[1]Shane Baptista |Computing Consultant |[2]Center for Teaching Excellence |[3]University of North Carolina Wilmington
I work at the University of North Carolina Wilmington as a computing consultant in the Center for Teaching Excellence. My job consists of researching new software which could facilitate teaching. In the beginning of my career, mid 90's, this was mostly html and image editing for course web pages.
Around 1998 I was introduced to Linux by one of UNCW's network administrators. He helped me make a dual-boot system for my home machine. I was intrigued but the sound card didn't work and the modem didn't work. I poked around in the games (which I love) and found the machine to be speedy and easy to use except for the parts that didn't work. Without connectivity to the web that side of the computer wasn't used very often.
In 1998 or 1999 I can't remember which, I downloaded GIMP 1.0 for Windows. As I recall it worked about as consistently as Photoshop in Windows did at that time, which is to say plenty of crashing. Given that it crashed as often as Photoshop and had an unfortunate name I continued to use Photoshop for my personal projects. I taught faculty how to use either Paint Shop Pro (shareware) which would allow faculty to use it for 30 days and then just nag them if they didn't pay; or Microsoft Image Composer which came bundled with FrontPage. In 2000 FrontPage stopped having a bundled image editor and Image Composer morphed into PhotoDraw which was bundled with the Pro version of the MS Office suite. In 2002 or 2003 Microsoft pulled PhotoDraw from the Office suite and made it a standalone package [4] for which UNCW did not have a site license.
Previously I had been able to help faculty with pretty much free software since the site license was already paid for. However, now I faced a problem where I had to tell the faculty to go get $90 or so for Paint Shop Pro (or be nagged and feel guilty their choice) or $90 for MS Digital Imaging, or $250 (academic pricing) for Adobe Photoshop. Some faculty have grants and can buy their own equipment and software. Other faculty do not have grants and might have a hard time procuring the resources for software that many department chairs at the time found frivolous especially if the imaging didn't relate directly to research.
Re-enter the GIMP. Still unfortunately named but the crashing had ceased and there was a concerted effort on the part of project managers to make the interface standard. As a research project I started using the GIMP instead of Photoshop. Once I had determined the prime-timeness of the GIMP I started introducing it to faculty.
Since then I have come to be known as the Open Source Technologist at UNCW a perception I heartily encourage.
--Baptistas 13:46, 28 July 2006 (UTC)