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.

Events I'll attend during 2010

I write this post while on vacation. I live in the Canary Islands, as you probably know. Although I've been living almost all of my life in Tenerife, the bigger island, I feel La Palma is home. It is a little, still very mountain, island visited by people that loves trekking and adventure sports. It has a National Park, Caldera de Taburiente, the world's biggest active crater. It is an awesome place. Being surrounded by walls of more than a thousand meters tall is something worth seeing, specially in spring, when there is water falling all over.

It's been raining for three days in a row so I've got plenty of time to write...

I'm trying to be updated with some KDE mailing lists where I think I can contribute in the near future: usability, promo, etc. I'm also taking some time to read all mails related with KDE España and participate a little. Organizing the Akademy-es event is our next major task. Some new technicians are joining us lately and we have some people working on the event's organization so we have everything so far to organize a good one.

It is amazing how much information and discussions are around KDE. The KDE SC is becoming great and improving everyday. I feel really comfortable with it and I'm proud to show it every time I have the chance.

This 2010 my plans are attending to FOSDEM, LinuxTag and Akademy. I'm trying also to arrange a visit to GUADEC. I would like to go to Amsterdam during my vacations so I hope I can afford it.

Hopefully this year we will have more Spanish free software companies attending to FOSDEM than ever. We will arrange some meetings there with other free soft. organizations to let them know what we do to figure out how we can collaborate. As I always say, we do great stuff here, but nobody knows it. We need to go out there and show it.

It will be my first time at LinuxTag. I wanted to attend last year but it was too close to GCDS so I couldn't go. This year I will and, since I know people in Berlin, I hope they show me some nice places :-). It'll be my first time in Germany.

Akademy this year take place in Tampere, so again, it'll be my first visit to Finland. I hope I have enough time to visit a couple of places besides Tampere. It has to be a great country...during the summer. I'm not sure about it during winter.

I hope you had a nice Christmas. Ah and...Happy New Year.

Call for host for Akademy-es 2010

KDE España opens the Akademy-es Call for Host until January 22nd for 2010 edition. Proposals are welcome. Further information is available through KDE-España website (in spanish).

I'm writing this post from Barcelona, where Maemo Long Weekend is taking place. I'm in an introductory talk about Gtk right now. There is a familiar mixture of Gtk/Qt folks around here :)

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.

KDE- Edu wants to know your opinion

I have complained many times about bugs or missing features in many applications I use.. What about you?

I like this initiative from KDE-Edu because they are openly asking your opinion about relevant points related with the great applications they develope and support. So if you use any KDE Edu applications please take a few minutes for helping them to improve KHangman, KGeography, KmPlot, Kig, Kalzium, Kstars, etc.

Click here to fill the survey.

Would you like to have a spanish student doing practices in your company?

IES El Ricón is a High School / Technical School from Gran Canaria, Canary Island, Spain, really involved in software libre. They were part of the local team in the GCDS: GUADEC + Akademy 2009. They are involved in a program (ERASMUS) for sending students to foreign countries finish their education working in IT companies during few weeks/monthes.

If you think it could be a good idea to incorporate a young enthusiast student, please contact Miguel Peña ( miguelpl /dot/ inf / at/ gmail / dot/ com ), the teacher in charge of this program, or contact me directly.

October on the road

An idea first...I've never felt so comfortable with my desktop than I am know. Comfortable and proud. 

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.

What is that software you have on your laptop?

The last couple of months I've been doing many presentations about different things related with my job. Since I have KDE on my laptop and I usually use slides even in personal conversations (I usually send them to the people I talk to so they remember the basic ideas I explained to them) they see my desktop. For most of them, it is the first time they take a look at KDE. Some of them have never seen a desktop libre before.

So sometimes I feel a little like moving back in time and showing to somebody from other age something common for us (that stupid scene when a cowboy showed a mirror to an indian). It's hard to handle the reaction once in a while. I also feel like having some responsability, so I am becomming worried about the look and feel of my desktop and that everything works (or it looks like) perfectly. Few things that didn't matter to me in the past now...can become an issue. Being able to configure the network (specially the wifi) fast, not having crashing messeges during the booting processs, X configuration when using a projector, speeding up the booting proccess, my laptop should not slow down due to RAM comsumption when opening apps, plasmoid that do not look nice without internet connection... Some of these things have nothing to do with the desktop itself but most of the people don't know it. They will blame it on that "frikie thing you have on your laptop".

