When governments, organisations and companies move to LibreOffice – as we’re seeing in Austria, Germany and other countries – they usually enlist the help of Certified Migration Professionals.
Recently in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, we held a LibreOffice Migration Workshop. 40 attendees registered, from the public and private sectors, and the session was conducted pro bono by Lothar Becker, co-chair of LibreOffice’s Certification Committee. The goal of the workshop was to grow and foster the LibreOffice Technology ecosystem by supporting partners and government organisations in facilitating migrations to the suite.
It took place in the conference rooms of a hotel in central Nairobi, with a great view:
The event was hosted and funded by the Kenya branch of GIZ Germany, along with The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice. The first two days focused on LibreOffice, covering best practices for migrations to LibreOffice Technology, with the first day being more user-centric and looking at the user interface and features of the software. There was also a general introduction to TDF and open source.
Then, the second day focused more on the migration process, providing deeper insights into migration and training protocols. Other topics included digital sovereignty with the Open Document Format (ODF) and other certification processes with TDF.
On the third day Lothar gave a talk called “Open source Community of Practice” in his capacity as OSBA board member. The talk focused on “Open Source as an Enabler of Digital Sovereignty & Innovation” with respect to DPI, Free and Open Source Software, open standards, and AI.
Special thanks to Carsten Glöckner, Amrit Labhuram, their team from GIZ Kenya for all their help and support in organising these events. Lastly, during the workshop Lothar had the opportunity to learn about the valuable work of the Telesky Foundation for digital participation of all children in Kenya from John Mbugua. Lothar handed over a book about “Ada & Zangemann” from Matthias Kirschner (Free Software Foundation Europe).
