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Episode: 824
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Title: HPR0824: Opentech Conference 2011: Paula Graham, FOSSBox
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0824/hpr0824.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-08 03:04:21
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---
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The Full Circle Podcast on Hacker Public Radio in this episode, Open Tech and Thoughtsbox.
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Hello world, and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast on Hacker Public Radio.
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With Mr. Les Pounder, good evening Les, good evening and we are continuing our series
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of interviews that Les recorded at the Open Tech Conference which was held in London in May
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and this is our second in the series of three interviews.
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The Full Circle Podcast is the companion to Full Circle magazine, the independent magazine
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for the Ubuntu community. Find us at www.fullcirclemagazine.org forward slash podcast.
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Next up, Paula from FOSBOX, a very interesting topic, a conversation.
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Paula is passionate about free software and open source Ubuntu. As you hear, they have
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FOSBOX Fridays which is one Friday in the month where people can come along with any
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problem they've got, talk to someone and get it resolved. Free charge, no pressure, just
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turn up and they'll help you as best they can, which I think is really good, it means it's
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nice. That's what I didn't know, barriers to entry just turn up and they'll sort you out.
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But they also do more bits and pieces such as their projects around the area which help
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in local communities with the IT related issues. They mainly favor open source but obviously
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they cover a broad spectrum of support. Okay, Les and I are wasting more time, we'll
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play that one in and we'll see you on the other side of this one.
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Full circle interview. Okay, here I am with Paula Graham from FOSBOX.org.uk and we're
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going to be talking about FOSBOX and OpenTech 2011. Hi, Paula. Hi. Start with FOSBOX,
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first of all, what is FOSBOX? Well, it came out of a project we were doing some work
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with some volunteer sector infrastructure organisations for a couple of years and we
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did some pilots with Ubuntu, well we have the time and money and FOSBOX sort of came out
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of that. So we found to kick when the original project finished and we carried on working
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with infrastructure organisations. It turns to do two things really, partly just straightforward
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V2, to move people towards open source, green open source software from the Microsoft
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addiction. But also trying to kind of affect a change in the way people deal with information
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and knowledge. There's a tendency to hug it to people's chest and we're trying to get
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more awareness of things like open culture and open access in that sense.
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Brilliant. Is Ubuntu a chosen distribution based on its merits or is it because of
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your proximity to canonical perhaps? No, it's really, I mean, it's very difficult, isn't
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it? Every distro is good for something in someone. So it's not that it's the best distro.
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It's just that it's most acceptable to the people that we work with, really. It has
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the best balance because really we're kind of free software. But to do what we're doing
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you have to be pragmatic and I've always liked where Ubuntu has trodden that quite
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well in my opinion. They can use something free and open they will, but they also have
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quite a pragmatic approach to providing a usable experience for non-technical engines
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as well as the reason we're really going through Ubuntu.
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Right. I notice as well as is there something called FOSBOX Fridays as well that you do?
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That's right, yeah. We're kind of over the two. We're running for two years and we've
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kind of tried everything to work with quite a few organisations and go as much feedback
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as we can and we've ended up with an approach to a mix of training and at the moment
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we're in the process of expanding our training we're going to stop providing a basic Ubuntu
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maintenance course which is for non-technicals just to get the labels to look after their
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own conclusions. So that's to be realistic. They need some kind of resource on going.
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So we started with a kind of lug source of arrangement but that really didn't work.
