Most people find information in videos easier and more fun than information on websites or text. Making a simple video isn’t as hard as you might think and there are some simple, free tools available with Ubuntu.

This training session will show you how to use an ordinary digital cam and some free editing tools to create a simple information video and upload it to You Tube.

Date and venue for this session will be published shortly. Contact us at Fossbox if you’d like more information about this session.

We’re celebrating Software Freedom Day with hands-on demos and presentations to help organisations of all sizes innovate and revive existing equipment — and get the most from shrinking IT budgets.

If you can’t afford paid tech support, we can show you how to get free help and tutorials for Ubuntu and other Free Software online and learn how to find the software you need and keep your own systems running smoothly for free.

Download a brochure here for more information

Click here to register for this event online or contact us for more information — or you can just drop in for a while on the day.
Please note that the global event is on Saturday, 18th — the London event is on Friday 17th as VCS organisations are unlikely to attend a weekend event.

Date, cost & Venue:

Date: Friday, 17 September 2010, 11am to 7pm – Tea, coffee and biscuits provided but bring your own packed lunch or there’s a Waitrose and lots of cafes nearby.
Cost: Free of charge (donations welcome)
Venue: Fossbox Workshop, Stephen & Matilda Community Centre, 46 Matilda House, St Katharines Way, London E1W 1LG

Barbecue and social on the patio — weather permitting!

DIY websites are now very easy to make and maintain using FOSS applications. Any non-techie with a little confidence can build an attractive website in a couple of hours and maintain it themselves.

Click here to register online or contact us for more information.

Who’s it for?

Anyone who needs an attractive and easy-to-update website for a charity, voluntary or community group, environmental group, or social enterprise.

Topics covered:

• Installing Wordpress
• Themes – choosing a ‘look’ for your website
• Adding pages, news and multimedia
• Adding functionality (like events calendar or social media buttons)
• Keeping it updated

Users will be able to practice on real installations of Wordpress as well as being given access to the Fossbox training website which offers video guides to the topics covered in the session.

Date, cost & Venue:

Date: Thursday, 23 September 2010, 11am to 5pm — Tea, coffee and biscuits provided but bring your own packed lunch (or Waitrose and plenty of cafes are nearby)
Cost: Free of charge (donations welcome)
Venue: Fossbox Workshop, Stephen & Matilda Community Centre, 46 Matilda House, St Katharines Way, London E1W 1LG

Would you like to get a new lease of life from existing PCs, servers and laptops? Or learn how to install and use Ubuntu on lower-cost, lower-carbon and space-saving equipment? Ubuntu is a fully-featured Desktop environment which can provide a user-friendly alternative to Windows or Mac OS. We’ll show you around Ubuntu and some of the software available for it and walk you through installing it.

Click here to register online or contact us for more information.

Who’s it for?

‘Accidental techies’, IT Managers and communciations staff, Funders and Trustees — anyone who would like to reduce their software costs and use their existing ICT resources more sustainably for a charity, voluntary or community group, environmental group, or social enterprise. Everyone welcome, women especially encouraged to participate

Topics covered:

• Introduction to Ubuntu Desktop
• How to install Ubuntu on a typical laptop, PC or netbook
• Guided tour of the Desktop and basic admin
• Finding and installing software for all your usual tasks
• Introduction to some innovations in PCs, laptops and servers

You can take away a free Ubuntu demo and installation CD and also have the option to purchase a 2 GB USB stick with a selection of Free Software for Windows or with Ubuntu to install on a netbook.

Date, cost & Venue:

Date: Tuesday, 12 October 2010, 11am to 5pm – Tea, coffee and biscuits provided but bring your own packed lunch (Waitrose and numerous cafe’s nearby)
Cost: Free of charge (donations welcome)
Venue: Fossbox Workshop, 46 Matilda House, St Katharines Way, London E1W 1LG

We had a great time at the dotActivist event organised by Turnfront — a really interesting day with friendly people.

This is a video of an interview Fossbox did for VisionOn TV on Open Software Service Definition (OSSD) — alternatives to the “walled garden” approach to social networking in proprietary services such as Facebook.

The full presentation can be viewed here.

Fossbox has just been awared an A4A grant to set up a portable Ubuntu training suite and offer 4 free taster training sessions. Contact us if you’d like to host a session or would like more information. Visit our website to find out more about Fossbox training sessions.

We’d like to know more about what sort of training non-profits need, so do visit our training poll and cast your vote.

We’ll be posting details of individual training sessions here over the next few weeks.

Social Media Training at the Evelyn Oldfield Unit, 356 Holloway Road
London N7 6PA

Introduction to social media for BAMER organisations demonstrating popular platforms with help to assess whether it’s right for you, get started, avoid the more obvious risks, build and evaluate your social networking.

An election debate including issues which are otherwise left out of the mainstream debate such as poverty alleviation, bank regulation, curbs on secret lobbying, defending the BBC services against media industry pressure to cut public broadcasting, care for the elderly, climate and nuclear weapons.

You can vote for which topics will be included on the 38 Degrees election debate page.

Charter for citizens’ and artists rights in the digital age has just been released by a coalition of organisations in 20 countries. Video and text summary here.

This is particularly timely for the UK after the passing of the Digital Economy Bill through the Commons last week. More information about the Digital Economy Bill here and the 38 Degrees campaign to ban secret lobbying here and more about the Free Culture Movement here.

Dan Martin has started up a list of things you can do with Linux that you can’t do on Windows. Being able to add and reconfigure software and hardware without having to reboot is one of my favourites. I’d add some Ubuntu-specific advantages to my list:

• Completed installation in 20 mins to half an hour – rarely need additional drivers and, if I do, Ubuntu pops up a little green gizmo that tells me what it is, warns me about any implications, and offers to install it for me
• Plug and play really means you can plug in anything from a printer to a camera to an mp3 player and Ubuntu thinks for about 5 secs before informing me it’s ready to use. Again, no CDs, faffing, rebooting etc

It’d be good to expand this list — too many people think of Linux as a poor substitute when, in reality, it’s better in many ways and at least just as good.