Libre Software World Conference (LSWC'11) is the most important commercial event related with Free Software in Spain. It is organized by ASOLIF, the National Federation of SME's Free Software Associations. As you might remember, I was its Manager Director just a few weeks ago.
Last year it was organized in Málaga, Andalusia, and this year it will take place in Zaragoza. The regional Association from the region, CESLA, along with the Municipality, play a key role in the organization of the event.
This edition includes the Joomla Day and the Python Day, which will help bringing to the LSWC'11 even more people than last year, specially technicians, which I think is really good. The event will take place on November 9th and 10th.The following two days, Zentyal celebrates it first Zentyal Summit in the same place. Zentyal contributors , partners, users and employees from all over the world will meet there to take this Free Software Business Server one step further. A lot of good news will come out of it.
Representing KDE Spain, I will give a conference called KDE as a solution in business environments. It is scheduled on November 10th at 10:30 a.m. Although there are several activities at the same time, I expect a lot of people attending since it take place in the central room. That is pressure :-)
As you can see in the program, more than 70 talks and workshop are scheduled. More than 100 companies will be there and more than 500 atendees will participate those two days.
By the way, Microsoft is sponsoring the event.
Showing posts with label asolif. Show all posts
Showing posts with label asolif. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Thursday, June 09, 2011
My job at ASOLIF
As you might know, I work at ASOLIF, the Spanish National Federation of Libre Software SMEs, formed by 9 regional associations that group about 200 IT companies.
You can find a description about who we are and what we do in our website and an updated presentation below:
So basically my time is divided into:
So I'm in the Libre Software bussiness but in a non common organization. I hope this clarifies what I do. Many people ask me and it is not so easy to explain.
You can find a description about who we are and what we do in our website and an updated presentation below:
So basically my time is divided into:
- Projects (design, execution, monitorization, cost control, etc. ) that involve our associations and/or our companies.
- Commercial activities.
- Communication activities.
- Lobby :-)
- Administrative and other internal activities.
So I'm in the Libre Software bussiness but in a non common organization. I hope this clarifies what I do. Many people ask me and it is not so easy to explain.
Friday, April 30, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Basque Regional Government signs an agreement with software libre SME associations
Yesterday an agreement was signed by the Basque Regional Government, ESLE (Vasque Software Libre companies association) and ASOLIF (Spanish National Federation of soft. libre companies) in order to take steps forward toward software libre migration in Basque Public Administrations. To accomplish this obtective, an Advisor Commitee and a Technical Office will be created with representatives from the three actors involved.
Among other goals, one of the most relevant is to ensure that future public contracts related with software development and hardware puchaisings will be plattform independent so software libre solutions are able to compite under the same conditions than any other software with non libre licenses.
The Technical Office will be in charge of studying and recommending software libre solutions that can be deployed in the Basque Regional Government and other Public Administration from this region.
This is the first time in Spain that a Public Administration sign an agreement with the spanish software libre SME sector, which gives an idea of the maturity that these associations/federation are getting in Spain. Other Regional Governments are also interested in such agreements.
Among other goals, one of the most relevant is to ensure that future public contracts related with software development and hardware puchaisings will be plattform independent so software libre solutions are able to compite under the same conditions than any other software with non libre licenses.
The Technical Office will be in charge of studying and recommending software libre solutions that can be deployed in the Basque Regional Government and other Public Administration from this region.
This is the first time in Spain that a Public Administration sign an agreement with the spanish software libre SME sector, which gives an idea of the maturity that these associations/federation are getting in Spain. Other Regional Governments are also interested in such agreements.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
October on the road
Now...
I left home in Málaga on October 1st. I arrived 29th late in the afternoon. I'm tired but happy about all the things I've done, people I've met, places I've been... I've been visiting several cities all over Spain presenting ASOLIF, where I work, and the things we do, to a lot of people. Madrid, Zaragoza, Vitoria, Canary Islands and Sevilla has been the ones visited this trip.
I've been talking to several ICT managers from several regional and local public administrations, Central Gov., big companies, Universities, etc. I've met people from software libre SME I didn't know before. It is amazing how many cool stuff some SME are doing without much support. I've also attended to events and talk to old friend or people related with ASOLIF (or any of the Spanish regional software libre SME associations).
But my major target has been...
ASOLIF is organizing an internal event so software libre companies belonging to our regional associations can meet each other, know what they are doing, etc. We also have opened a call for projects and mature 10 ideas has been presented. Companies will collaborate on developing those ideas to turn them into projects so ASOLIF can help them to looking for funds. Like any other project ASOLIF promotes, it has to be licensed with GLP or similar licenses and developed openly, like free software communities do. It's going to be hard to put in practice, but if it works...