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It's just too intimidating for non-technical people. So we do something much more laid back,
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volunteers come and hang about, people from the launch sector come and we just sort of
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match people up on the spot. So they've got that ongoing resource. We also kind of put people
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into the Ubuntu chat channel where we can, that people prefer quite often just to talk
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to us. So that's another part of it. So it's kind of a Ubuntu. We teach them how to
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install and maintain it and we provide that ongoing resource so they kind of trust and
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know that that's there. It's sort of safe to, you know. So that's really what the FOSBOX
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Friday is for. And obviously it's an opportunity for us to hang out and sort of bond because
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obviously we're quite a volunteer little organisation. So it's FOSBOX just localised to,
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is it a London area that you're based in? We're based in East London and we work with
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infrastructure organisations mainly in East London but because we're pretty much now the
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only organisation in the UK doing this apart from a group in Manchester and there was
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a group in Birmingham but they kind of disbanded really. So it's pretty much us and an organisation
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run by someone called Anne and Manchester doing this. So we get people calling us from
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Wales. Yeah, of course. But obviously the bulk of our work is so that it's on the boroughs
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of Ends of the city. Yeah, just a quick aside. The Onin Manchester. That's not done by Anna
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Morris, is it? Yeah. Ah, that's okay. Computer. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I help at that.
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Oh, did you? I thought it was wonderful what Anna does. I've really got a lot of sign
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for Anna. I think she's great. She's really fantastic. Yeah. I think we're going to try and
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work together more in the future. She's done a good event, it's really us. There's another
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one for the end of the year as well. Okay, computer too. We were talking a lot before she put
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that event on and we're kind of developing together now, you know, like sort of approaches
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that kind of, just to be able to work effectively with non-tech years. Yeah. It all helps, doesn't
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it really? It helps raise the profile of Linux and Ubuntu. Exactly. Exactly. It's all
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good stuff. I think we're talking about doing more stuff with women as well. I think we've
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been talking a bit about forming some kind of women's group maybe with the SSD, but I don't
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know yet, we'll see. But I think we'll start, we want to develop because we've worked
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supporting a lot of women. Yeah. But there's very few women available to kind of help other
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women with training and social. So we're going to look at how we can work with that in
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future. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. There is, I know a little about it. It's the Ada
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Love Lace Day, isn't there? Very indeed. Yeah, I need to contact those with them. I don't
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actually know those women at all. I don't have a very good link with some Linux checks
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because they're much more open source here and kind of corporate. Yeah. So I know the
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people from eclectic tech can't have been much better and women who are more free software
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oriented. There was a talker. There was a talker open tech regarding Ada Love Lace
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Day. Yeah, but I didn't manage to grab the woman. Unfortunately, so I need to contact her.
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There's something called eclectic tech carnival in which runs in Europe and we can't
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run it in London because we're not in Shankham. I'd quite like to do something else if we
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can in the UK. So it'd be based around the gender changes and eclectic tech carnival
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all the way there. Yeah. No open event, basically. Yeah. That sounds interesting. On about
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events, open tech, what I mentioned a few seconds ago. You were there on the day, weren't
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you? Yeah, I was there all day. Were you doing a talk on the day? Yeah, I did a talk
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later on in the afternoon. What was your talk all about? It was about the kind of action
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research approach that we used to put together a kind of effective way of bringing in non-tech
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ism, supporting them in a way that worked for them, basically. We had an action research
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approach that we started when I was, because I used to work with a group called Done Technology
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and Social Action, which was a ESRC funded project about human computer interactions
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of the voluntary sector. So we used those kinds of methodologies to work with our, you
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know, we did some work in depth with some groups just to work out what was needed. So I
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talked about that. Did you go to any of the talks on the day? Yeah, I saw the guy from
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London, his name. I saw the guy from, I think he was UK on Kant, who did a talk in the
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morning with Bill Thompson. And the woman, he was talking about Ada Lovelace, who was
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the major lover of the talk, as well as I saw that. Were there any talks on the day
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that really piqued your interest? That was really made you think about things? Yeah, obviously
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the Ada Lovelace talk, I was particularly interested in. Was there anything else about
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the event that you liked other than the talks? I mean, the chance to network with other
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people? Yeah, that's great. I met a lot of really good
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contacts. And I, I, a chat with a guy who was also talking the afternoon in the same
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slot as I did. He's doing work with bringing kids into programming and some of the methods
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that he is and I really like for kids, but I think they can also be adapted to women.
