Imágenes de Gonzalo y un servidor en Málaga

Vemos en la foto, de izquierda a derecha, a Gonzalo Aller (gerente de Fotón, del Grupo CPD), Lars Ellebretch (de la Fundeación Apache), Antonio Larrosa (desarrollador de KDE) y un servidor. Fue sacada en la pasada Conferencia de Software Libre de Málaga, en febrero de 2006.

No se nota demasiado, pero nos lo pasamos la mar de bien. Antonio, como ya ocurriera en Akademy, fue todo un maestro de ceremonia para los foráneos, especialmente los guiris.

We can see on the picture, from left to right, Gonzalo Aller (Fotón, Grupo CPD), Lars Ellebretch (Apache Software Foundation), Antonio Larrosa (KDE e.V. member) and I. It was shooted on Malaga Free Sofware Conference, on february 2006.

Estas y otras fotos de la Conferencia, sacadas por Antonio Larrosa (con su cámara, vamos), pueden encontrarla aquí

Conferencia de Richard Dale en la ULL

Atendiendo a algunas peticiones de lectores para que escriba en español, quiero hacer unos comentarios sobre la conferencia de Richard Dale en la ULL.

El pasado jueves 23 de marzo, la dirección del Centro Superior de Informática y la SSL (Secretaría de Software Libre) de la ULL (Universidad de La Laguna) invitaron a Richard Dale a impartir una conferencia aprovechando su visita a Tenerife para trabajar conmigo y con Enrique Zanardi en mEDUXa. Asistieron unas 50 personas, lo cual es un éxito teniendo en cuenta que fue confirmada con sólo 24 horas de antelación. Me dio la impresión de que muchos de los asistentes no tenían muchos conocimientos de programación orientada a objetos, por lo que parte de la conferencia supongo que les resultó áspera.

Por otro lado, al igual que hice con la ULL, ofrecí a la ULPGC, a través de la lista de correo de la OSL (oficina de software libre) la posibilidad de que Richard ofreciera una conferencia o un workshop. Me ha extrañado comprobar cómo algunos miembros de la lista no se han mostrado a favor de un evento como este. He respondido en dicha lista exponiendo mis ideas acerca de la idoneidad de que los alumnos escuchen o trabajen con alguien como Mr. Dale. Si yo fuera responsable universitario lo tendría claro, querría que mis alumnos compartieran el máximo número de horas posibles con alguien con tanta experiencia y buenhacer. Veremos qué pasa.

Richard Dale in Tenerife

Richard Dale has spent some days in Tenerife. I have had the chance to be with him most of the time and the only thing I can say is that it's been a pleasure. Richard is the number one in his job (Qt-Ruby) but also a great guy.

We have been trying to figure out how Kmenu works in order to customized it for mEDUXa. We also have been designing (with Enrique Zanardi) some other key mEDUXa's features.

He gave a conference in ULL (Tenerife's college). More than 50 people assisted. It was a great surprise. Esteban Manchado (another guy from Grupo CPD, a debian developer and an expert on RoR) is teaching a course in ULPGC (Gran Canaria's college) about RoR with a great success. It looks like it exists great interest related with free software in the Canary Islands. We (Grupo CPD) have to develop more events in order to satisfy that demand.

Richard and I have been talking about wikis vs word processors. These conversations will help me a lot in a document I'm writing about this. On september he gonna come back to Tenerife for another conference.

After Santa Cruz's Carnival

After Santa Cruz de Tenerife's carnival, a huge party, the mEDUXa companies are working hard to finish the first phase or our job. We are putting a lot of energy on the kiosk mode, in order to build up two profiles for students, depending on their age. The first one is for primary school's kids and the second one for secodary's. Richard Dale, a KDE developer, is doing a great job.

Lately I'm using Akregator (a RSS reader app) a lot. It's a great application. I wonder why I didn't use it before. Now I spent each couple of days half an hour or so reading what's new on freshmeat. It's amaizing how many new apps are there. I have no time to try even 1% of them. Another application I recommend, based on my job experience, is Mediawiki. It is a extremely powerful application. I'm making it popular to the people I work with. Newbies like it. I feel like a "wiki preacher" sometimes.

Next week Grupo CPD is organizing two courses on the Canary Islands. One of them is called "Iniciación a la administración de sistemas Linux" (Introduction for the administration of linux systems). The second one is called "Introducción al diseño 2D y 3D" (introduction to 2D and 3D design). This second one is based on Blender. Linux is becoming popular here and people demand technical courses. Another guy from our company, Esteban Manchado, a Debian Developer, will teach in a Ruby course on Gran Canaria's college. We have another 4 courses planned before summer. As you can see, education is a major part of our job. If we want linux to become more popular, we need to teach people how to use it, right?

One of the members of the mEDUXa team, Pedro Gracia (Neuroomante SL http://neuroomante.com ), has began to work in Mare Nostrum, the biggest cluster in Europe. It is in Barcelona, Spain. It is big news for all of us and demostrate we have a lot of talent here on the Canary Islands.


Yesterday I installed Kubuntu to a friend of mine called Michel Ruiz. He liked a lot, I think. My mother is also using it. In future days I'll write about their experiences with KDE.

