Hello,

Here is a report on the Finnish team activities since the last report (which I sent on 2011-03-18). Proceedings are listed in chronological order.

Sorry for spelling error etc, I'm in a hurry to write some many reports today..

- The Finnish Linux User Group's election machine was a failure http://www.flug.fi/eduskuntavaalikysely-2011, since they got so few replies. I guess the candidates didn't see it as important or in some cases even the party office might have down-prioritized it. Personally I don't like how FLUG handled it: the site and form didn't look professional (http://www.flug.fi/eduskuntavaalikysely-2011/kysymykset) and they didn't accept our offer to pay a designer to fix it nor did they list FSFE anywhere even though we co-operated on formulating the questionnare and promoting it. The page was also buggy, might have lost some candidates on that.. Finally though, they mentioned FSFE in the press release about the results (www.flug.fi main page).

- Since FLUG was very late on publishing the results, we did our on press release using the results found in the Finnish computer (business) associations election machine. There was a question about FOSS adoption in public sector and the majority of candidates where in favor. Unfortunately we haven't had time to translate it in English yet, but a Finnish copy is at: http://www.valo-cd.fi/tutkimukset/pr-finland-2011-04-15-parliament-candidate... Main points: 76% of candidates and 82 % of the public who did the election machine where in favor of using FOSS in the public sector, even though it could involve some additional costs in the short term One reporter contacted me, but unfortunately the PR didn't get released anywhere - probably to much other news two days before the election.

- Eventually new party in Finland took nearly a fifth of the votes (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13107620). As a result, many old parties like the Green Party lost many seats and out MP's inside fell out. Luckily they are still in the city councils and our two OpenOffice initiatives in Helsinki and Tampere are moving forward.

- Last week we had a lunch with me and Martin von Willebrand as FSFE representatives, Martti Karjalainen and Ilkka Tähtinen from the ministry of Justice (who made the biggest so far OpenOffice migration in Finland) and Taina Nurmela, the new project manager at Helsinki City responsible for implementing the OpenOffice pilot. The goal of the meeting was to introduce these people so that they could collaborate. Martti Karjalainen was very eager to help Helsinki City (after all, he is the man behing the Ministry of Justice migration and he has even made his doctor thesis on OpenOffice migration). We also got to know each other a little bit, which might be helpful in the future. Taina Nurmela told us that they are rolling out OpenOffice on 21 500 workstations (but they still have MS Office, this is just an extra app for pilot purposes). I'm not sure what the internal motivation of Taina Nurmela is. I think they are just doing their job. It isn't the best guarantee that the pilot will turn out successful. Actual administration of Helsinki workstations is done by Tieto Finland.

- In Tampere we're waiting for dates to have a meeting with some prominent city council politicans, the IT chief and reps from the support company, which in Tampere's case is Fujitsu. We have contacts at Fujitsu who are pro-OpenOffice, so the Tampere migration is likely to succeed as soon as the IT chief orders it to start.

- MeeGo Summit FI was in Finland, very popular with 250+ attendees. Many Finnish companies seek new MeeGo opportunities outside the Nokia ecosystem. We'll have to wait and see how thing evolve.

- Some students at the Tampere university of technology made a market research about the VALO-CD (www.valo-cd.org, English version in the works). In the survey (made face-to-face at a mall) they e.g. found out that 30% of the general population have never heard about FOSS, and 30% have heard but don't know what it means. Half of the respondents could not name a single FOSS program. So we have still a lot to do in terms of public awareness. On the other hand, within the "technical population" (Internet survey) everybody knew FOSS and almost everybody could name a FOSS program. Report (sorry, only in Finnish): http://www.valo-cd.fi/tutkimukset/VALOCD_RAPORTTI_ns_valmis.pdf

- We had a Fellowship meeting (with 4 attendees) in Helsinki and we're having another one on 2011-06-01. The purpose of the meetings is to plan our activities and generally activate our Fellows to participate.