BostonPHP User Group: January ODF Focus

[donald_harbison@us.ibm.com]

Folks,

Mark Withington leads the BostonPHP
user group community that meets monthly at the IBM/Lotus campus in Cambridge,
MA. Check out his web site here: 
http://www.bostonphp.org/component/option,com_gigcal/task,det

You'll see that he's building the agenda
and speaker roster for the January 4th meeting. Since we were discussing
the complementary possibilities of PHP and ODF on this morning's ODF Adoption
TC call, I thought I'd send this out to the list to continue the thread,
and as a call-to-action for any TC member to raise their hands if you're
willing and able to support the event. I also suggest that if you see a
way to improve the straw agenda below that you make your suggestions to
Mark.

Mark, we discussed doing a survey of
the PHP-ODF projects that are hosted on SourceForge with an eye to selecting
a few that are most active, contacting the leadership, and inviting them
to participate in one of our weekly calls for information exchange. Ultimately,
we have a purpose in mind to raise awareness that ODF is about alot of
things, and open programmability is one of them. Our value is only as great
as the information we bring together and publish on http://opendocument.xml.org.
 It seems to me we have some common ground here and would like to
support your local effort in Boston.

January User Group:: ODF what's in it for you?

The OpenDocument standard has been developed by a variety of organizations and is publicly accessible. This means it can be implemented into any system, be it open source or a closed proprietary product, without royalties. The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats so organizations and individuals can avoid being locked in to a single vendor.

Join BostonPHP along with representatives from some of the major ODF "forces" as we explore:
1.        what is ODF
2.        where is it going
3.        what vendors support
4.        how does it affect me, as an enterprise and why should I care?

Don Harbison
Program Director, IBM ODF Initiative
Business & Technical Strategy
IBM Software Group
tel:1-978-399-7018
Mobile: +1-978-761-0116
email: donald_harbison@us.ibm.com