Although ASOLIF companies use, promote and develop with free software, not all of them make their work libre or are related with communities. For some of them, this event is an opportunity to learn from other companies that do, by working together in something they all are interested in, a project they want to achieve.
For software libre companies, interacting with communities is something that is becoming more common. It is not easy at all to build up your own community based on a product developed by a SME, so ASOLIF is trying to put together companies with experience with other ones interested in becoming more open. The goal is to raise the percentage of ASOLIF companies that has business models related with making the code libre.
To do so, since we do not have the strength multinational companies have, we have to promote collaboration in a different way. Building up ASOLIF was the first step. This event is a second one.
If we want to have a chance to succeed, we need to be close to free software communities and establish a strong relation with big companies that support soft. libre technologies. But this relation has to be based in different principles than in the past. In Spain, like in many other countries, we have been software consumers. We now have the chance to produce software and do it well.
Some of the companies attending to ASOLIF event are quiet popular among some communities: Igalia, eBox, Grupo CPD, Emergya, Warp, Grupo Ikusnet, Yerbabuena ... up to 160 aprox. We are working to have 75 companies there (50 would be a nice number anyway).
This event, that will be celebrated each 6 months, is proposed to take place in several places around Spain. We have to break with the idea that business always take place only in big cities.
The following edition (the third one in fact since in 2008 we celebrated the first one), that will take place in spring 2010, will have activities not just for our companies, for for visitors too, with special focus on soft. libre developers.
Let's see how it works...
I don't want to finish without thanking all of you who has support me to become part of KDE e.V. I'm really happy and I hope I can help.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Nothing in particular...
I'm sitting in the backyard of my grandfather house, in a little village, by the mountains, in Segovia, Spain. It is called Matabuena. Here it is usually cold except in July and August. Just a few families live here in winter but the place gets alive during summertime, like many little towns all over the world.
There are cows and horses all over the place, kids with bicycles, old people taking long walks and a bar, where old men play cards during the afternoons. It is a totally different place from the Canary Islands or Malaga. I used to come here when I was a kid and it was really cool. It is only 90 minutes away from Madrid, so I guess I will visit this place more often if I finally move to Madrid next year.
I spent a month in Gran Canaria, three weeks to prepare the GCDS and the week of the event, of course. A couple of days after the closure, I went to Tenerife, spent a couple of days with my parents and then I went to La Palma, a little paradise I strongly recommend. La Palma is the place I call home. After a week there, I went back to Tenerife invited to an event. A day after I went to Málaga, spent a week there and began a long trip around Spain.
Madrid, Matabuena, Madrid again, Segovia, Valladolid, Vitoria, Bilbao, Matabuena, Madrid and finally Málaga (tomorrow). A little more than 2500 kms done by car.
Despite the hardworking, I've had some time to do cool things, meeting new and old friends, living some new experiences and spending some time with my family.
It looks like the rest of August I will have time to slow down and finishing some undone tasks, plus preparing the rest of the year's agenda. There are tons of things going on around ASOLIF this year but also we have to focus on closing some open tasks. I guess this one of the hardest thing to do when a new project involving a lot of people begins. You have to make sure some basic taks get done. There is a strong inertia of keep moving, continuosly starting new things, moving forward without closing previous work.
Meanwhile I have updated my laptop from XFCE/KDE 3.5 to KDE 4.2. As expected, some issues has arised, but in general, most of the everyday actions works quiet well. I still haven't had time to push the desktop further. Hopefully these following weeks I will. I'll write a post with my conclusions. Another thing I will do is installing GNOME and use it for specific tasks. I haven't use it for almost a year and I want to experience the improvements.
Another regional free software companies association has been created in Spain with our help. It's called CyLESoL, from Castilla y León. We are working to create one or two more before the end of this year. The plan is to reach 200 free software companies associated to the Federation ASOLIF by the end of the year, that means doubling the number we had by the end of 2008.
Spain is well known because of free software projects related with education. Almost every region in Spain is already deploying, developing or planning to put linux in schools. But lately two different areas are becomming really popular here: 3D and SIG. There is a lot of good energy and bussiness perspectives around these areas.
ASOLIF President is flying this week to Mexico and another member of our board will fly to Republica Dominicana soon. It is the second time that representatives from ASOLIF go to South America. Both of them have been invited to promote companies associations in Latin America and to do some networking.
