Open Source Specialist Group

A user reported that the iCal feed provided by the OSSG blog caused Google Calendar to repeatedly send event reminders for old events. After some digging I am still not sure why Google Calendar behaves in this way; I think the timestamps on the feed items may change under some circumstances, making Google Calendar think the events are “new” and thus send and email.

In an attempt to resolve this issue I have upgraded the software that provides the iCal feed and restricted the posts shown by default in the feed to those after a date 1 month in the past. Hopefully the software upgrade will prevent the issue occurring in the future, if you still experience problems please let me know. I’ve subscribed my own Google Calendar to the OSSG feed now, so I shall share the pain if there is an issue

I’ve also changed the default feed type on the blog from the venerable vCal type to iCal and introduced a CAPTCHA and confirmation step for user registrations. This will hopefully reduce the incidence of spam-bot registration.

Alasdair Mangham, Head of Information Systems and Development, London Borough of Camden will explain the rationale behind implementing Open Source at the London Borough of Camden on 14th May 2009 from 1830 hours for the Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA.

To book a place to attend this event please email your name to the events coordinator

For further information please contact Mark Elkins at mark_elkins@bcs.org

Free buffet and refreshments available.

The Open Source Schools community, a project supported by Becta, is delighted to invite teachers and technical staff who use, or are interested in, open source software to participate in a friendly, informal day of sharing enthusiasm, experience, and expertise at NCSL’s Conference Centre in Nottingham, on Monday 20 July, 10.00 to 16.00.

Places are free for those working in schools or local authorities and for those presenting; there’s also the chance to stay at NCSL the night before for those interested.

We hope as many delegates as possible will be willing to offer presentations or facilitate discussions.
Topics are likely to include: Moodle, Open Source netbooks, design software, teaching programming, management information systems, and whatever you would like to talk about! Unconferences, such as TeachMeets and BarCamps, owe their success to their participants rather than organizers.

However, to inspire you and provoke discussion we have two keynote speakers:

Graham Attwell, Director of Pontydysgu, is well known in the field of technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Graham’s recent work focuses on new applications and approaches to e-Portfolios and Personal Learning Environments and use of social software for learning and knowledge development.

George Auckland, Head of Learning Innovation, BBC Learning, whose experience and expertise spans the original ‘open source’ education computer, the BBC Micro, and the most recent BBC open source project, BBC Open Lab.

There are further details at http://opensourceschools.org.uk/unconference09.

To register, create an account on our site, making sure you tick the ‘Unconference 09’ group. http://opensourceschools.org.uk/user/register, or join ‘Unconference 09’ via the groups menu if you’re already registered.

To offer a session, simply create a proposal at http://opensourceschools.org.uk/node/add/sessionproposal

RT is the leading open-source issue tracking system. Written in object-oriented Perl, it is a high-level, portable, platform independent system that eases collaboration within organisations amd makes it easy for them to take care of their customers.

Full details and booking form can be found at: http://www.ukuug.org/events/rt/

The Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) will be holding a one day workshop on Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) for Social Networking from 1030 on Thursday 30th April 2009 at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA.

It is envisaged that the workshop will compare some of the leading Open Source CMS such as Drupal, Joomla, and Plone for social networking purposes. However the scope of the workshop has been deliberately left open so as to allow for discussion of other Open Source CMS and other relevant matters.

Workshop participants include:

Miles Berry, Head, Alton Convent Prep | www.altonconvent.org.uk/prep and Website manager, Open Source Schools | opensourceschools.org.uk

Robert Castelo, Director Code Positive Limited who has organized various events in London for Drupal (http://www.drupal.org) open source CMS will give an introduct to Drupal focusing on social networking.

Adrian Delemore, Co-ordinator for the  Justice In Health Network (JIHN)

Anne Matthews, Project Manager, Open Source Schools | opensourceschools.org.uk

Alan Milligan, Convenor, Open Source SIG, NSW chapter of the Australian Computer Society, has been running a Plone ECM practice for the best part of a decade and will be giving a presentation on Plone and social networking.

Adrian Walmsley, BCS Vice President, Member Services

To book a place and/or request further information please contact Mark Elkins at mark_elkins@bcs.org

There will be no fee to participate in this event and a free buffet and refreshments will be available during the day.