Libre Software World Conference instead of Open Source World Conference

Every year it used to take place in Spain a big software libre conference. One year it was celebrated in Extremadura and the other one in Andalucía (Málaga). The Málaga one, called Open Source World Conference had over seven thousand atendees during the three days conference in 2008. This year was announced for October 27th and 28th a few months ago. KDE along with more than a hundred organizations were going to give talks, demos, participate in round tables, etc.

Many companies from ASOLIF, the National Federation of Free Software SME from Spain, the organization I work for, were preparing contents for that conference, and some representatives from our Andalucía Association, Andalibre, and myself has been involved in organicing our presence there since early February. Like it happens in any other big conference, it takes a lot of work to have everything ready in time and there are many things you cannot wait until the last minute to solve.

During the OSWC, ASOLIF was going to celebrate our internal meeting, called IV Encuentro ASOLIF, that take place every six months. 75 of our companies were expected to come to Malaga from all over Spain. During these meetings, we coordinate the actions and projects we are working on and we celebrate meetings with public administration, big companies and other entities interested in collaborating with us.

On October 6th, the Andalucía's Regional Goverment, the OSWC organicer, suddenly announced the cancellation of the event. This meant that all the work we were preparing had no meaning and was going to be lost. Our companies were shocked, just like I was.

Two days later, after a lot of internal disscussion, ASOLIF did agree on leading the organization of a public event during October 27th and the IV Encuentro ASOLIF on October 28th in Málaga. For doing this, we made an open call for help and many other organizations and individuals got involved on it: colleges, LUGs, media, developers, etc. The open collaboration mode worked well. The City Council of Málaga helped us by letting us use the Malaga Congress Palace for the event.

So after 19 days of hard work, we were able to kick off what it was called de Libre Software World Conference (LSWC) in the same place and time the OSWC was supposed to happen. In the four tracks we of the event, more than 60 members of different companies, universities, local and regional goverments, etc. were involved. About three hundred people attended and about 30 ASOLIF companies could show their products in demos. About 50% of the contents involved ASOLIF members and the other 50% were given by other entities. KDE Spain was one of them (Antonio Larrosa did it...yes...he's back :-) ).

The following day, ASOLIF celebrated its IV Encuentro ASOLIF and about 40 companies from all over Spain showed up. So the whole adventure ended up being a great success.

I've been quiet busy the last month trying, along with other people, to organice in a few weeks what it usually takes a few months....but we did it quiet well so all the work was worth it. It is the first time our organization leads the celebration of a partly commercial oriented event. We already have plans to repeat the experience next year. With more time and money we know now we can do a good job.

Bussines around free software is not an exception anymore so we feel there is room for a more commercial oriented event in Spain. We want to bring different profiles to it without losing the hacking way of doing things that works so well for networking purposes in community oriented events.

It was good news that KDE Spain did a KDE 4 demo during the LSWC. Many enterpreneurs attended to it. But it was even better news that most of the speakers used KDE. Some tweets reflected this fact. It was unexpected to most. I knew we had a bigger penetration in commercial enviroments than in public administrations (GNOME rules there) here in Spain, but I was also surprised of our presence being so notorious. As I've said many times before, I think companies should be our major target here in Spain. More and more people agree on it and we are trying to focus some energy in that target.

¿Why will I celebrate the Software Freedom Day?

Tomorrow we celebrate the Software Freedom Day. The hispanos translate it into Día del Software Libre. I'm going to celebrate it because of the following reasons:

1.- I think it is a good tribute to those that, before me, fought hard to make Software Libre and the movement around it posible.

2.- This day should serve as an inspiration to those who keep putting effort and illussion to promote freedom through Software Libre, to those who want to bring justice to Software market and to those who, like myself, still feel motivated by innovation around ingeenering in general, and software in particular. During the everyday battle we loose part of ourselves and ocassionally we need some extra energy.

3.- All our effort is useless if our work is not known and understood by others, no matter if they agree or not with our statements. Only if they know what we do and why we do it, they will be able to understand us, which is the only way to respect us the same way we respect them.

Beacuse at the very end, this day is about celebrating that we now can choose. That is freedom. Happy Software Freedom Day. Celebrate your freedom.

II Desktop Summit: take control of your own future!

