On 02-Jun-2010, at 10:50 AM, Arun Khan wrote:

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:44 AM, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:

...

I have been invited by one of the more pro-active engineering and manufacturing associations of the country to present a paper on the role of open source in helping our country compete with the best in the world. This is a great opportunity, because normally hard core manufacturers and industrialists have no exposure to such things. I do not have too much experience in these areas and request everyone to give inputs on this so I could make a dent in this sector.

I am not sure what input you are seeking but topics like ERP, Supply Chain Managemen (SCM), conformance to govt. regulations as well as interaction with govt. come to mind.

Yes, in areas like CRM and CMS lots of good solutions are there in the open source domains These software are also built on LAMP architecture. It would be one area to concentrate on as its easily understood by the manufacturing industry. You need to talk of killer applications, those which will quickly show benefits in terms of more efficiency.

May be something in communication technology specially for those with offices and factories at different locations.

Do not talk of ERP in open source as its a complete failure in Indian scenario at least.

I have interacted with a couple of manufacturers one in the plastic tube industry and the other in copper tube manufacturing. The adoption of open source, just as in any other organization, is highly dependent on the "vision at the top" The plastic tube manufacturer does not care what the underlying platform is as long as the solution gives the co. a lower TCO (one of the few who actually understands the value of TCO), the COO has appreciates the fact that his ERP server has been running non stop (except for power outage) and is now looking to migrate his task workers desktop to Ubuntu. The copper tube manufacturer did want to move to open source on desktops (task workers) and server (file server and gw etc.); This same manufacturer also dealt various PSUs and Govt. tenders - the major road block in this realm - need MS Windows and IE to upload bids. I did a month long pilot with them and removed all their objections to OO vis-a-vis MSO but there was a lot of resistance from the mid level management and their IT infra remains status quo (the MD was not keeping well and he had to rely on the mid managers to run the operation).

HTH.

-- Arun Khan

http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers

The manufacturing segment is run by old farts who detest change. Are you planning to offer come kind of comprehensive training programme as well?

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:44 AM, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:

hi,

I have been invited by one of the more pro-active engineering and manufacturing associations of the country to present a paper on the role of open source in helping our country compete with the best in the world. This is a great opportunity, because normally hard core manufacturers and industrialists have no exposure to such things. I do not have too much experience in these areas and request everyone to give inputs on this so I could make a dent in this sector.

-- Regards Kenneth Gonsalves Senior Associate NRC-FOSS at AU-KBC -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers

web etiquettes are easy to pick up. it's personal etiquettes that escape most people. good linux evangelists try and keep the sarcasm down

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 8:01 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:

On Thursday 03 June 2010 19:45:51 Rahul Jayaraman wrote:

...

The manufacturing segment is run by old farts who detest change. Are you planning to offer come kind of comprehensive training programme as well?

obviously you have not read my post. (btw, I also offer free training on how not to top post) -- Regards Kenneth Gonsalves Senior Associate NRC-FOSS at AU-KBC -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers

On Thursday 03 June 2010 20:08:18 Rahul Jayaraman wrote:

web etiquettes are easy to pick up. it's personal etiquettes that escape most people. good linux evangelists try and keep the sarcasm down

looks like you need to enroll in my 'how to avoid top posting in 10 easy lessons'

On Thursday 03 June 2010 20:13:54 Rahul Jayaraman wrote:

...

http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers

there you go. my 'input'.. be polite.. sarcasm would irk the grandsons as well

please avoid bottom posting

Guys please, can we please stop this rant.

We are wasting precious bandwith on nothing constructive.

Most of the times I see questions ending up in a free for all and meaningless taming sessions with unneeded lessons in mannerism, etiquettes etc.

I think if someone wants to teach someone a lesson or two, it can be done off the list on your personal emails without causing havoc here.

I hope everyone understands and stands by in helping each other.

My apologies for top posting as I am on a mobile phone ;)

Best Regards Prakash Shetty Sent on my nWired BlackBerry®

-----Original Message----- From: Rahul Jayaraman rahul@moqshh.com Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 20:13:54 To: GNU/Linux Users Group, Mumbai, Indialinuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] open source in engineering/manufacturing industry

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 8:11 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:

On Thursday 03 June 2010 20:08:18 Rahul Jayaraman wrote:

...

web etiquettes are easy to pick up. it's personal etiquettes that escape most people. good linux evangelists try and keep the sarcasm down

looks like you need to enroll in my 'how to avoid top posting in 10 easy lessons' -- Regards Kenneth Gonsalves Senior Associate NRC-FOSS at AU-KBC -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers

there you go. my 'input'.. be polite.. sarcasm would irk the grandsons as well

On Thursday 03 June 2010 20:10:44 Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

On Thursday 03 June 2010 20:01:00 Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

...

On Thursday 03 June 2010 19:45:51 Rahul Jayaraman wrote:

...

The manufacturing segment is run by old farts who detest change. Are you planning to offer come kind of comprehensive training programme as well?

obviously you have not read my post. (btw, I also offer free training on how not to top post)

and in addition the manufacturing segment is now run by the grandsons, all with shiny MBAs from foreign, very computer literate and as or more innovative than their grandfathers who built up huge enterprises from scratch by hard work and continous innovation. I do not know where you got these silly ideas from.

Ducks, backs, quacks etc.

He needs a padyatra thru tier 2 cities, if he's lucky one of the old farts will give him a chopper ride over their plantations, plants, sez's....

