The Document Foundation is looking for an Administrative Assistant

The Document Foundation is the home of the LibreOffice community and one of the most popular open source projects, with an estimated user base of 200 million people worldwide.

The foundation has existed for seven years and today several activities are coordinated by a multi-national team of open source advocates who look after release management, infrastructure, marketing, quality assurance, mentoring, documentation, user experience and design.

The team is working on lowering the barriers to entry, fostering participation in native language communities, providing the server infrastructure, organizing events, handling travel refunds and – in general – to make it easier to join the volunteers active in all areas of the project.

We are now looking for an Administrative Assistant. The position requires speaking both German and English (which is and remains the project’s main language) and this is the reason why the following tender is in German. Find the official tender below:

Hallo Welt!

Kennst du LibreOffice, das freie Office-Paket?

Wir sind die gemeinnützige Stiftung „The Document Foundation“ und das Zuhause der LibreOffice-Community. Weltweit arbeiten viele Firmen und hunderte Ehrenamtliche gemeinsam an einem der bekanntesten Open-Source-Projekte, das von über 200 Millionen Menschen weltweit eingesetzt wird.

Die Stiftung gibt es seit sieben Jahren und unser vielköpfiges Team aus verschiedenen Ländern sorgt dafür, dass sich Ehrenamtliche u.a. in Marketing, Qualitätssicherung, Entwicklung, Dokumentation, User Experience und Design einbringen können, indem wir beispielsweise die Einstiegshürden senken, die Serverinfrastruktur bereit stellen, Veranstaltungen organisieren, Reisekosten bezahlen und somit den Ehrenamtlichen das Mitmachen erleichtern.

Wir suchen so bald als möglich eine im Home-Office arbeitende

Assistenz der Geschäftsführung (m/w/divers)

in Teilzeit (20 Wochenstunden) zur Festanstellung.

Als spendenfinanzierte gemeinnützige Einrichtung können wir dir zwar keine teuren Boni bieten, dafür ist Arbeiten im Home-Office bei uns Standard, genauso wie flexible Arbeitszeiten und flache Hierarchien. Ideal ist, wenn du im Großraum München lebst, das macht den regelmäßigen Austausch mit den deutschsprachigen Kollegen noch einfacher.

Du kannst mit deinem Einsatz bei uns etwas für den guten Zweck tun und das Arbeiten in einer internationalen Community bereichert ungemein.

Zwar gibt es auch bei uns eine Probezeit, wir wollen mit dir aber langfristig zusammenarbeiten.

Deine Aufgaben

Wir sind in den letzten Jahren gewachsen, deswegen suchen wir jemanden, der verlässlich, zuverlässig, eigenverantwortlich und kompetent administrative Aufgaben übernimmt. Die Administration ist ein notwendiger Teil der Stiftungsarbeit und kommt vor allem unseren Ehrenamtlichen zugute, denen wir damit den Rücken freihalten und viele Projekte überhaupt erst ermöglichen.

Zu deinen Aufgaben gehört unter anderem

  • Du bist erster Ansprechpartner nach außen. E-Mails an unsere info@-Adresse, Anrufe auf der zentralen Nummer und der Posteingang landen bei dir, du antwortest entweder selbst oder leitest an’s Team weiter und du verschickst ausgehende Post.
  • Du kümmerst dich um die Spendenverwaltung. Du erstellst Spendenbescheinigungen, pflegst die Spendendatenbank, beantwortest Rückfragen, führst etwaige Rückbuchungen durch und behältst die verschiedenen Spendenkonten im Blick.
  • Du unterstützt uns bei der vorbereitenden Buchhaltung. Du sammelst, sichtest und prüfst Belege und Kontoauszüge, hast die Budgets, Sachkonten und Umsatzsteuervoranmeldungen im Blick und pflegst die nötigen Zahlen in das DATEV-Modul ein. Eingehende Rechnungen prüfst und bezahlst du. Die anonymisierten Monatsabschlüsse übersetzt du ins Englische, da wir diese regelmäßig veröffentlichen.
  • Du hilfst mit bei der Organisation von Projekten, Ausschreibungen und der jährlichen LibreOffice Conference, die im Jahr 2019 beispielsweise in Almeria in Spanien stattfindet.
  • Du pflegst und organisierst unsere interne Nextcloud-Dateiablage und scannst und archivierst Dokumente.
  • Du bist verantwortlich für unsere Inventarverwaltung und übernimmst den Versand von Marketing-Materialien und von Hardware für Veranstaltungen.
  • Du bearbeitet Reisekostenabrechnungen. Dazu prüfst du die Anträge und Belege, führst Überweisungen ins In- und Ausland durch und buchst ggf. auch Hotel, Konferenzräume und die Anreise für ganze Gruppen.
  • Du bereitest für Sitzungen und Telefonkonferenzen die Einladung, Tagesordnung und Beschlussvorlagen vor, führst und veröffentlichst das Protokoll (i.d.R. auf Englisch), stellst die Präsentationsfolien zusammen und prüfst regelmäßig, wann Entscheidungen des nichtöffentlichen Teils publiziert werden können.
  • Du unterstützt das Mitglieder-Komitee bei der Mitgliedsverwaltung und der Meldung an die Stiftungsaufsicht.
  • Du bereitest Veränderungsanzeigen unter anderem an Stiftungsaufsicht, Versicherung, Bank und Transparenzregister vor.
  • Du hilfst uns dabei, Termine, Fristen und Wiedervorlagen im Blick zu behalten.