...and the winner is...Berlin. It will be the "star of our system" for a week during the summer of 2011.

The II Desktop Summit has location, a good one. I'm excited about this event for several reasons. The first one is because, somehow, it gives credit to all the hard work done to celebrate the I Desktop Summit (Gran Canaria Desktop Summit). But above that, I'm excited because, after breaking the ice during that first approach, this event can be a huge oportunity to takes steps forward in joining efforts between GNOME and KDE to develop better technologies, better solutions for more devices and more exciting applications.

Beside pure technical issues, there is a lot of work we can do together in areas like marketing/promotion, usability, internationalization, education, etc. This is a great chance to begin.

So, do you want to know why Software Libre makes a difference? Come and live it by getting involved in decisions that matter.

II Desktop Summmit: take control of your own future!

Akademy is over for me

I'm writing this while heading to the airport to go back home. It's been an interesting Akademy, well organiced and with a lot of good topics to disscuss. Last night we ended up in a karaoke...something unexpected but really fun. Listening people from Netherlands, India, México, Brazil and Spain singing together is not common, right?

This Akademy has also been a little different because of the World Cup. Obviously for all the spaniards that came to Tampere we have enjoyed it a lot. Let's see what happens this sunday against Netherlands. If we win.....Spain will be a huge party.

I've attended to several BoFs related with many different topics. I've also updated my laptop, tryed some new KDE features, talk about several little improvements and coordinated different actions I'll be helping on. Akademy is fun, but definetly means a lot of work of all of us.

As expected, my clothe doesn't fit into my bag. Buying clothe in the summer sales may cost me a lot....thanks God Antonio Larrosa is flying to Málaga in the same plane that I am and he has a little room in his baggage for some of my new clothe.

So, with a lot of hours of sleeping to take, a couple of extra kilos, a two weeks beard and tons of new experiences lived ....my vacations in Finland comes to an end. Thanks to all the KDE people and to the local team for organicing everything. See you all next year in the II Desktop Summit.

Let's do it

Sometime we concentrate on little things that matter a lot to us but has no impact on what we are doing. I frecuently come to disscussions in my everyday live in which I put a lot of my energy but, overall are not worth it. Sometimes I have people around me telling me that there's no point on "trying to win" those arguing but moving forward and pushing hard to accomplish the real goal. But sometimes I don't have them.

This Akademy is being great so far, but as always happens when innovating, I've seen a lot of tough disscussions. Some of them matters, and some don't. Or at least to the project as a whole or not to acomplish the global goal, which is to have a great product made by a healthy community and having a lot of people using it.

This article [1] [2] just got into my e-mail client and I want it to share it with you. Even if it's not totally true, it reflects how much work is ahead of us.

So let's concentrate more in what matters and a little less in other things. It is not that we are doing bad....I just want to share this feeling that we can do even better. There are tons of opportunities out there, and now we have a great product and the best community we've ever have.

Let's do it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_market_share
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Operating_system_usage_share.svg

Akademy Day 3

Today I attended to my first KDE e.V. Assembly. Everything was on time, as schedule. Some points were interesting, and some very insteresting. Well....maybe not but hey...it was my first one so I'm not going to complain.

After having lunch with some KDE e.V. members, I went to the hacking area to resolve some urgent stuff from work and go back to KDE related activities, like having beer, etc. I have my schedule for attending several BoFs during the week...so I guess I'm prepare for the more technical part of the event.

After doing some some task related with KDE at Demola and having dinner I went to sleep early since I totally exhausted. It's been a great Akademy so far...and well organiced, by the way.

Akademy Day 2

After waking up late, I arrived at the Akademy place very late, but just in time for the Group Picture. The lunch was good and had some good conversations with part of KDE España. About 8-9 people from this organization are here. I'm having problems with my internet connection. I have screw up my Knetworkmanager, I think. I'm in a perfect place to fix it. There are tons of developers around.

After attending to some talks and the Akdemy awards, I went to have some beers with KDE España, after an internal meeting. Tomorrow I'll attend to my first KDE e.V. assembly.

Akademy 2010 Day 1

Conferences has started in Akademy 2010. The first conference was about MeeGo, done by the Meego leader from Nokia. Surpringly the two best arguments were given during the question turn by the KDE/Nokia member Suresh and the Intel representative, talking about Meego upstreamming the code. They ensured they do not allow code that is not upstream in the community projects Meego uses. Nice to hear, now they will have to prove it.