Latin Amrica have awesome free software projects and developers. We have to figure out how to mix that potencial with our Federation by builing a simbiotic relation, treating each other as equals. We go there with a speech that is far away from usual. We are really excited about the idea of building up trasparent bridges across the Atlantic Sea between small free software companies from both sides. We have a lot to learn from each other. Of course this will take some time, but we are on it.
ASOLIF will celebrate an internal event on Novermer where companies will join to define and write down projects that we will try to acomplish during 2010. It is the first time we do such a thing but people is excited about the idea of meeting each other and seatting around a table to work on free software projects. I hope one or two of them deals with desktops and mobile technologies. I've been working on the event's methodology and it will be finished by the first week of september. It can be a nice experience to export. Let's see. It will be my major task for the following weeks.
Enough for today, right?
There are cows and horses all over the place, kids with bicycles, old people taking long walks and a bar, where old men play cards during the afternoons. It is a totally different place from the Canary Islands or Malaga. I used to come here when I was a kid and it was really cool. It is only 90 minutes away from Madrid, so I guess I will visit this place more often if I finally move to Madrid next year.
I spent a month in Gran Canaria, three weeks to prepare the GCDS and the week of the event, of course. A couple of days after the closure, I went to Tenerife, spent a couple of days with my parents and then I went to La Palma, a little paradise I strongly recommend. La Palma is the place I call home. After a week there, I went back to Tenerife invited to an event. A day after I went to Málaga, spent a week there and began a long trip around Spain.
Madrid, Matabuena, Madrid again, Segovia, Valladolid, Vitoria, Bilbao, Matabuena, Madrid and finally Málaga (tomorrow). A little more than 2500 kms done by car.
Despite the hardworking, I've had some time to do cool things, meeting new and old friends, living some new experiences and spending some time with my family.
It looks like the rest of August I will have time to slow down and finishing some undone tasks, plus preparing the rest of the year's agenda. There are tons of things going on around ASOLIF this year but also we have to focus on closing some open tasks. I guess this one of the hardest thing to do when a new project involving a lot of people begins. You have to make sure some basic taks get done. There is a strong inertia of keep moving, continuosly starting new things, moving forward without closing previous work.
Meanwhile I have updated my laptop from XFCE/KDE 3.5 to KDE 4.2. As expected, some issues has arised, but in general, most of the everyday actions works quiet well. I still haven't had time to push the desktop further. Hopefully these following weeks I will. I'll write a post with my conclusions. Another thing I will do is installing GNOME and use it for specific tasks. I haven't use it for almost a year and I want to experience the improvements.
Another regional free software companies association has been created in Spain with our help. It's called CyLESoL, from Castilla y León. We are working to create one or two more before the end of this year. The plan is to reach 200 free software companies associated to the Federation ASOLIF by the end of the year, that means doubling the number we had by the end of 2008.
Spain is well known because of free software projects related with education. Almost every region in Spain is already deploying, developing or planning to put linux in schools. But lately two different areas are becomming really popular here: 3D and SIG. There is a lot of good energy and bussiness perspectives around these areas.
ASOLIF President is flying this week to Mexico and another member of our board will fly to Republica Dominicana soon. It is the second time that representatives from ASOLIF go to South America. Both of them have been invited to promote companies associations in Latin America and to do some networking.
Latin Amrica have awesome free software projects and developers. We have to figure out how to mix that potencial with our Federation by builing a simbiotic relation, treating each other as equals. We go there with a speech that is far away from usual. We are really excited about the idea of building up trasparent bridges across the Atlantic Sea between small free software companies from both sides. We have a lot to learn from each other. Of course this will take some time, but we are on it.
ASOLIF will celebrate an internal event on Novermer where companies will join to define and write down projects that we will try to acomplish during 2010. It is the first time we do such a thing but people is excited about the idea of meeting each other and seatting around a table to work on free software projects. I hope one or two of them deals with desktops and mobile technologies. I've been working on the event's methodology and it will be finished by the first week of september. It can be a nice experience to export. Let's see. It will be my major task for the following weeks.
Enough for today, right?
Thursday, July 30, 2009
How do your company do it?
Many of the ASOLIF companies have different ways of distributing the workday. Others simply do not have any way at all. Another group has a 8 to 5 schedule.
Reading Jorge's blog, from Warp Tech (a well known ASOLIF company from Zaragoza) planet (in spanish), I come out with a nice distribution that solves some of the problems some company face everyday. They call it Flextime. The model is far from perfect and it probably do not work for everybody, but is serves me to ask...
