free as in free coffee & sigmund freud

everybody has humble beginnings! richard stallman started off with his printer, i started off with a presentation !

(i love comparisons where i come off with more hair than i have now!)


well a couple of days ago (as usual, i'm late on the blog) i went to the school round the corner from my house to talk to a bunch of kids about free software by virtue of being the only soul in the vicinity who was, fortunately or unfortunately, doing computer science engineering, was in the final year and was at a great college.

it was the school's computer club and there was a class-room full of kids from 5th to 9th and 10th - about 45 in all. from the outset i saw it as a very difficult proposition to get the small kids to understand about the concept of switching over from a free and pirated Operating System (read windows) to a free and not-pirated Operating System (read linux). so i thought about focussing on the fun stuff...

i was in appropriate attire - lousy cargoes and my "free" Linux T-shirt!


like all events its about want you take back. i got 4 things to take - the first 2 were realizations.

first, would be that to get a kids attention you have to use analogies he/she understands. i garnished the presentation with as many original analogies as i could. the one which i did borrow was from a mr. randy pausch and i'm sure he would be only too glad about my plagiarism. analogies ranged from cricket to food, if you were wondering to what extent i could go!

And next would be that kids are very intelligent nowadays. whether its just the internet or whether having tech savvy siblings/parents, i don't know, but surprise surprise a good number of them are already using free software (and were aware of that fact - in 5th grade!!) - albeit on windows. they've heard of the vlc player, mozilla firefox and even open office (though they have used only the first 2) .

there were some unexpected material gains (read goodies) for me from this whole thing...
i got my evening tea (though i normally have boost - secret of my energy :P ) and along with that a book as well! the unexpectedness-grade goes up a notch because the book was a sigmund freud! (i'm pretty sure it wasn't intended for me)

so all in all - worth my while :D