The second conference about the 7 Principles of Community projects was quiet interesting. I attended to the conference related with developing apps and place them on the Ovi Store. They have lowered down the price and allow people (not just companies) to publish their apps in Ovi Store.

After a few conversations with MeeGo people from Nokia and Intel I went to have lunch with some KDE folks. As always, it was a pleasure to talk not just about technology but about other things that motivates us. During the afternoon I saw the prototype of Plasma for N900 and I attended to a few more talks before watching Germany vs. Argentina (with about 30 germans), comming back to the Hostel and get into World Cup mode.

At night, at the MeeGo party, we could watch the game Spain vs Paraguay and drink some beer. It was fun.

Akademy 2010 Day 0

After spending a week visiting different places from the middle part of Finland with Nacho and Heidi Vilppola (thanks both for your hospitality) and their family I went to the train station to go down south to Tampere, where Akademy 2010 will begin tomorrow (saturdayjuly 3rd).

The train I was going to take was full so I have to wait an hour and a half for the following one, which makes the same trip as the previous one but takes one hour longer (4 instead of 3 hours). Not a good start.

I went with my friends to do some shopping while waiting for the train. It is summer sales period in Finland so I ended up buying some clothes at a real good price. In fact, now it doesn't fit into my bag. I have a problem....

When I got into the train....Jonathan Riddell was sleeping at my seat. What a surprise! He was comming from Oulu (a city which I also visited a few days ago). We haven't seen each other since GCDS, so we had some things to talk about.

So after all, not being able to travel in the train I was supposed to, was a good thing.

Once I arrived to Tampere and made my check-in in the hostal, I went to the welcome party/registration place. This is something we usually didn't do but since it worked well last year at GCDS, the organization has repeated this year. I had the chance to meet everybody and have some beers at night with the "spanish team". Tomorrow is when the real action begins.

What I've been doing lately and my near future plans

Lets begin like many people did before ....

It's been a long time since my last post.

Now... I won't bother you with excuses.

I'm helping (as part of ASOLIF) in the organization of the GNOME Marketing Hackfest, along with the regional association of free software companies from Aragon (CESLA), the Aragon Technological Centre (ITA), Zaragoza Municipality and the Regional Gov. Some well known GNOME community members like Vincent Untz, Stormy Peters or Paul Cutler, among others, are attending. I'll be in Zaragoza from next Tuesday until Friday afternoon, just in time to go to Bilbao for Akademy-es.

On thursday May 6th, apart from the GNOME event, I'll give a workshop (in spanish) about free software bussines models within ASOLIF. In this Federation many companies make money in different ways related with free software. I'll try to summarize the most relevant ones giving some keys about how to improve those models. 30 people are already registered which is an unexpected number for me. It's been a long time (about 5 years) since my last teaching session so I'm quiet excited about it.

The organization of the local KDE conference in Bilbao is going fine and a few days ago we had almost 70 people registered, wich is a good number. Some ASOLIF companies and the Regional association from Vasque Region (ESLE) are sponsoring (not much, but hopefully this is the first of many) Akademy-es. Check other sponsors through the website

Last week I was involved in the organization of III Encuentro ASOLIF, the Federation internal event, which take place each six months. It wasn't as crowded as expected (just around 50 companies during the two days, we expected around 75) but very interesting anyway. We will repeat it in October (it takes place every 6 months).

The week before that, on April Friday 16th, I went to the ODF Plugfest in Granada. The event was organized by another ASOLIF company, Opentia, along with other organizations. It was cool to see how the ODF standard is done and how is implemented in different applications, KOffice among them. Jos Van den Oeven was there and, on saturday, I went back to Granada from Málaga this time with my friend Antonio Larrosa. The whole ODF Plufest crew visited la Alhambra with an archeologist that worked there a few years. We got there at 16 hours and we left at 23. We all agree that it was a long but still awesome tour.

After Akademy-es, it looks like I won't have another event until LinuxTag, which is good 'cause I need a rest. But let's not say it loud, just in case...

I'm still thinking about staying at Berlin after LinuxTag until flying to Akademy 2010, at Tampere, Finland. Maybe I can work a few days in Berlin and then take some days off.