can and a lot are using it 85% of the time.  I’m trying to ascertain why not 100%, find the pitfalls of where oss lets them down and see if we the community can help them.

How I’ve gone about this is asking NGOs to take part and overall the reception to this has been great as they want to tell everyone about how great it is, and also where they are let down by.  In the end I’m going to use these interviews to go to other NGOs who don’t use oss and show them that they use it just as easily as their current choice without much effort and there is a community of friendly people to help them when they need it.

Students and staff gathered around one of the few working computers to upload field internship reports at L'Ecole d'Infirmiers de Gao. Photo by Danny de Vries in August 2007.

Czajkowski Can you tell us more about your organisation and how you use Ubuntu?

JS : IntraHealth International is a (mostly) US-government funded non-profit tasked with (mostly) promoting better health care systems in the developing world. Systems is used in a broader sense, not a technical one. We work with governments and regional leadership to ensure an adequate number of health care talent exists and that these individuals are well trained and equipped.

MH : We’re in the process of wrapping up the Capacity 2 funding cycle (yesterday was the End Of Project thing at the World Bank) and beginning on the country-specific AAs (Associate Awards — follow-ons for Capacity). There should be additional funding soon… but all that is kinda sketchy atm. But most of our work right now is around health care capacity in developing nations. Training and tracking providers. Our Mission statement is here . But one thing we do is the iHRIS Suite. Which I can go into more detail on. Jeff  will be able to tell you how we use Ubuntu internally. But when we deploy our open-source iHRIS Suite, we tend to use and develop on ubuntu. iHRIS is an open source human resources for health application that Mark and his colleagues developed. It is now in use in many regions in the world.

Big problem in developing countries like Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, etc, where we’ve been working, is that health care providers (doctors, nurses) are out there, but no one really knows where they are or all the information is in paper files literally kept in containers. Not the easiest thing to look through when you have an Hep G outbreak. What iHRIS does is gives the Ministry of Health or Nursing Council a way to keep track of all that information by putting it in a digital format. (Actually, while Internet is spotty, there is electricity and thus, computers, at the health care centers. )

“no one wanted to touch them they were so dirty” so, of course, first you have the problem that it is paper and hard to get to, then it is dirty and no one wants to touch it. Just digitalizing the records would be a boon, but Uganda is now rolling out iHRIS to each of its districts and we’ll hopefully be working with them to integrate it with OpenMRS, running on Ubuntu where possible.

Rita next to files in Uganda

Czajkowski can you perhaps tell me some more about the challenges you come up against?

MH : Challenge: finding people in-country to support the software. We have one really really great guy in Uganda (and others in Kenya, etc) who is really interested in OSS, but he says most of his peers are MS focused. and we’re trying to work with Unis in-country to develop educational programs (see Intrahealth Open intrahealth.org/open) here was a really good story in the Linux Journal maybe 10 years back that talked about training people in-country to use accounting software he realized that the software would be no good if no one could maintain it or the computers… so he backed up and taught them dbl entry book-keeping.

But I think the biggest problem is finding people on the ground who are willing/able to even learn to maintain the software…. (as far as software use goes) and getting the right people trained on using these methods (not all of which means the software). We have workshops, but the first few of those have been attended mostly by managers and not the people who would actually be doing the work. Hopefully that changes.

JS: Trying to apply Western technologies into the developing world is probably the largest challenge, generally speaking. That and getting Western people to think in terms of the technologies that do exist in the developing world. We recently had meetings with a number of sister NGOs that have similar missions and financial tracking was the #1 issue for all of them.

Czajkowsk So what made you start this?

MH: Then USAID first started saying “we want to build capacity” and they were looking around for some HRIS software intrah started talking to consultancies to get a price for it the consultancy said something like $500k for the initial development + $100k/country/year after that  which, when you’re talking to developing countries… is just ridiculous.So they had a developer at the time, Luke Duncan, and he and Dykki started working on the first version of the software think that was for Rwanda and Kenya saw it and re-implemented in Java .

