SADC-Wide Workshop: Building Support and Awareness for the use of Free and Open Source Software Solutions (FOSS) in Women's Organisations

The FOSS workshop got underway on Monday the 6th of September at Women'sNet offices in Johannesburg. Participants came from all over africa to learn more about technology and to increase their skills in order to make decisions about their use of technology.

PURPOSE OF THE WORKSHOP

With the exception of certain Internet-related tools, open source software is not yet widely used in Africa, and there have been no initiatives aimed specifically at using open source to support women's organizations and networks. In order to realize the potential of open source software it is necessary to:

* Raise awareness of open source tools at a variety of levels: policy, management, technical staff and end-users.
* Provide easy access to open source tools.
* Develop skills among end-users, technical staff and potential open source developers.
* Ensure the ongoing development of support and training materials.
* Develop capacity for planning and decision-making around implementing open source solutions, including an awareness of factors such as total cost of ownership.

The workshop has two overall objectives: (i) stimulating awareness and adoption of free and open software source (FOSS) solutions among women's organisations in the region, and (ii) deepening understanding and skills among women technicians in providing technical support to women's organisations in the assessment, adoption and use of FOSS applications wihtin women's organisations.

STRUCTURE OF THE WORKSHOP

The workshop will run over 5 days, from Monday 6 September t to Friday 10 September 2004. The workshop will be structured into 2 parallel tracks, with some overlapping sessions.

Track 1:
During the 5 day event, Track 1 participants and facilitators will share technical skills and experiences, discuss key challenges in realizing F/OSS projects, and develop concrete strategies for supporting women's NGOs in their technology decision-making processes and efectively integating ICT into their operations and future plans.

Track 1 will target young women computer technicians - mainly technical support staff and system administrators - to build their capacity to support women's organisations in their assessments of technical hardware- and software-related needs and, where required, in migrating to and implementing FOSS solutions.

The agenda will cover issues such as:
* Social and NGO context
* Customizing/configuring and deploying GNU/Linux distributions
* Configuring clients for desktop and network applications
* Open Source database and online publishing tools
* Existing desktop FOSS applications and application development
* Migrating to FOSS

Track 2:
This track is targeted at decision-makers and end-users in women's organisations, with a view to building their ability to asses and choose between different technical (especially software) solutions. This track will also demonstrate the use of some FOSS software solutions that faciliate web publishing and information-sharing, to illustrate the ease with which women's organisations can maintain their a web site - e.g. by pooling content and collaborative online publishing - at the regional level, using only basic word processing skills.

The agenda will include:
* review of different desktop and networking applications including FOSS
* decision-making processes on technology options, including FOSS understanding theory and practice around use of ICTs for equality;
* developing inclusive ICT strategies
* measuring the impact of your ICT strategies on gender equality, using Gender Evaluation Methodology
* collaborative online publishing, using FOSS applications like ActionApps