[Fellowship Zurich] Strategy for next year: 'breakfast briefing' event and Swiss Free Software Day!

[Graeme West]

Hi all,
First of all, thanks to those who were able to make it to our holiday get-
together in Zürich last week. And thanks to everyone for your contributions to 
the Zürich and Switzerland Fellowship groups over the past few months.

I'd like to summarise a couple of things that we have recently discussed in 
the Zürich group, so that we may begin to plan them in more detail.

At the last meeting in Zürich (and over a few glasses of Glühwein), we refined 
the concept of the breakfast briefing meeting that had been suggested before. 
As well as the existing focus on direct advocacy of Free Software in 
government, we thought it would be good to give something of a 'spotlight' to 
Switzerland's FS industry, with a follow-up event around the 1st August 
entitled 'Swiss Free Software Day'.

The approach of bringing in Swiss businesses is a good one. It gives us more 
legitimacy when talking to politicians, and it also lets us show, in a very 
practical way, how closed standards and procurement of proprietary solutions 
by governments affect the economy.

It seems that 'open standards' and how they relate to FS might be the most 
universal and appropriate theme to concentrate on, given that the audience 
will likely have a relatively wide range of political views. It would be 
particularly good if the Fellows on the Switzerland list who have been keeping 
up with standardisation processes would consider contributing a talk on this 
subject.

The outline for the briefing meeting would be something like this:

Time: Morning - 2 hours maximum, plus time for networking afterwards
Location: Bern
Date: ~April 2009
Audience: government officials, political party policy specialists, trade 
union representatives, non-governmental organisation workers (e.g. fair trade, 
charities), Fellowship members

Outline schedule:
        * Briefing by Fellows or FTF on the relationships between standards, 
'open government', and Free Software
        * Briefing by FTF on methodology of Free Software business; business 
opportunities in Switzerland, and the importance of licensing 
	* Briefing by one or two leaders of successful FS projects in Switzerland. 
Explaining the key elements for success, and and (possibly) closed / 
proprietary standards and lock-in impede their business
	* Kaffee und Kuchen!

Therefore, we need to do the following things:
	* Identify the people who we should invite, and find out what their interests, 
biases and areas of expertise are
	* Contact businesses who may be interested in talking about how they use Free 
Software
	* Find a venue in Bern and set a date. It may be good to schedule it around 
OpenExpo 2009, which takes place on the 1st and 2nd April. FSFE will be 
attending OpenExpo.
	* Contact other organisations (ch / open, Debian.ch, and so on) who may be 
interested in co-hosting the event.
	* Begin producing briefing documents to distribute at the event, and to send 
to potential attendees

I would be grateful if we could have volunteers to help with coordination and 
talks.

After getting people interested at the briefing meeting, one idea was to 
arrange a follow-up event for the week prior to Swiss National Day, entitled 
Swiss Free Software Day. This would be an opportunity to create publicity 
around the links we build with the briefing event.

We should work out the details of this if you think it's a good idea.

Oh, and have a great holiday break, everyone! I'll be in Scotland until the 
3rd Jan, but feel free to send me ideas and suggestions.

Regards,

Graeme

-- 
Graeme West
Intern, Zürich office
Freedom Task Force
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)   (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship of FSFE!   (http://fsfe.org/join)
Your donation powers our work!   (http://fsfeurope.org/donate)
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