Tomorrow Ana María García will join to my company for 4 mothes, thanks to a college's program that is trying to improve tecnology in the Canary Island's companies. There is no doubt she will learn a lot from us. Hopefully we also learn from her experience. She wiil get involve on mEDUXa educational linux distribution.

That's enough for today. Thanks for reading this blog and put your comment if you want to.

Friday afternoon at Malaga Conference

At the end of the conference, we went to eat at the same place we did the days before. I met Michael Wechner and Lars Ellebretch, from Apache Fundation. After lunch we took the bus and went back to the residence. We tried to prepare a presentation of mEDUXa in Gonzalo's laptop. Although back at the Gran Canaria's office Richard Dale, Noel Torres and Miki made a good effort, we coudn't fix the problems on the develop machine we have, so we couldn't make the show on the restaurant we went at night.

We had dinner with the KDE team that assisted to Malaga, among others. We had a good time.

Last day of the conference

The last day in the conference was also very interesing. We assisted to the last conference. I had the guts to ask a question related to the future role they visualice that small freesoft companies can play in the comunity. The answer wasn't satisfactory, although they pointed some interesting comments.

Me and Gonzalo Aller showed a wiki to Javier Bustamante. He liked what he saw. We explained to him this powerful tool. Gonzalo is one of the most enthusiastic person I know about wikis. I think there are reasons for that.

Second day in Málaga's Conference (thursday afternoon)

Two kids mounted on a motorbike tried to steelmy laptop. They couldn't. Back in the conference place, I talked with a couple of companies to offer our services.

I've talked with workers from some companies thata assisted to the conference.

I assisted to the conference that Javier Bustamante and Francis Pisani gave (don't remember the name of the third guy). It was great. I wen't at night to have dinner with some guys from Galicia (in the northwest of Spain). Some of them are from the company Igalia. They develop Fisterra, a useful application for small and medium companies.

Thursday morning

In the morning we woke up late. Yestarday we had a nice party time. We tryed to assist to Alan Kay's presentation. There was too many people and the conference room was too small. We tryed to talk to the organization so they change the location of the conference. They gave us no solution. Many people couldn't assist, we among them. Finally Kay didn't assist. His editor went in his place.

I wen't to the work room but couldn't connect to internet by wifi. I talked there with the foreing group of KDE developers. We took them to have lunch with us. They told me András Mantia knows how to connect by cable to internet. I'll ask him this afternoon.

Wednesday afternoon in Málaga (first day)

I assisted to Michail Bletsas's conference. But I arrived late so I didn heard the hardware part. It was a nice conference. Meanwhile a talked with the Miguel García Capilla, from XOOPS project.

I've been talked in the afternoon with KDE developers, the developer of Quanta Plus, Andras Mantia, a developer of KDE PIM, Till Adam, the tecnician responsable of migration in Berlin with NX, Michael Manke, the developer of "Hot New Stuff...", Alexander Dymo, a mainteiner of KDevelop and some other guys. I've already knew them from Akademy 2005. Melenas, a solid member of KDE-hispano, is doing a good job with kde-Guadalinex. I listened his conferenceand we have to collaborate.

I've meet again David Santos Orcero. I't always a pleasure talk to him. I've meet the Bulma guys. David introduced them to me. I've also meet the president of Gnome hispano (don't remember his name). The first impression is that he is a inteligent guy, which it didn't surprised me. Gnome is a great project and has to be directed by an inteligent people.

At night, Antonio Larrosa took us to have dinner. The place was a typical southern spanish restaurant. We had a good time. I won't say anything about what happened later.

Málaga Conference about free software

I assisted to Málaga Conference about Free Software. I went with Gonzalo Aller, from Grupo CPD, among others.

Wednesday morning

I've seen the new linex product for primary schools. It's great. Although I don't agree with some ideas that we included in mEDUXa primaria, the job they have done is great. One detail it's cool, they have called the user space exactly the same as we did, "Mi mochila". We have called "La Mochila". Eventhough it is a word used frecuently in spanish schools, it is a coincidence. I'm am happy about it. It means we are in the right way.

I talked with people from most of the educational distributions from spain. The argentinian's developer of Linex, Dario Rapisardi, explained to me the new Linex desktop for children. We have to learn from Linex project beeing aware that they are innovating, so many of their actions we'llbe wrong. If we use them, we have to be prepare to fail. If we don't we can fail anyway, but we also gonna go slower. The conclusion is, I think, we should use their ideas and make them advance futher.

(spanish)

He visto la Linex para primaria. Se basa en el concepto mixto de barra de iconos e iconos en el escritorio. Son tres niveles. El primero de ellos para no lectores, el segundo para neo lectores y el tercero para niños que ya leen.

He hablado con la gente de Madrid, de Guadalinex, de Lliurex y de Molinux. El desarrollador de Linex, Darío Rapisardi, me ha explicado lo que han hecho para primaria. Lo han intalado en 3 colegios de primaria durante 4 meses y ahora lo lanzarán en todos. Es la idea que deberían hacer en MEDUSA.