Re: OSS presentation

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Isam Bayazidi <bayazidi arabeyes org> wrote:
>   I can not deny that I am having cold feet .. I hope to overcome this by
> some practice ..

Isam - its not that big deal.  Practice out-loud 2-3 times alone in front
of a mirror (make lots of eye contact and move around a bit -- be normal)
and then do a practice run on your friends/family (and time yourself).
Take their questions and answer them.  Be very professional (ie. dress
nice, etc :-) and don't worry - there is nothing to lose here and we
can't be wrong - we are SOOOOO right we'll blow people out of the water :-)

> About the slides.. as there are some representatives from RedHat, IBM, and 
> other OSS activist, we should focus more on Arabeyes projects, on-going ones,

Agreed - we need a couple more slides on arabeyes, but the slides currently
there should remain intact (don't make any assumptions and simply present
everything as though you are talking to a bunch of taxi-drivers :-)  The
point is "we need to say what WE need to say not what they expect us to
say (and or what they want to hear)".  Again, no big -- just go in there
and do the complete presentation, then remember the questions and we need
to address those questions better in future presentations.

> finished ones, and not-yet-started ones.. with a little about and status 
> about each one, to give a better idea about Arabeyes activeness and 
> determination to reach the desired goals..

I was thinking of the following -- we could do the following (very
professional).  We give hand-outs which include the contents of our
about page and would include the slides (6 on page) in miniature form.
That would give the people all the info we want to convey in-hand as
well as contact info (that 'support' email needs to go out !!).

> I guess that I will phone contact Mr. Nabeel to have a better idea about
> who the OSS activist present .. to make sure that there will be no
> intersection between what we will present and what others will have
> ( I am sure there will be some intersection with IBM with Arabization
> efforts) .. Maybe an LUG guy from SA or EG will be there. I am not sure..

Again, I wouldn't do that if I were you :-)  Simply put, get the following
info,

 + contact person (phone number, email - I guess that's Ghada)
 + location (you need to be able to get there)
 + time (don't be late :-)
 + duration of the entire presentation (so your mom doesn't worry about ya)
 + duration allocated to arabeyes
 + presentations preferred in Arabic or english (which would be better)
 + what software/formats will be ok for the presentation (don't freak if
   they say power-point -- its no big)
 + hand-outs ok
 + website noting all this info (pre and post -- can our logo be included)
 + etc

This could also be an opportunity to get help from others there (like
from IBM, RedHat, etc) -- so make sure to talk to lots of people there
and get their business cards and email addresses.  Be fun and HAVE fun :-)

>   The slides with "Why OSS is good for Arabs" is for sure not needed, as I 
> suppose there will be stand-alone seminars about this topic, slides for:

Again, I think it would be best if we presented the entire set - there is
no harm in repeating the objectives and pluses.  Again "we should present
what WE want not what we expect they'd want to hear".

> - Translation Project ( kde-i18n, gnome-i18n )
> - Akka
> - Duali
> - Katoob
> - QaMoose
> - non-Arabeyes project patches
> 	- VIM 
> 	- PuTTY
> 	- txtbdf2ps
> - Misc
> 	- xkb, gkb, kxkb patched ( Arabic Keyboard added and fixed)
> 	- Bug Tracking, reporting and fixing for Arabic language support issues
> 	- Documentation/HOWTOs/FAQs for Arabic support issues

Well give me some meat to put on that outline :-)  I'm not sure what I can
say about the projects beyond simply listing them.  I don't want to do a
slide per project (that would be very boring - and could serve as a
different presentation (that's what was agreed upon a long time ago)).
I could include a single short sentence on each, would that be ok ?
I guess we can define what each is and leave it be (we did list the
number of projects we have, etc.)  Hmmm...  don't know.

> - Cooperation with Universities/ Businesses
> - Brag a little about what we had reached in less than 2 years (attention, # 
> of subscribers, being looked upon for Arabic language support issues for OSS)
> this is some of my thoughts.. I will contact Mr. Nabeel in sunday.. or maybe
> I will contact Ms. Ghada ..

I will try to come-up with something - your help is appreciated (if you
have a slide or few in mind that you'd like to see - note them out and
I'll cut-n-paste).

BTW: I've included the logo on the presentation - I think it looks nice,
     do let me know what you guys think (Mohammed, make it available
     say on ~elzubeir -- sorry I forget to upload it to arabeyes and
     its at home).

Salam.

 - Nadim


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