¿What about your company? ¿How do you manage the schedule, the workday?
Reading Jorge's blog, from Warp Tech (a well known ASOLIF company from Zaragoza) planet (in spanish), I come out with a nice distribution that solves some of the problems some company face everyday. They call it Flextime. The model is far from perfect and it probably do not work for everybody, but is serves me to ask...
¿What about your company? ¿How do you manage the schedule, the workday?
Friday, April 24, 2009
Some reflections about ASOLIF
Facing the end of the second month on my new job, things move slow but forward, as always happens with new projects.
I've been working hard to open communication channels between companies. Interaction is more usual at a technical level than at a manegement level in every free soft. company and we are no exception. We know how to interact in a lower level. We've learned it by collaborating in free software communities, but at higher levels....that's another story.
The good point is that most of the managers and owners of ASOLIF companies come from the technical world. In fact, most of them begun as free software developers. They want to interact as managers as they did as technicians.
So how can we achieve this goal when not all of the information a company handles can be public, can be shared? How does cooperation is possible when you compete everyday?
Big companies can organice themselves in departments with different procedures, so they can interact with different profiles at different levels. Small companies cannot. For individuals is hard to be transparent for just certain activities and not for others. In ASOLIF have to deal with that duplicity.
The little time they have for ASOLIF activities is invested with big dosis of enthusiasm. Managers love what they do. I feel that good energy. Not so long ago I was like one of them so it is a well known situation for me. Bringing them a space where the can share all that good energy eventhough they live in different places is a really cool goal. It can make a difference for them, for ASOLIF and for our workers (I don't like this word), our customer.
ASOLIF board knows pretty much about how free soft. communities (FSC) work and they want to take that transparent way of doing things into this (we hope it'll become soon) community of small free soft. companies (a little more than 150 so far). This is a major objetive. We are just on the first step of the journey. I feel like the Santa María helmsman, sailing west.
Companies have different motivations and responsabilities than individuals so not everything that works for FSC will work for us. We have one thing in common though: I'm surrounded by hackers, economic system hackers. As tech hackers are doing since long time ago, they want to hack the system...but at a different level. Economic relations in our sector do not have to be gregarious. We want to turn them into mutualism.
This job is going to be fun.
I've been working hard to open communication channels between companies. Interaction is more usual at a technical level than at a manegement level in every free soft. company and we are no exception. We know how to interact in a lower level. We've learned it by collaborating in free software communities, but at higher levels....that's another story.
The good point is that most of the managers and owners of ASOLIF companies come from the technical world. In fact, most of them begun as free software developers. They want to interact as managers as they did as technicians.
So how can we achieve this goal when not all of the information a company handles can be public, can be shared? How does cooperation is possible when you compete everyday?
Big companies can organice themselves in departments with different procedures, so they can interact with different profiles at different levels. Small companies cannot. For individuals is hard to be transparent for just certain activities and not for others. In ASOLIF have to deal with that duplicity.
The little time they have for ASOLIF activities is invested with big dosis of enthusiasm. Managers love what they do. I feel that good energy. Not so long ago I was like one of them so it is a well known situation for me. Bringing them a space where the can share all that good energy eventhough they live in different places is a really cool goal. It can make a difference for them, for ASOLIF and for our workers (I don't like this word), our customer.
ASOLIF board knows pretty much about how free soft. communities (FSC) work and they want to take that transparent way of doing things into this (we hope it'll become soon) community of small free soft. companies (a little more than 150 so far). This is a major objetive. We are just on the first step of the journey. I feel like the Santa María helmsman, sailing west.
Companies have different motivations and responsabilities than individuals so not everything that works for FSC will work for us. We have one thing in common though: I'm surrounded by hackers, economic system hackers. As tech hackers are doing since long time ago, they want to hack the system...but at a different level. Economic relations in our sector do not have to be gregarious. We want to turn them into mutualism.
This job is going to be fun.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
ASOLIF: my new job
This is my first post about my new job. It's been a little bit more than a year since I came to Malaga from the Canary Islands. During this time I been involving in two different migration projects (Municipalities from Axarquía of Málaga and Extremadura Regional Gov.), worked back again with Grupo CPD in ModularIT and, since march 1st, I've became manager of ASOLIF. I've closing down my little company back in the canaries so, in a couple of weeks, my only employer will be the federation of Spanish free software companies associations (ASOLIF). This is the first time I'll be working for somebody else. Since I was 23 I've always been self employed.
