News from A2A

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as announced last week, the Alumni workshop will start soon. I'm very happy to announce that InWEnt asked me to organize/run this workshop. This is a great chance to meet many of you again. This time even in one of your countries. We have put a lot of planning already in this workshop to offer you interesting days by working with FOSS IT topics and exchange knowledge among each other.

At the moment I cannot give you the complete workshop schedule, because we don't have the final amount of participants. As soon as we know how many it@ab Alumnis will join, we can setup the final schedule. There will be topics where we all can join in one training team, however on others we might have to split the groups. It would be very helpful for us to find out which topis you're interested most. Additionally we want you to play an active role during this meeting. If you have a topic that you would like to present, let us know. We need this soon to embedd your topic into our planning.

Three inputs from Nelson Chamba from Mozambique and Fausta Nguzo and Isaac Kisiva from Tanzania are already available.

From our side we have prepared the following topics already:

• Building a Mailserver gatway
  between your existing MS Exchange server (or others) and your ISP to filter incoming mails and free them from spam and infected malware. This business model can save you a lot of money, because you don't have to pay for additional expensive proprietary software on MS servers. Using this solution does not need many changes into your existing IT infrastructure.
• Migrating to Debian
  Many of you have not used the Debian distribution yet. We will bring you latest DVD's and show you how to install/configure it. Last year we have distributed harddisks with the latest Debian mirror. Ask your Senior to give you this HD that we can update it during the workshop. Additionally we add the latest Ubuntu mirror onto your disk.
• Using Ubuntu
  Ubuntu fits nicely into our Debian based OSS scenario. It's the most used distribution by now and it is supported out of Africa. That's the reason why we think it's a must for you to become familiar with it. In June we expect the latest version Dapper Drake to be distributed. We will have it ready for you.
• LPI certification
  Ubuntu will join the LPI certification. We think that we should be among the first using it. Our idea is to provide you with eLearning information to train yourself to become LPI certified. Additionly those of you helping us with the eLearning platform could build their own mirrors out of this platform to sell it to your own customers. You may upload our LPI online training to any of your SCORM compliant platforms like CLE, Moodle or Kewl and offer access to your customers. If you want to join this project, let us know in advance, because we want to start the online phase already prior the workshop. If you just want to use it for yourself, enjoy the demonstration during our workshop.
• Using OpenVPN for wireless access
  ipCop firewall/router has got a nice plugin to add OpenVPN to wireless access points. This is considered to be the only real secure scenario to run wireless. Our workshop will demonstrate wireless technology during training. (Thats why we want you to bring your wireless equipment with you).
• Going virtual
  Virtual machines is an upcoming topic in IT business. Computers spend a lot of time by idleing. Why not use modern machines to hook several guest Operating Systems onto your host system. We will demonstrate this technique with the free VMWare Server. You will be able to run several OS simultanously. If you want to test MS running in your Debian environment, bring in any of your CD's (Winnt, W2K or XP). We have Ubuntu and latest Knoppix for you to host them all in one system.
• Community Project
  You all know St. Ursula Gynmasium in Freiburg. Linux Terminal Server is running now with 17“ monitors. Students are very happy that they can use those machines. We have frozen all settings, no student may change anything. (This brings down TCO). We want to demonstrate this solution during the workshop. We will transfer it from a German environment to a Portuguese environment. If we're done, we will donate some clients and a server to a school in Maputo. It's up to our it@ab experts from Maputo to find a school. We will drive there together to hand over our small project.

We hope you like our ideas. Feel free to give us feedback. A forum will be opened in a few days where you can exchange information among each other. We hope you use it intensively. See www.a-2-a.net
for details.

We assume that you can answer 1 to 3 with yes. There will be no other PCs available! Number 4 is optional, however strongly recommended especially for OpenVPN

One last comment:

eMail is our primary communication channel. Unfortunately, many addresses are no longer valid. That's why InWEnt set up a database. The following list indicates who signed already in. Please check this list to find other members who are not yet in. We need your help to contact those people to update our list. The Malawi ladies did a great job yesterday. Most entries are from there.

Thanks a lot, hope we can extend this to the other countries.

Butao,Millicent
Chikumba,Patrick
Chinguwo,Dickson
Chirwa,Clara
Felix,Norberto
Hangula,Ndapewa
Ibrahim,Mniko
Kaijage,William
Kissiva,Isaac
Magawa,Yvonne
Makoza,Frank
Malenga,Chaulere
Maliwichi,Priscilla
Manda,Tiwonge
Masite,Charles
Massaite,Elina
Muchanga,Alberto
Mumba,Soyapi
Ndume,Vitalis
Nguzo,Fausta
Shumbusho,Edgar
Simon,Nibampa
Phindu Lipenga
Taca,Ricardo
Thobias,Lionel

regards
HPM

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