Czajkowski what made you chose Ubuntu/OSS ?

I think it was just because back in 2005 or so that was what Luke was using. That Canonical was behind it and pushing its LTS helped. so, time goes by… by the time they’re working on version 3, I come along and Carl L. comes along. Carl really pushed the software forward made a really complete framework. (I was mostly working on other OSS  projects) the MoH in Uganda uses Suse on their servers (maybe even the iHRIS ones) because they bought it pre-installed, but mostly we’re talking about Ubuntu. (When I went to Rwanda, I took a USB HD with a mirror of the Ubuntu repo on it so that made it easier)

Czajkowski Do you use any proprietary software?

JS: We’re still a primarily Windows shop. We have 500-ish Windows workstations + an AD/Exchange environment.

MH: There is a small component inside iHRIS that isn’t strictly open source, but that is replacable — and I hope to replace it

Czajkowski you say 500 are Microsoft Workstations, that’s a lot, how many are running Ubuntu so ?

JS: A dozen or so. Servers are probably 50/50 ms/linux.

MH: While we tried to get internal HR to use iHRIS, we’ve run into an HR problem. Hard to get them to want to eat their own dog food enough to pay for additional devs….

Czajkowski do you see that as an obstacle, your own people not using OSS , how do you expect others to?

JS: We do use OSS and I don’t think we “expect” others to use it either. We expect (or hope) people to use the most appropriate tool for the job.

MH: The concept of OSS is good, people get it, but its hard when they already have MS installed and are used to it. Hard when most people aren’t technical and don’t get all the “political” arguments for OSS. Remember 500 PCs … most of which are used by people with medical, not technical, backgrounds  unless I’m wrong about the backgrounds, jstrope?)

JS: Not wrong at all. Few of the people here are technical.

MH: Other projects, like OpenMRS, have similar problems. OpenMRS depends on MS’s proprietary form software. Users at one site in Uganda said “we could run everything on Ubuntu and save lots on MS licenses if it weren’t for that requirement in OpenMRS”

Czajkowski what can Ubuntu do to help you?

JS: Laura — you hit the nail on the head there about training. Why would IntraHealth want to save $50,000 on licensing when it would cost us $1,000,000 in retraining to do so? That’s really why Ubuntu should focus less on desktop and more on web-based services. That’s how Microsoft is going to lose its grip. Because my MS users here might not be comfortable in a Gnome desktop, but they are (for the most part) very comfortable in a browser. It would be very, very nice to see better AD integration. AD stinks, but it’s not going anywhere. Focus on smoothing out the server and that will really help desktop adoption

MH: I would like to know what is needed to get some things into Ubuntu proper. what do I need to do to contribute things I’ve packaged? Debian Med is a micro-distro, for example, focused on Medical stuff that I’ve thought about and may still contribute my iHRIS packages to. Is there a possibility of something similar for Ubuntu? (would they be interested in the packages)  JS is working on some Asterisk stuff… getting that easier to deploy on the server side would be good.

I see Canonical/Ubuntu very focused on the desktop and doing great things there, but the server side could use the same attention. Many things (e.g. AD integration, Apache single-sign-on) could be really, really simplified. And the AD stuff could really, really easily be automated and packaged w/o relying on any proprietary stuff. Make it simple to join a domain, etc. Make it possible, on the server side, to set up SMB and LDAP and Kerberos to work with or replace AD. I think this is possible now, but takes a lot of fiddling. make it fiddle-free.  Did I mention I’d like to see a lot more love for the server side? I mean, it helps if the people we train in Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, etc don’t have to deal with so much… Debian has done a lot of good there, but Ubuntu could take it so much farther.

So I’d like to thank once again Mark and Jeff for taking part in the evening of interviews. I’m learning a lot during these meetings, and also being able to share with you and others in the community aspects in which I hope we can address, already I’ve passed on some of the server comments to people so lets hope we can help them in some way.