A year after the agreement between KDE eV and KDE Spain

Yesterday, September 29th 2011, it was published in the Dot, the article KDE España, an inspiring first year, wich summarizes KDE Spain activity after the agreement between that organization and KDE e.V. was signed. This milestone have been important due to several reasons:

• Reinforce the institutional relation between both organizations, allowing KDE Spain to become stronger when relating to local public administrations, companies, other non profit organizations, etc.
• It stablishes a precedent to be followed by other "KDE daughters" like the ones going on in Brazil, India, France, etc.
• It shows the interest that KDE have in growing in a viral mode in every country, in the local language, taking in consideration the local culture and singularities.
• Helps breaking down some myths about free software communities not being able to organice themselves properly or not having an "institutional or corporative side/point of view". It is obvious that we are getting more and more mature and these kind of agreements reflect it.
• Supports every action KDE España is taking in Spain in an organized and structured way:
• Almost twenty participations in events.
• Akademy-es 2011 (4th edition + 1 pre-edition) sponsored by Google and Qt Software (Nokia).
• Celebrating institutional meetings with local organizations and public administrations.
• Organizing of KDE Sprints, for the very first time, in Spain.
• Solid Sprint 2010 and 2011 (called Forge)
• KDE-Edu Sprint 2010
• Increasing the active members up to 30 (we pay a yearly fee/suscription) along with the spanish contributors to KDE.
• Supporting not just Spanish, but other languages spoken in certain parts of Spain like galician, vasque, catalan..
• The following weeks we will face the 15th anniversary of KDE and KDE España will organice some comferences to celebrate it.

KDE Spain, like other comming local KDE associations will be able to execute locally what we design globally and the opposite. It is not just a legal strategy, but a global one. KDE has made a step forward in a promising direction. One year after the agreement was signed, we have accomplished a good amount of goals, but the best is yet to come.

Generation of innovation nodes, labour insertion and technology transfer through Libre Software communities in colleges.

Next monday, September 19th, the Free Software Office and the International Relations Department of La Laguna College (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain), has invited me to give a talk about how good is for teachers and student to become part of a mature Free Software Community.

The benefits of defining and executing a long term program that promotes the involvement of teachers and students in projects like KDE (and others) are well known....by us. Most people out there have no idea about it

My goal is to structure the arguments, present them in a simple way and support them with examples and success stories from KDE. I'm open to also show examples from other communities, so feel free to add a comment about it, with references, please.

Although the conference will be in spanish, I'll do the slides in english. I hope I'll have time to translate them into Spanish. I have plans to give this talk in other colleges so I would improve it.

We need to get teachers involved in our communities since they are the front door to get students' interest. KDE, along with other mature community prjects, offer an incredible opportunity for both groups to learn, contribute and create an innovation and knowledge trasfer node in colleges. We need to create a shared enviroment where our projects, students, teachers and local corporations get benefit of that collaboration.

I'll publish the slides in my slideshare account.

• Title:  Generación en la Universidad de polos de innovación, inserción laboral y transferencia tecnológica a través de comunidades de Software Libre
• Conference location: Room 2.9, Computer Science School, Science Campus, La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
• Time: 17:00 (local time)
• Further information in Spanish

Open to open new doors

Next Thursday September 15th will be my last day as ASOLIF Manager Director. It's been two and a half awesome years helping many companies, regional associations and entrepreneurs to build a Libre Software SME sector from scratch in Spain.

I've always believed that, if you want to become a good professional, working hard is not enough. You have to work side by side with high skilled and motivated people and I feel ASOLIF has given me the chance to do exactly that. I feel lucky.

I would like to thank Daniel Armendariz and Pablo Gómez (ASOLIF first two Presidents) and their boards for supporting and believing in me. These days I'm overwhelmed by the support messeges I've been recieving, wishing me luck in my new adventures. I've had a great time and I'm going to miss a lot of people.

Spain is going through the biggsest economic crisis in democracy, but Libre Software companies are growing, which means that the future is brilliant. ASOLIF have an increasing impact. If free software companies keep pushing, a lot of good news will come out from the National Federation. I wish the best to the new board and to every company involved.

It is time for me to rest a few days and look for another job. I'm sure there is something as exciting as ASOLIF has been, out there. And I want to go for it.