On Thursday 03 June 2010 20:26:25 Rahul Jayaraman wrote:

agreed.. @jtd the motive of my question was to find a way to get past the barriers i face

My method:

1. most of the 'old farts' are not tech savvy in terms of computers and gadgets. Many of them even refuse to use mobile phones. But they are tech savvy in manufacturing and business - respect that. There is an old reader's digest joke:

Phd in agriculture to farmer: The way you are cultivating it, I would be surprised if you got even one kilo of apples from that tree (sneers)

farmer: I would be even more surprised since it is a pear tree (sneers)

2. Do not try to dazzle them with your knowledge of technology - they have made their money and their mark. They will not be impressed.

3. Dazzle the grandsons by showing the immense superiority of linux distros over what they use. My success in this sphere is mainly due to my showing of a local cloud server which gives response times of 72 ms whereas the servers they are using are giving 772 ms. If they ask why there are so many distros, you ask them why they have 6 types of cars - better to stick to ambassador and fiat!

Our people fail in impressing 'old farts' precisely because they think they know everything and act superior - this goes for college professors too.

On Wednesday 02 June 2010 11:52:50 jtd wrote:

4. voip, chat, email and mobility services
5. expensive cisco routers, firewalls and bandwidth optimisation software.
6. PKI infrastructure
7. HA facilities

what are PKI and HA? btw, I have made a wiki page to help plan the presentation, please feel free to add stuff.

http://nrcfosshelpline.in/code/wiki/SiemaPresentation

I will make slides, incorporate the responses and feedback from the seminar into them and put it up somewhere for use of everyone.

(note to self: do not forget to put a license)

On Saturday 03 July 2010 13:31:48 Mehul Ved wrote:

...

what are PKI and HA?

PKI - public key infrastructure HA - High Availablilty

...

http://nrcfosshelpline.in/code/wiki/SiemaPresentation

Wiki is reachable but this page isn't.

works for me

btw, one of the things I want to talk about is open standards - I wanted to create a doc file and an odt file, open both in a text editor and show that the doc file is full of binary junk, whereas the odt file is in xml format

• but I find that when I did it, the odt file was also full of binary junk
• how do I get it in xml format?

well the odt file is actually a zip file consisting of various files which are in xml. just unzip the .odt file and then open the files in any text editor.

-Yohan

On Saturday 03 July 2010 13:53:34 Yohan Pereira wrote:

...

btw, one of the things I want to talk about is open standards - I wanted to create a doc file and an odt file, open both in a text editor and show that the doc file is full of binary junk, whereas the odt file is in xml format - but I find that when I did it, the odt file was also full of binary junk - how do I get it in xml format?

well the odt file is actually a zip file consisting of various files which are in xml. just unzip the .odt file and then open the files in any text editor.

cool - another request: it all comes in one line - what is the easiest way of formatting it?

btw, one of the things I want to talk about is open standards - I wanted to create a doc file and an odt file, open both in a text editor and show that the doc file is full of binary junk, whereas the odt file is in xml format - but I find that when I did it, the odt file was also full of binary junk - how do I get it in xml format?

well it turns out the new "office open xml" (docx, pptx etc) format used by Microsoft office is also xml based (and zipped). i dont have access to any docx files to verify this though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_xml

cool - another request: it all comes in one line - what is the easiest way of formatting it?

just open them in firefox.

-Yohan

Hi,

On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:

[snipped]

btw, one of the things I want to talk about is open standards - I wanted to create a doc file and an odt file, open both in a text editor and show that the doc file is full of binary junk, whereas the odt file is in xml format - but I find that when I did it, the odt file was also full of binary junk - how do I get it in xml format?

IMHO, it may **not** be the best possible example. Given the generic nature of the audience and the example in this case, if someone opens up a .docx file instead of a .doc file using a decompression utility, it would look very close to the .odt experience - a bunch of XML files.

just my 2p :)

-idg

-- Regards Kenneth Gonsalves Senior Associate NRC-FOSS at AU-KBC -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers

-- Indranil Das Gupta

Phone : +91-98300-20971 Blog    : http://indradg.randomink.org/blog IRC      : indradg on irc://irc.freenode.net Twitter : indradg

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other format is acceptable. Support Open Standards.

To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit http://www.openoffice.org/

On Friday 09 July 2010 09:41:57 Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

...

http://nrcfosshelpline.in/code/wiki/SiemaPresentation

I will make slides, incorporate the responses and feedback from the seminar into them and put it up somewhere for use of everyone.

slides are uploaded

the seminar took place and my presentation was very well received. I would like to thank those members of this list who contributed ideas and helped clarify my thoughts. A brief report:

1. The audience was 25% top management (CEO, CMD), 25% independent entrepreneurs and the remainder senior professors and senior students of B schools and engineering colleges - a total audience of around 200.

2. all the speakers (except one) were of national and international repute and the level of talks was very highly informed.

3. of the audience most of the speakers, some of the top brass, some of the entrepreneurs and one student had heard of open source software, so I stuck to the basics and a lot of them were thrilled. In the Q&A there was a note of anger - if all this was there why were we not told? one guy even demanded that the government pass a law compelling computer dealers to disclose alternative software available! Anyway it looks like a lot of open source is going to be adopted in this region shortly

4. Of interest to note, there were *two* speakers who used linux for presentation - and the projector worked flawlessly for both. The other linux guy used a uber-sexy tool called prezy for his presentation (prezy.com).

5. The one student who had heard about open source was very enthusiastic about FOSS, mainly because he studies at a private university that is very heavily into FOSS. But he was of the opinion the linux is no use because most of the peripherals do not work and there is no sound - I found out that this was because he was using an immature distro and advised him to try out a stable and sane distro where everything would work out of the box.

and finally, 100% of the linux users in the conference were golfers - shows linux is heading in the right direction ;-)