The Ubuntu CDs (20) for the SFD 2010 in Kiel just arrived today!
Today the SFI board made the decision to switch to Joomla. I can not give you any rational reason why this was decided, but I think it is fair to inform you about this fact.
To all the SFD folks out there. The registration for this year has not yet started, but the new wiki is now up and running. I have been successful in installing it on a new server at the address wiki.softwarefreedomday.org. The old wiki will soon be moved to a new address and now is READ ONLY. If you want to copy stuff I suggest you copy the markup and paste in with the GUI Editor of MoinMoin (see HelpOnGraphicalEditor). The other editor is the text editor and is set as default for new pages. We decided to install a new wiki and not move all the content, because many of the content was outdated and a lot of users have been spam accounts. We do not have the time and ressources to check every page and user. And OTOH every Software Freedom Day is different and requires new content, even if you sometimes like to reuse some of your old content. So I ope you understand our reasons for going that route.
I have also put some efforts in creating templates for generating new pages for countries , regions and teams. The idea was to streamline the content a bit more. There is even some multi language content as a start. I hope we will be able to enlarge that in the coming years.
And thats also a point for the question where people often ask: Why do you use MoinMoin? Why not MediaWiki or Dokuwiki? The fact is, that MoinMoin has a built in multi language support by default. We do yet not use a lot of it, but the popular MediaWiki would require us to install more wiki instances (which we would all need to upgrade and administer). The new MoinMoin uses MOD_WSGI which is really stable and fast. And the new instance now is able to search inside attached documents with XAPIAN search.
I think with the new install we have founded a new stable basis for future SFDs. If you have any problems or questions about the wiki please get in contact with me and I try to answer or help. I will also look at your edits and fix stuff were needed.
Tomorrow we will have our late DFD 2010. More here (german): http://akkiel.blogsport.de/2010/05/21/sa-22-05-ab-1200-open-source-workshop-buero-der-rosalux-exerzierplatz-34/
Am 22. Mai veranstaltet die LUG Kiel zusamen mit dem Arbeitskreis Kritischer Studierender einen Workshoptag in Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. Ihr könnt auch eure PCs und Notebooks mitbringen. Es ist auch ein nachgeholter Document Freedom Day.
- ab 12 Uhr
- In der Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung SH, Exerzierplatz 34
- Flyer (jpg, groß)
Themen:
- Linux / Ubuntu
- OpenDocument Format (ODF)
- OpenOffice.org
- u.a. – eure Fragen….
Da es Abstimmungsprobleme gab, wird kein DFD von unserer Seite am 31.3. stattfinden. Ist zwar schade, aber lässt sich jetzt nicht mehr ändern.
Wir sind wieder am Planen für den DFD2010 . Nächste Woche erstes Planungstreffen.
Our SFD is over since about 7 hours. We had around 30 visitors. I am VERY pleased with the result. Last year there were 20 visitors altogether, this year we had 30 nearly the whole day. There was a lot of curiosity about what free software was. Many of the scepticism that some had could be resolved.
Our planning and the location was much better than last year. This year we could use the rooms at the Gewerbe- und Technikzentrum (GTZ) Raisdorf, which is a location where startup companies are located.
We did focus mostly on Ubuntu Linux and OpenOffice.org this year, because I thought that this will allow us to do more – and from the reaction of the people I think this was absolutely the right way to go. For every small team in the future I would also suggest to follow the ‘less is more’ principle. Less topics, less talks, higher quality and maybe even more time to talk to visitors.
They are all very happy if you answer their questions they PERSONALLY have in a private conversation. I tend to think more and more that the great talks are not that important and its unlikely that this will make your visitors satisfied.
It’s also because you need to know what troubles people have. If you talk you can not listen at the same time. I do regret a bit, that I didnt keep my original wish to use 2 hours between each talk including breaks. I think talks should normally not be longer than 45 minutes essentially with additional time to ask questions. But I am very much against to try to lock visitors in a strict 45 minutes corset or with too much fixed breaks. You definitely need to be flexible.
We also had two spontaneous talks after the official end of the talks by a younger visitor about Blender and some programming topic.
Although we had a 9 hour program people still looked hungry as they left. But not from no food – we had a lunchtime with real food, nothing vegetarian was available, thought.
As I woke up this morning I thought: Why do I do this, as its all volunteer work – but in the end I was happy to have organized it. I hope it also went well for you all over the world!?
Images from Event: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tpfennig/tags/sfd09/
We have released our SFD flyer under a Creative Commons license here. Because we think free software and free documents should be one. You can download it as JPEG, PDF and XCF.
Unfortunately not all layers are editable, because the first version was done in Photoshop and not GIMP and by importing the PSD file some effects could not be imported. I hope we will be able to do with Scribus on the next occasions.
In 4 days we will have our SFD in Kiel, Germany. many things didnt go too well, unfortunately, but I am positive about the outcome, anyway.
I think in the future we will have our standard topics:
- OpenOffice.org
- Ubuntu
- Free Software
So three talks – and everything else will be „nice to have“. So thates the idea for 2010 – 2009 will be similar. 2008 we also had a talk about OpenStreetmap and encryption, but I think when you have only few talks you need to concentrate on the most important applications. If they change, one can change, but if not I would like to stick to the standard talks and rather change the content rather than the topic. This has some benefits. One of it is, that you can more or less print the flyers and posters without knowing much more than the date and the location. You can then add additional talks to the homepage.
I do not like it, if people retreat their talks weeks before an event, especially if the reasons they give sound shallow to me. Anyway, we can cope with that.
I think SFD should be upfront and user orientated and less theoretical. Therefore I also think the distance between the talkers and the listeners should be shrunk. People should learn what Free Software is and how and why they can and should use it. People need to „get their hands dirty“.