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And I've seen some work in Sweden during the summer. So that was one of the best contacts.
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And I also actually finally met, I know there's another group of women doing some staff
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around North London, but I didn't know who they were. I actually ran into them there and
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made the contacts. That was really good. Has boss box got any events that you want to
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talk about that coming up? Any meetings or any outings, anything like that? You want
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to mention? Well, at the moment, we're fundraising
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like that because we've got hit quite badly by the cuts, but we're also working on developing
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the Ubuntu maintenance course, which will make a nominal chargeful. And we're looking
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at the women's events. Richard Melville, actually, we've been working with Richard Melville
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was developing low power, really small form factor PCs. He's got really some really good
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ideas for reducing maintenance, like he's plugging the upgrades. He's sending the operating
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system in the day to complete this. The operating system can plug into the, you can actually
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plug in on a module. You don't actually have to install it. And various other things
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he's looking at, developing a kind of backup system that distributes all the data across
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all the nodes on a network so that you can back up about, is a kind of form of, you know,
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umber reflexive backup, basically. So he's looking at some of those ideas and he's
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got approached back to the box. We're looking at developing that because it was shifting
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in quite well with all the other things that we're doing. You know, it would take out
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the bad hardware compatibility and that stuff. So we're quite interested in that. Yeah.
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But yeah, basically, we're just developing, you know, we'll do software freedom today,
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in the summer. And we're going to start another round of training in probably about three
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months. And obviously, the software doesn't carry on. But we just done dozens of years. We
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had a wheel up between Christmas and March. We did about eight events. We'll do another one
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in about three months time. But at the moment, we're concentrating on restructuring, basically,
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to deal with the new environment. We've got enough work in there that we know we're okay,
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because for a while when the cuts were hitting, the work was drying up and we were really
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panicking why the road, but it works because everyone now can see what they've gotten
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who's left and what rest of it is starting to move again. And we're getting enough
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work in from selling services that we know we're going to be okay. Yeah. But that's obviously
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been the last couple of months. It's all kind of kicking in again now and it's just
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the future. So we're really exhaling and starting to plan the courses that we're going to run.
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That's good to hear. All right. Well, last question. Oddcamp is going to be August this year.
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Are you going to Oddcamp? Oddcamp is going to Oddcamp with a camper.
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They're promising us they'll be somewhere to camp.
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Yeah, there is a campsite, isn't there? I know that one of our friends is camping that.
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Can't for life. We're not doing the campsite.
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No, I'm going to stay in the hotel.
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I love camping. Yeah, I'm not doing camping.
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All the questions. Thank you for all that.
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And we're back. Paula sounds really, really good to have a chat with actually.
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She's very knowledgeable. I mean, she's been doing this sort of work for years now and she knows
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this stuff and she's got lots of great ideas. So I mean, if there's anyone in the London area
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who can go to postbox on postbox on post Friday's or just in general, go down, have a chat,
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visit the website and see what they can do. What part of London do they generally meet in?
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I think the nearest tube station is going to be Tower Hill. That's that's that's fairly central.
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Yeah, that's very central, in fact.
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Yeah, there's not a million miles away. I think it's where the caverns are. It's just a bit further along.
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Feedback. You can post comments and feedback on the podcast page at fullcirclemagazine.org
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forward slash podcast. Send us a comment to podcast at fullcirclemagazine.org.
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You can also send us a comment by recording an audio clip of no more than 30 seconds
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and sending it to the same address. Comments and audio may be edited for length.
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Please remember this is a family friendly show.
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That was Les Pounder speaking to Paul Graham of Frostbox, the second of our three interviews
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from the folks of the OpenTech conference. And that's it from this episode.
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For our third interview, see us here on the full circle podcast on Hacker Public Radio.
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For me, Robin Cattling, it's thank you and goodbye.
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.
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