How can open source help your organisation save money and increase flexibility? Join us at Open source in the public sector in London on 22 April and be empowered with the knowledge you need to make the right choice for your organisation when considering the move from proprietary software.

Explore various options available and weigh up the pros and cons in terms of time, expense, logistics and security, and get the answers to your most pressing questions from experts in the field.

EXCLUSIVE OFFER for British Computer Society Open Source Specialist Group members: Get a 20% discount by using promotional code ‘Guardian’

Don’t miss your chance to hear from:
Dr John Pugh MP, Liberal Democrats - why is open source climbing up the IT agenda now?
Ryan Cartwright, Contact a Family - examine the difficulties and benefits of rolling out open source across the whole organisation
Alasdair Mangham, London Borough of Camden - hear first hand the challenges of implementing open source systems, including the people and cost implications
Prof. David Chadwick, University of Kent - hear the impact of open source systems on your organisations security
Gerry Gavigan, Open Source Consortium, Dr Stephen Lucey, BECTA and Liam Maxwell, Centre for Policy Studies - discuss the place of open source in the ICT procurement process
Adrian Davey, Tube Lines - investigate the business and economic decision making process for staying with Microsoft systems
Chaired by Mark Elkins, British Computer Society Open Source Specialist Group

Discover how an open source system could enable your organisation to be responsive to some of the latest, flexible software solutions available and ensure you make an informed decision about the best way forward for your organisation’s IT strategy.

To book your delegate place visit www.kable.co.uk/events or call our conference team on 0203 353 4858 .

The Cambridge Wireless Software SIG aims to explore the world of mobile open source software development and challenge the arising issues from this debate.

Start date/time :  25th February 2009 13.30hrs
End date/time : 25th February 2009 18.00hrs
Venue : Symbian, 3 Ely Road, Milton, Cambridge

This half-day event is kindly hosted at Symbian’s Cambridge office and is championed by Mark Dalgarno of Software Acumen and Peter Hazlett of Symbian.

With open source platforms such as Limo and Android consistently gaining ground in the mobile operating system space, and the announcement that Symbian is going open source in the near future, there is rapidly growing interest in professional open source software development in the mobile arena.

February’s Software SIG aims to explore the world of mobile open source software development and challenge some of the current thinking:

• the benefits, and disadvantages of professional open source development
• open source business models
• proprietary vs open source
• patents & licensing
• managing an open source development community

For further information please visit: http://www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/events/article/default.aspx?objid=36076

Adriaan de Groot will give a talk about the new KDE 4 release for the BCS Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) on Thursday 1st November 2007 from 1830 hours at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA.

The KDE 4.0 release is one of the most anticipated software events in the Free software desktop world today.

This talk, which in true OSSG style is open to all to attend, will take us on a tour of what KDE 4 will bring to your desktop with technologies such as Plasma, Solid, Phonon, SVG and more as well as take a look at some of the new and updated applications that will be arriving with KDE 4.0 including the Okular universal reader and the groupware Akonadi system.

We will wrap up with an overview of the community behind and around KDE at how you too can get involved in a variety of ways, ranging from software development to documentation to quality assurance to translating to promotion, and help KDE 4 be the best desktop the world has seen in the process.

Adriaan de Groot is a Canadian by birth and a Dutchman by training. He lives in the Netherlands and works in Greece with his German colleagues. As a researcher in (Free) Software Quality, he travels in Europe trying to spread the word on quality checking tools and Free Software.

Adriaan’s first Open Source project started in 1989 when visual editors on serial consoles were all the rage. He contributed bits and pieces to other projects until settling down with the KDE project where he works on synchronizing PalmOS-based handhelds with the desktop; he also works on FreeBSD and OpenSolaris portability. Free Software takes up most of his work day.

Adriaan is a member of the board of directors of KDE e.V. and a member of the board of directors of the NLUUG.

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

Free buffet and refreshments including wine available from around 1800 hours.

For further information please contact Paul Adams at chair@ossg.bcs.org

RT is an enterprise-grade ticketing system which enables a group of people to intelligently and efficiently manage tasks, issues, and requests submitted by a community of users. Book now: online or booking PDF. Tutorial is on 16th October 2007 and starts at 0900 hours and is planned to finish by 1700 hours. Venue is The Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, London WC1B 5BB
The RT platform has been under development since 1996, and is used by systems administrators, customer support staffs, IT managers, developers and marketing departments at thousands of sites around the world.

Written in object-oriented Perl, RT is a high-level, portable, platform independent system that eases collaboration within organizations and makes it easy for them to take care of their customers.

RT manages key tasks such as the identification, prioritization, assignment, resolution and notification required by enterprise-critical applications including project management, help desk, NOC ticketing, CRM and software development.

RT is used by Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, educational institutions, and development organisations worldwide.

RT is the leading open-source issue-tracking system. Designed to make it easy for your organisation to track any sort of “task”. Various organisations, ranging in size from large corporations to the smallest non-profit use RT across a wide range of business cases. Frequent uses include the tracking of software defects, customer service inquiries, internal workflow, project management, network operations and even youth counselling. RT is powerful, flexible and built from the ground up to adapt to your organization and needs.

This comprehensive session will cover:

• RT’s system architecture
• A guided tour of the RT source code
• Extension mechanisms you can use to customize RT
• How to tie RT into your existing authentication infrastructure
• Bulding your own tools that talk to the RT backend
• Automating common procedures
• Customizing RT’s workflow to match your own
• How to write custom reports based on RT’s data

Jesse Vincent — tutor: (President, Best Practical Solutions LLC)Jesse Vincent is the author of RT and the founder of Best Practical Solutions, LLC, a company dedicated to open source tools to help people and organizations keep track of what needs doing, when it gets done, and who does it. Before founding Best Practical, Vincent worked as the systems lead for a now-defunct dotcom and as a software designer at Microsoft.

Please note UKUUG state that places are limited and early booking is essential. Booking deadline is 8th October 2007.

For further details please visit: http://www.ukuug.org/events/rt/

2 docs for committee perusal.