I use .pdf presentations made with LaTeX beamer and showed with Okular. It is a nice combination for content oriented talks but not for good looking ones based on images. I have to improve this point. Somehow I want to give the messege that software libre is also about creativity. I'm thinking about creating a new user on my laptop just for these occasions so I can use a cool theme and adding all kind of stuff that looks really cool eventhough sometimes they aren't too useful for me. Do you have any recommendation? I have now Kubuntu 9.04 + KDE 4.3.1.

I believe that it is easier for somebody to make the step forward and try something new in his/her computer if when showing it, your desktop works perfectly and looks nice. This is obvious. The point is that we are the main sellers of what we do and we sell our job everytime we show it. So little errors, misconfigurations or procedures that are ok to us, may not be acceptable for common users without explanation (or even with it). I'm trying to have that in mind lately and I confess that stress me a little sometimes, specially when I have a presentation after updating my laptop.

Social media cuts both ways

This is a post written after reading this post, from FreshNetworks, related with the impact of social media in a company's branding.

Social Media cuts both ways.

1.- Writters has to be aware of the impact of the information they publish.

Most of the regular social media users has no previous experience in marketing or regular media, obviously, so they have no real sense on how powerful published information (so these tools) can be and the harm they can make to a person or a company without even noticing it. We are seeing this in young kids at school. It is so easy to upload a unproper picture, to publish an unfair comment about somebody, destroy a company's reputation ...

Social media tools are used by everybody but not everybody know how to use them. Reacting against wrong behaviours related with their use is not just the Govs responsability. It is also ours.

2.- Companies have to take social networks as a really powerful marketing and feedback tool.

Social media are not just a new channel to make money out of. They also are a good tool for users to show your services weak points, you fealures, etc. So prepare your company (and yourself) to react to users opinions as they deserve. And also take in consideration that they have the ability now to harm you with a little cost you if you ignore them..or even if you don't.

3.- We need to adapt the law to this new reality

Social media are a new way of communicating so countries need to adapt the law to this new reality (without cutting down our rights). And since social media know very little about boundaries, Govs should make an effort to unify as much as possible its criteria related to the the protection of our rights.

Some questions come to my mind:

• How do we convince a company that risks related with the use of social media do not cancel all the great opportunities related to them?
• Do we have to?
• What should a company ( a person or a community) do when its reputation is in danger through twitter, facebook, etc.?
• How to react when somebody's opinion is unffair?
• And what about when you agree on somebody's complains, you want to repair the error but the complains published in a social network has already a huge impact, so the cost of that misbehavior is insignificant compared to the harm done by the customer/blogger/user?
• What if the social media user is not even your customer and have no real idea about your service?

More and more companies are getting concerned about the impact of social media for their reputation. Many of them may become afraid to use them if they are not "more controlled", so they will try to.

And we know well that fear is freedom's major enemy.

Social networks... a new challenge and a new risk for software libre projects

More and more people is now using KDE 4, and specially non technical people. Since KDE4 is improving fast but do not have yet all the features and apps that KDE 3.5 did, it is easy to think that old KDE users will have many requests or questions the following monthes. Since the usability of KDE4 is new in many ways, there will be many users also asking for help.

I have a feeling that lately more and more people is complaining/making questions in identi.ca/twitter about features or non key points that they miss, don't like or, simply don't work as they expected.

The commitment of every KDE developer to answer as many questions or comments as they can is out of doubt, but this question-answer approach do not scale, since these tools do not work as chats, forums or mailing lists (the major tools we have used in the past for support purposes). They do not have a single entrance from where to route them to the right information or person. They need a new language, different procedures, different interfaces, different tools (social desktops ;) )....

I'm not sure the policies we had in the past for supporting users are going to be as efficient as they were. Probably a different strategy to handle all these requests and complains is needed for these social tools. From my point of view is becomming something to be worry about since the impact of so many people making requests or complaining about different issues are becomming significant and it can turn into relevant.

Software libre projects have a nice chance to change the way they interact with users. Social networks force people to become concise. We can use that. But they are also great tools for expressing feelings worldwide... and that is a huge risk if they get frustrated with our software.

How do we route requests and complains through social network tools? How do we track and proccess what they want, what they need? How do we make ourselves visible so they know where/who to ask? How are we going to coordinate efforts through these tools? How do we adapt other tools we use (wiki, bug tracker, mailing lists, chat) to this new scenario? How do we include social network tools into our support and maintenance strategy? Or their impact will be so big that those classic strategies won't work anymore?

Maybe we have to assume some risks and, once more, innovate....maybe this is nothing to worry about...