Group: Manchester/Speakers

Speakers

Overview

This page provides a summary of people who have spoken at Manchester Free Software, those who will be speaking, and those we would like to get to speak.

If you have any suggestions for speakers, please add them to Suggested Speakers below. If you are interested in speaking, then please do not hesitate to contact us.

Why have talks?

An important aspect of free software advocacy is dissemination of information about free software. One way in which we do that is to arrange for people to speak about topics relating to free software.

What content is suitable?

Tag line for what we want is: "Inspirational free software talks".

Talks should be:

• Interesting to all.
• Contain at least some advocacy of the free software philosophy.
• Inspire people into free software and the philosophy.

Past Speakers

See Manchester/Meetings#Group_Meetings.

• Richard Smedley, GoodGNUs. - Mike
• Rob Taylor, Codethink
• Matthew Bloch, Bytemark Hosting
• Aidan McGuire, Blue Fountain Systems
• Stuart Langridge, LugRadio
• Alex Hudson, Bongo Project
• John Leach, ELER/Brightbox
• Richard Rothwell, M6-IT CIC
• John McKerrell (OpenStreetMap)
• Ian Forrester, BBC Backstage
• Dave Crossland, Fonts
• Mick Fuzz, "Free Spaces"
• Elmar Geese, [1], [2], [3] - Lucy
• Ian Lynch - Lucy
• Michael Sparks, BBC
• http://access-space.net/?c=overview – Sheffield based

Contacted

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz (@schestowitz) - Manchester Free Software Engineer. - Mike.
• Tom Steinberg, mySociety. - Mike
• Harry Metcalfe/The Dextrous Web Ltd. - Mike
• North West Learning Grid (NWLG)/Open Source Councils Alliance (OSCA). - Mike
• Open Rights Group (ORG). - Mike
• Owen Le Blanc, MCC Interim Linux. - Leslie
• Kate Vale, Sheffield Arduino Hackers Network. - Mike
• Rufus Pollock, The Open Knowledge Foundation. - Mike
• Noah Slater, CouchDB. - Mike
• Tim Fletcher, Parrs Wood Technology College — Simon
• Jason Clifford, UKFSN
• Steve Durrant, Manchester Green Party
• Glyn Wintle, Open Rights Group
• Ben Green, Bristol Wireless - Lucy/Dave
• Jono Bacon, Canonical - Simon
• Alan Burlison, Sun - Tim
• MJ Ray - Dave
• John Pinner, Linux Emporium - Lucy
• (Mr)Ben Thorpe - Lucy

Suggested Speakers

• Harald Welte
• Jamie Van Dyke, [4], [5]

From the UKUUG Manchester conference list:

• Luke Leighton (Python Workshop) is a technology specialist, researcher and Free Software advocate. He is usually ahead of the curve on 'best technology for the job. Focussing in such oddities as Pyjamas, he is interested in anything that saves time, money and effort to provide the average person and the average developer with the technological tools that they will find useful (rather than a hindrance).
• Scott James Remnant (Canonical, UK), talking about Upstart.
• Steven Goodwin (UK) - [6], Linux Home Automation with Minerva
• Michael Meeks (Novell, UK) - Latest developments in GNOME
• Mark Taylor: Mark is the CEO of Sirius, President of the Open Source Consortium, and an authoritative writer and speaker on all aspects of the Open Source phenomenon. He has been instrumental in some of the largest Open Source deployments in the UK, working with household names in both Private and Public sectors. Mark has worked with the Communities and Local Government department (formerly ODPM), e-Government Unit, Welsh Assembly, Scottish Executive, Becta, Conservative Party, Liberal Democrat Party, Socitm and many others to help them understand Open Source, the implications of it's adoption, and to accelerate it's uptake in Central and Local Government.
• Deborah Murrell has been project manager for Cumbria and Lancashire Education Online (CLEO), one of the ten English Regional Broadband Consortia, since 2004. CLEO began trials of the opensource virtual learning environment  Moodle early in 2006 and now offers a fully hosted and managed Moodle as an option for all schools with a CLEO broadband connection.  This managed service is hosted in the CLEO server farms at Lancaster University. Moodle has proved popular with teachers across the two counties. CLEO provides additional development and training to support teachers and schools in their adoption of virtual learning environments.
• Sue Johnson (McGuire) is in charge of campaigns for OSA, she is also a joint founder of Blue Fountain Systems Ltd, a local councillor in Sefton & governor of Marshside Prmary School Southport. She was formerly on the board of the European Movement. Before joining Blue Fountain, Sue worked for Wordperfect Corp when it was the defacto standard for word processing. Sue is married with two young children. Sue will also be a candidate in the European Parliament Elections 2009.
• Dr Stephen Lucey joined Becta in May 2000 and now holds the post of Executive Director for StrategicTechnologies. ???? Dr Lucey is Becta’s lead advisor to the DCSF on the strategic development of the National Digital Infrastructure providing strategic advice on the procurement, implementation and management of ICT infrastructure to support the government’s goals of embedding ICT in teaching and learning and into institutional development. Dr Lucey directs Becta's ICT procurement and technical support advisory services to schools, the development of technical and quality standards for ICT infrastructure and services and the accreditation of ICT suppliers. Dr Lucey has been responsible for leading Becta’s ground breaking work on Total Cost of Ownership issues in education.

See also: Manchester, Manchester/Meetings