[clug] report on meeting with Kate Lundy

[tridge at samba.org]

Folks,

We had a great meeting with Senator Kate Lundy today. Kate is already
very well informed about FOSS, and is keen to look for ways to utilise
FOSS in education in Australia.

In the meeting we had:

  Kathry Moyle from UC
  Pia Waugh from Linux Australia
  Bob Edwards from ANU
  Myself from the Samba Team

We talked for about an hour, and discussed a wide range of options for
how FOSS could be better used in schools, and how the barriers to
entry could be reduced. I won't go into all the details now, but you
can be sure that Kate understands the issues very well.

We will definately be working more with Kate on this topic! Stay tuned
for more info in the future.

We also demonstrated a couple of OLPC laptops, and I lent her one for
a few days (thanks to James Cameron, who sent me a more up to date B4,
instead of my old B2 models). Obviously the OLPC is not the solution
for the Labor secondary school initiative, but it is a good
illustration of what can be achieved. Kate recorded a "hello to kids
of the world" message using the built in video camera in the laptop,
and is keen to play with it more over the weekend.

Cheers, Tridge