It is strange because I keep in contact with my ex teammates since we are all working on the GCDS'09 and also they are really involved in the Canary Islands free software companies association (ESLIC), the oldest one in Spain, which I helped to found and is one of ASOLIF founders. Since I'll be in Malaga a couple more months before moving (it loooks like I'll be living in Madrid), it is somehow like I haven't changed my job. It feels more closer to a project change rather than a job switch. I assume this feeling will be changing hard in a few more weeks.
ASOLIF is composed by 8 free software companies associations from different regions of Spain. I'm working on updating the exact number of companies involved but I guess we are about 200. Most of them are small (up to 5 members). ASOLIF is one year old and we are growing fast. From 5 associations we plan to end up this year being 10, which is a nice grow. There are many small free software companies all over Spain that can be under our umbrella soon, since all the regional associations are growing and new ones are forming. It looks like we can become a strong movement in Spain in a couple of years.
The economic crash is giving a lot of attention to technological companies. We are no exception. Outside of Spain people thinks that the biggest business related with software libre in this country are Public Administrations, but that is not true. What is happening is that there is a strong movement among them toward Soft. libre and, since in Spain they are the biggest customer of the software sector, this is changing big companies' mind. The message is clear: if you want to keep being leaders, you have to move toward free software. This is good news but there are some concerns.
These big companies do not believe in free software, they do not collaborate, the just use it. They are not changing their methodology and do not participate in general in any community at all. They just keep doing what they use to but now with free software.
Opposite to this, there is a growing movement of small companies mostly build up by technicians with a tremendous innovation factor that works with the tools and procedures close to what communities uses. They are efficient. They do not need (many of them do not want) to grow a lot, since it is not mandatory to grow for surviving is you innovate everyday. Their number is increasing fast so local support is becoming a truth in many parts of Spain.
But they are still fragile and lack of many basic skills that are necessary in any business. Since they are formed by smart guys, they know it. At least most of the ones I talk to realize many of these weak points. For a small, technical oriented service company, it is hard to invest money/time in non core but still important tasks. Their natural respond is to associate themselves with other software libre companies they can collaborate with. The nice point is that they already bring a collaboration culture with them that flows in every activity, every meeting we make, etc.
So the Federation has, of course, a common lobby motivation, but also a parallel one: to collaborate as companies as we usually do as technicians, as community members. This second objective is the reason why I'm here, since the lobby activity will lay more on the board members, specially ASOLIF President, Daniel Armendáriz.
We are still new so many basic stuff must be done, like administrative tasks, setting up some collaborative tools, open relations with many social agents, promote some internal procedures to increase collaboration among companies, etc. These kind of projects needs time become solid but when I finish my job (I have a one year contract) I hope there is a strong base to face the future with an optimistic vision.
Since ASOLIF is part of the local organization of the GCDS'09, I'll keep working on it. The local team is working hard and everybody have a nice feeling about the event. We truly believe this event can be different from any previous one. If the experience is good, probably more community projects will visualize as natural to celebrate together these kind of events where they can keep independence but share activities, experiences, time, projects, problems, code, etc. It also makes sense from a management and economic point of view. Many of the ASOLIF companies will be attending so it will be a nice opportunity to interact with developers and companies from other countries, besides attending to many desktop related activities.
One of the things I don't know how to do but I want to invest time on is to open relations between small companies or organizations like ASOLIF and community projects. Maybe bringing college students into free software communities can be a first approach. Now in Spain the college education model is switching to the Bolonia plan and one of the objectives is making the relation between universities and companies closer. Since now students have to spend some time making practices on companies, small companies can get more involved in software libre communities by interacting with them through these college students. This can be a win to win to win (jajajaja) relation... We need to find out a good model for that. Maybe it is a good point of discussion for the GCDS'09 event. If it works here, it can be translated to other countries. There are two experiences already we can learn from, the GSoC and the University Software Libre Championship (in Spain).
This is anoher nice challenge I hope I can learn a lot from, meeting new people, going to new places, facing new risks. Innovation...that's is what it is all about.
It is strange because I keep in contact with my ex teammates since we are all working on the GCDS'09 and also they are really involved in the Canary Islands free software companies association (ESLIC), the oldest one in Spain, which I helped to found and is one of ASOLIF founders. Since I'll be in Malaga a couple more months before moving (it loooks like I'll be living in Madrid), it is somehow like I haven't changed my job. It feels more closer to a project change rather than a job switch. I assume this feeling will be changing hard in a few more weeks.
