[singapore-pm] Software Freedom Day Singapore 2009 - What do we do?

[Gaurav Vaidya]

Hey everybody,

The Free and Open Source Alliance (FOSA.sg) is organizing Software  
Freedom Day Singapore 2009. They'll have a number of events lined up  
next month (on September 18 and 19) at the Singapore Management  
University, Bras Basah and the National Library Building, Bugis.

They'll have events all day on both days. On Friday (September 18),  
they'll be organizing a series of talks at the NLB, providing an  
overview of setting up and using free and open source software in  
business, government and education, aimed primarily at a non-technical  
audience. Saturday (September 19) will see two simultaneous events: at  
SMU, they'll have tutorial sessions on the use of open source tools  
and techniques, aimed specifically at a technical audience. At the  
same time, they'll also have booths set up at the National Library  
Building's plaza to introduce members of the public to the benefits of  
open source, the wide range of powerful, reliable tools available for  
free, and to the participants, both companies and groups, involved in  
the open source community in Singapore. Event overviews are available  
at http://softwarefreedomday.sg/ ; detailed schedules will online as  
soon as they're ready.

Specifically, I'm wondering what we - as Singapore.pm - can do to make  
sure Perl doesn't get sidelined. There's slots on Saturday for  
technical demonstrations and tutorials at SMU; I'm planning a demo of  
Git and GitHub, and I'll probably use a Perl FLOSS project to  
demonstrate. But it'd be great if we could do something more directly  
Perl-based. Any ideas or suggestions? A talk on Catalyst or something  
like that might be too detailed (unless you can do a very quick talk  
on it, I guess). A talk on testing (Test::More, prove and the like)  
might be interesting, particularly if it's structured as a "Let me  
tell you everything I know about testing; this isn't a Perl talk, but  
here are a bunch of easy to use tools you've probably already got on  
your computer or can download easily at http:// 
www.strawberryperl.com/". Any other ideas, volunteers for talks or  
show of interest in a talk (of course, any spare talk ideas not used  
for Software Freedom Day can be brought 'round to our own meetups  
later on).

I'd love to hear ideas about setting up a booth at NLB, too: does  
anybody have Perl swag to sell? Do you think it'd be worth it to ship  
some over from the US? Anything else Perl can do to reach out to the  
masses? Even a single laptop running Frozen Bubble will probably do a  
whole lot to help dispel the Perl-is-dead myth.

They need all the help they can get, particularly in volunteers, ideas  
and marketing. If you'd like to help out, cheer on the home team,  
promote this event to your friends or family, or support them in any  
other way, you can find out more at the FOSA website (http://www.fosa.sg/ 
) and the SFDS website (http://www.softwarefreedomday.sg/), or on our  
mailing list at fosa-discuss at foss-alliance.sg. If all else fails, you  
can get in touch with me at gaurav at ggvaidya dot com. This would  
also be a great time for you to meet FOSA.sg (if you haven't already)  
and give them your ideas and suggestions on how they can best work  
towards the common interests of open source groups and communities in  
Singapore.

See you at  both the next Singapore.pm meetup (details to be  
announced) and Software Freedom Day in September!

cheers,
Gaurav