As part of the Danish LoCo Team I have been invited to attend the conference Open source-software i det offentlige (Open Source Software in the public sector) on March 19 in Copenhagen.
The conference is a part of the governments software strategy (as formulated here in Danish) and is hosted by the Videnscenter for Software (the people who run The Software Exchange).
Hopefully we (along with the other open source projects and companies present at the conference) can convince some of the decision-makers and IT professionals in the Danish public sector that Open Source Software is a useful alternative to the current closed source solutions being used throughout the public sector.
In the Danish Team we have been discussing what arguments are best used to convince this audience. Our experience when it comes to advocacy has been mostly with individuals who need an alternative for their machine with Windows and MS Office at home. But what arguments will work best at this conference?
Some of the top selling points we came up with on our mail list seem to be:
- No malvare (viruses etc.)
- Low TCO
- Easy to administrate
There are of course many other advantages of Ubuntu and open source software, but what would be your top three selling points to this audience?