Explaining Open Source to computer illiterates

Yesterday I was invited as a guest speaker at Foras (Forum voor Academici uit Schoten). Foras is a monthly meetup of academics somehow related to Schoten. Every month, a speaker is invited to talk about a general topic of interest. Overseeing the list of the past 25 years, I found a lot of interesting topic and speakers. Being part of this list now honestly humbles me. A big thanks to Foras for inviting me.

I have been giving talks about Open Source (and other topics) here and there for quite some time now, but this was the first time my audience had an average age of over 50, was mainly computer illiterate, but highly educated.

Here are the slides I used for the presentation. I usually present without slides, or with only very few. This time I opted for a fully slide-supported presentation:

However unacquainted the audience with the topic, the questions and discussion afterwards were very much in line with what one would expect:

• What about the quality assurance of Open Source software?
• If it was all so straightforward, then why isn’t the world convinced yet?
• Can one use Open Source software together with proprietary software?
• …

In the future I should address these elements in the presentation itself. Frametitle could be “Open Source Myths” or so. :-)

One thing surprised me a lot. In my presentation I never mention Microsoft. Still, people afterwards were constantly asking my opinion about their practices. Interesting how clear it was for them Microsoft does not have a place in the picture I hung up about Open Source.

I can recommend everyone giving a presentation about their favourite topic to an audience with no prejudices or even knowledge about your subject. It’s an eye-opener!