Event reports: LibreOffice in Cyprus and Czech Republic
Throughout the year, LibreOffice community members attend events around the world, helping to promote free software and open standards. We’re really grateful for their work! Today we have a couple of reports from recent events – and we start with Muhammet Kara who has been busy in Cyprus:
I attended the Free Software and Linux Seminar on October 20 at METU NCC (Northern Cyprus Campus). 60 people were there, all university students, and I talked about many topics: free Software, Linux, LibreOffice, ways to contribute, and opportunities like Google Summer of Code, Outreachy, and LibreLadies. Then I finished by answering their questions about Free Software, Linux, and Pardus. The excitement of the attendees was promising!
Then, on October 21 at METU NCC, I helped to organise a LibreOffice Developer Workshop. Many people were interested in joining this session, but I asked the organisers to bring a small group, so 10+ people attended. We formed a Telegram group with the attendees so that they can cooperate, and I can provide some hand-holding while they got their first patches merged. (So far two of them have had their patches submitted, reviewed, and ready to be merged. The first ones will also help the others to follow.) Overall, I am happy about the results.
LinuxDays 2017 in Prague
Next up, we have a report from Stanislav Horáček about a recent event in the Czech Republic:
Zdeněk Crhonek and I attended LinuxDays, the biggest Linux event in the Czech Republic. A simple LibreOffice booth was managed there – here’s what it looked like (photo by Lukáš Jelínek):
We got useful feedback, and most of our visitors were satisfied with LibreOffice – there were fewer complaints about document compatibility than in previous years. In addition, there was interest in how development works and the role of The Document Foundation. We were surprised by some very specific questions (headless mode, Base, remote documents…) and it’s clear that LibreOffice Online is still generally not well known.
There was also a meeting of Czech localisation communities (Mozilla, GNOME, OpenSUSE) – we agreed to continue with cooperation (terminology and style consolidation, and an initiative to renew language dictionaries). Overall, I have a feeling that the Linux/FOSS community here is strong and growing, and it is great that LibreOffice can be part of it.
Thanks to Muhammet and Stanislav for their great work! We really appreciate your help spreading the word. And to others reading this: if you want to get involved as well and promote LibreOffice in your country, join our marketing mailing list and we’ll give you a hand!