I publically launched Vinux at the Sight-Village Exhibition in Birmingham last week, this is the biggest VI event of the year in the UK attending by thousands of people over three days. All of the main hardware and software manufacturers attend as well as VI orientated institutions and educational providers etc. I managed to distribute about 150 Vinux 1.52 CD's over the three days and although people were a little sceptical at first about the idea of a free, open-source, Linux based operating system, most were pleasantly surprised when they came and had a play with it. I purposely took the oldest laptops I could find to demonstrate it on, so that people would not be disappointed with the performance when they tried it on their own computers at home. It was also great to finally meet a few people off the mailing list: David Knight, Dennis Freedman and Georgina Joyce all managed to make the trip from the North of England, and I also bumped into Digital Darragh from Ireland who recorded an short interview with me which he will post on his website. On the Friday after Sight-Village, I presented two workshops on Vinux to members of the BCAB (British Computer Association for the Blind) each attended by 6-12 people. The BCAB provided six laptops with a dual boot setup (Vinux and Vista) and we didn't run into any major problems although speech-dispatcher did crash a few times while online. I think everyone enjoyed the sessions, and were pleasantly surprised as apparently the last time they looked at Linux it was a complete disaster! They made me feel very welcome and I really enjoyed running the sessions. They are a very friendly bunch and I would heartily recommend anyone who is living in the UK and is not already a member to sign-up!
Sunday, 19 July 2009
Sight Village 2009!
I publically launched Vinux at the Sight-Village Exhibition in Birmingham last week, this is the biggest VI event of the year in the UK attending by thousands of people over three days. All of the main hardware and software manufacturers attend as well as VI orientated institutions and educational providers etc. I managed to distribute about 150 Vinux 1.52 CD's over the three days and although people were a little sceptical at first about the idea of a free, open-source, Linux based operating system, most were pleasantly surprised when they came and had a play with it. I purposely took the oldest laptops I could find to demonstrate it on, so that people would not be disappointed with the performance when they tried it on their own computers at home. It was also great to finally meet a few people off the mailing list: David Knight, Dennis Freedman and Georgina Joyce all managed to make the trip from the North of England, and I also bumped into Digital Darragh from Ireland who recorded an short interview with me which he will post on his website. On the Friday after Sight-Village, I presented two workshops on Vinux to members of the BCAB (British Computer Association for the Blind) each attended by 6-12 people. The BCAB provided six laptops with a dual boot setup (Vinux and Vista) and we didn't run into any major problems although speech-dispatcher did crash a few times while online. I think everyone enjoyed the sessions, and were pleasantly surprised as apparently the last time they looked at Linux it was a complete disaster! They made me feel very welcome and I really enjoyed running the sessions. They are a very friendly bunch and I would heartily recommend anyone who is living in the UK and is not already a member to sign-up!