ASOLIF is composed by 8 free software companies associations from different regions of Spain. I'm working on updating the exact number of companies involved but I guess we are about 200. Most of them are small (up to 5 members). ASOLIF is one year old and we are growing fast. From 5 associations we plan to end up this year being 10, which is a nice grow. There are many small free software companies all over Spain that can be under our umbrella soon, since all the regional associations are growing and new ones are forming. It looks like we can become a strong movement in Spain in a couple of years.
The economic crash is giving a lot of attention to technological companies. We are no exception. Outside of Spain people thinks that the biggest business related with software libre in this country are Public Administrations, but that is not true. What is happening is that there is a strong movement among them toward Soft. libre and, since in Spain they are the biggest customer of the software sector, this is changing big companies' mind. The message is clear: if you want to keep being leaders, you have to move toward free software. This is good news but there are some concerns.
These big companies do not believe in free software, they do not collaborate, the just use it. They are not changing their methodology and do not participate in general in any community at all. They just keep doing what they use to but now with free software.
Opposite to this, there is a growing movement of small companies mostly build up by technicians with a tremendous innovation factor that works with the tools and procedures close to what communities uses. They are efficient. They do not need (many of them do not want) to grow a lot, since it is not mandatory to grow for surviving is you innovate everyday. Their number is increasing fast so local support is becoming a truth in many parts of Spain.
But they are still fragile and lack of many basic skills that are necessary in any business. Since they are formed by smart guys, they know it. At least most of the ones I talk to realize many of these weak points. For a small, technical oriented service company, it is hard to invest money/time in non core but still important tasks. Their natural respond is to associate themselves with other software libre companies they can collaborate with. The nice point is that they already bring a collaboration culture with them that flows in every activity, every meeting we make, etc.
So the Federation has, of course, a common lobby motivation, but also a parallel one: to collaborate as companies as we usually do as technicians, as community members. This second objective is the reason why I'm here, since the lobby activity will lay more on the board members, specially ASOLIF President, Daniel Armendáriz.
We are still new so many basic stuff must be done, like administrative tasks, setting up some collaborative tools, open relations with many social agents, promote some internal procedures to increase collaboration among companies, etc. These kind of projects needs time become solid but when I finish my job (I have a one year contract) I hope there is a strong base to face the future with an optimistic vision.
Since ASOLIF is part of the local organization of the GCDS'09, I'll keep working on it. The local team is working hard and everybody have a nice feeling about the event. We truly believe this event can be different from any previous one. If the experience is good, probably more community projects will visualize as natural to celebrate together these kind of events where they can keep independence but share activities, experiences, time, projects, problems, code, etc. It also makes sense from a management and economic point of view. Many of the ASOLIF companies will be attending so it will be a nice opportunity to interact with developers and companies from other countries, besides attending to many desktop related activities.
One of the things I don't know how to do but I want to invest time on is to open relations between small companies or organizations like ASOLIF and community projects. Maybe bringing college students into free software communities can be a first approach. Now in Spain the college education model is switching to the Bolonia plan and one of the objectives is making the relation between universities and companies closer. Since now students have to spend some time making practices on companies, small companies can get more involved in software libre communities by interacting with them through these college students. This can be a win to win to win (jajajaja) relation... We need to find out a good model for that. Maybe it is a good point of discussion for the GCDS'09 event. If it works here, it can be translated to other countries. There are two experiences already we can learn from, the GSoC and the University Software Libre Championship (in Spain).
This is anoher nice challenge I hope I can learn a lot from, meeting new people, going to new places, facing new risks. Innovation...that's is what it is all about.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Spanish small free software companies have a brand new voice: ASOLIF
The federation of spanish free software companies' associations (ASOLIF) was born few weeks ago. 7 regional small free software companies associations has joined efforts and have founded ASOLIF, which envolves a hundred free software spanish companies aprox.. Another 3 regional associations will get into the federation soon.
I wonder if there is such a movement in other european countries so we can collaborate in a more global scale. Since the federation of associations ASOLIF is formed by small companies, we need to become a big network to push strong and defend our points of view.
We do not have web yet, but you can e-mail us: asolif@asolif.org
I'll announce when it's done.
I wonder if there is such a movement in other european countries so we can collaborate in a more global scale. Since the federation of associations ASOLIF is formed by small companies, we need to become a big network to push strong and defend our points of view.
We do not have web yet, but you can e-mail us: asolif@asolif.org
I'll announce when it's done.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)