Fw: Re: advice on organisation sought from Greece

Richard Kweskin rkwesk at hellug.gr
Tue Jul 12 11:00:23 EEST 2005


Geia sas

Edw exoume ena polu endiaferwn kai praktikh apanthsh, akomh skeftounte na doulepsoume mazi!

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 15:52:00 +0100
From: Paul Cooper <pgc at openadvantage.org>
To: Richard Kweskin <rkwesk at hellug.gr>
Subject: Re: advice on organisation sought from Greece


On Thu, 2005-07-07 at 13:33 +0300, Richard Kweskin wrote:
> Hello OpenAdvantage

Hi,

> Your organisation has come to our attention just as we, Hellenic Linux
> Users Group (Hellug), are actively discussing among ourselves to set
> up something here in Greece resembling what you are doing.
> 
> May we ask your advice as to where to look for funding for such an
> effort? We are a legal entity in Greece, a not-for-profit society.

Despite being of greek descent (my mother is greek), I don't know the
local funding possibilities - here in the UK we have Regional
Development Agencies (RDAs) that receive funding from central government
as well as the EU for various initiatives. We were lucky in that our
RDA, Advantage West Midlands (AWM) was looking for some innovative
projects when we first contacted them (about 3 years ago now). I don't
know there are similar agencies in Greece.

Alternatively you could apply directly to the EU, perhaps for a
framework bid. The process seems complicated and full of red-tape but
the EU are extremely pro open-source (despite the problems with the
patent legislation).

We are in the process of developing such a bid ourselves, for a network
of European centres to exchange knowledge and best practise of using
OSS, especially in community redevelopment, but also in business,
schools, local gov, etc. We are still looking for partners and would be
happy to discuss this more, when we have our thoughts better organised -
we're right at the beginning of the bid, thinking out exactly what our
plans are. 

One thing we've learnt about funding bodies (only after our initial bid
to AWM) like to see evidence of an idea being popular / valid before
funding it. For example if you put on through volunteer work a seminar
or training course (for example my colleagues have Creative Commons
licenced their PHP & MySQL training course material) you could then
demonstrate the demand and interest to the funding body. Sort of a 'this
is what we managed with no funding and we were massively over
subscribed, image what we could do with some funding'.

I hope this is of use, please feel free to contact us again for further
info or to ask questions and let us know how any funding applications
go.

Regards,

Paul

> Richard Kweskin
> elected member of financial control committee of Hellug
> 
-- 
Paul Cooper                    |  Tel: 0121 634 1620
Assistant Director             |  Fax: 0121 634 1630
OpenAdvantage                  |  http://www.openadvantage.org




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