Report from the Indonesian Community
I am Taufik Hidayat, Founder and Coordinator of BLOI (Belajar LibreOffice Indonesia) Community in Telegram. The BLOI group was created on March 16th, 2016, as GBLOI (Grup Belajar LibreOffice Indonesia). The acronym was then simplified in BLOI (Belajar LibreOffice Indonesia). The objective of the group is to help Indonesians to learn and use LibreOffice.
We announced the first book about LibreOffice in the same month, on April 21st, 2016. The original title was “Mari Mengenal Aplikasi LibreOffice”, then changed into “Mari Mengenal LibreOffice”. The book has 42 pages and has been written by 6 people (http://libreoffice.puskomedia.web.id/kontributor/). Two months after the release of the first book, we started our second project: “Lebih Dekat Dengan LibreOffice Writer”, to focus on Writer. This book has 225 pages and has been written by 15 people (http://libreoffice.puskomedia.web.id/kontributor/). The second book was completed in 3 months and was released on October 30, 2016, and has been reprinted three times since then. Both books can be downloaded from http://libreoffice.puskomedia.web.id/buku/.
We decided to print our second book to allow everyone to get a “phisical” copy, in addition to the digital one (e-book). But even after the publication of the second book, I still had the feeling that those two books were not enough. So, we decided to publish an improved version, which is called “Lebih Dekat dengan LibreOffice Writer Edisi Revisi 2” and contains many changes over the previous one (changes are listed here: http://libreoffice.puskomedia.web.id/2017/07/12/pesan-buku-lebih-dekat-dengan-libreoffice-writer-edisi-revisi-2/#more-46). We published only the printed version of this book, which we sell through the website to raise the money to pay contributors and cover the costs. All of our books are published under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
On July 12th, 2017, we have released the official website of the BLOI Community. Before, we were using my own blog at http://ubupediaindonesia.wordpress.com. The BLOI Community website has many contributors, which are listed on the same page: http://libreoffice.puskomedia.web.id/kontributor/. They contribute to the book, to the domain (website, subdomain and server), to the mirror, and to the different administrative tasks, including the delivery of orders.
Today, the BLOI Community has specific growth plans: collecting donations and member fees, organising online courses, creating jobs and providing directions for the community. We have announced jobs for people who want to help us share Free Software concepts in Indonesia (http://libreoffice.puskomedia.web.id/lowongan/). We are trying to make our members prosperous. For next year, we are planning either a seminar or a workshop to gather the community face-to-face, and educate people about free software and especially LibreOffice. For the future, we are also thinking about a 3rd collaboration book project: “Lebih Dekat dengan LibreOffice Calc”.We hope that our community becomes useful either for LibreOffice newbie or our country Indonesia. So we can share the spirit of free software to
We hope that our community becomes useful both for the LibreOffice newbie and our country Indonesia so that we can share the free software ethos to the whole country.