Was du können solltest

Sag uns, warum du den Job kannst und welche Praxiserfahrung du hast! Wichtig sind folgende Punkte:

  • Du hast Erfahrung mit (gemeinnützigen) Organisationen.
    Begriffe wie Jahresabschluss, Sachkonto, Tätigkeitsbericht, Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung, A1-Meldung, VBG, DATEV, Zuwendungsbestätigung, Künstlersozialkasse und Zweckbetrieb sind dir nicht fremd. Mit fachlicher Unterstützung navigierst du auch durch die Grundzüge der Buchhaltung.
  • Du beherrscht fließendes und gutes Deutsch und Englisch in Wort und Schrift.
    Du wirst nach außen hin unter anderem mit Behörden, Dienstleistern und Partnern kommunizieren, die Projektsprache intern hingegen ist ausschließlich Englisch. Da du häufig als „Gateway zwischen den Welten“ fungieren wirst, musst du in beiden Sprachen sattelfest sein.
  • Da wir LibreOffice herausgeben und das natürlich auch selbst benutzen, ist ein souveräner Umgang damit wichtig.
    Ein Teil deiner Arbeit besteht in der Gestaltung von Dokumenten und Anschreiben (Writer), dem Erstellen von Präsentationen (Impress) und dem Kalkulieren von Budgets und Kosten (Calc).
  • Fit solltest du auch im Umgang mit vielen E-Mails sein, beispielsweise in Mozilla Thunderbird, mutt oder Roundcube.
    Die Hauptkommunikation im Projekt erfolgt mittels E-Mail – mittels vieler E-Mails! Den Umgang mit Mailinglisten, Mailfiltern und Verteilerlisten musst du beherrschen. Wir nutzen dabei bevorzugt freie Lösungen.

Ebenfalls sehr hilfreich ist Folgendes:

  • Wenn du dich für das Open-Source-Prinzip begeistern kannst und weißt, was es damit auf sich hat, hilft dir das definitiv, dich bei uns zurechtzufinden. Der beste Start gelingt dir, wenn du selbst bereits freie Software einsetzt!
  • Das Arbeiten im Home-Office bietet viele Freiheiten, verlangt aber auch gute Organisation und Selbstdisziplin, damit dir nicht die Decke auf den Kopf fällt. Wenn du mit dieser Arbeitsform schon Erfahrungen sammeln konntest, ist das sicher ein Plus.

Wir freuen uns über deine Bewerbung per E-Mail, inkl. Lebenslauf, Gehaltsvorstellung und frühestmöglichem Eintrittsdatum bis spätestens 5. April 2019 an Florian Effenberger unter floeff@documentfoundation.org. Du kannst deine E-Mail an diese Adresse mittels PGP verschlüsseln.

Bewerbungen, die bis zum 10. Mai keine Rückmeldungen erhalten haben, waren nicht erfolgreich.

LibOCon Almeria Call for Papers

The Document Foundation invites all members and contributors to submit talks, lectures and workshops for this year’s conference in Almeria (Spain). The event is scheduled for early September, from Wednesday 11 to Friday 13. Whether you are a seasoned presenter or have never spoken in public before, if you have something interesting to share about LibreOffice or the Document Liberation Project, we want to hear from you!

Proposals should be filed by June 30, 2019, in order to guarantee that they will be considered for inclusion in the conference program.

The conference program will be based on the following tracks:

a) Development, APIs, Extensions, Future Technology
b) Quality Assurance
c) Localization, Documentation and Native Language Projects
d) Appealing Libreoffice: Ease of Use, Design and Accessibility
e) Open Document Format, Document Liberation and Interoperability
f) Advocating, Promoting, Marketing LibreOffice

Presentations, case studies, workshops, and technical talks will discuss a subject in depth and will last 30 minutes (including Q&A). Lightning talks will cover a specific topic and will last 5 minutes (including Q&A). Sessions will be streamed live and recorded for download.

Please send a short description/bio of yourself as well as your talk/workshop proposal to the program committee address: conference@libreoffice.org

If you do not agree to provide the data for the talk under the “Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License”, please explicitly state your terms. In order to make your presentation available on TDF YouTube channel, please do not submit talks containing copyrighted material (music, pictures, etc.).

If you want to give multiple talks, please send a separate email for each.

Thanks a lot for your participation!

(Image credit: José Juan Sánchez, CC-BY-SA, Wikimedia Commons)

LibreOffice Asia Conference 2019, Tokyo: Call for Papers is open

Berlin, February 28, 2019 – Call for Papers for LibreOffice Asia Conference 2019, held at the Nihonbashi Tokyo Tower (at Cyboze, Inc., Tokyo Office) on May 25th (Sat) and 26th (Sun), is now open.

LibreOffice Asia Conference will be the first event gathering LibreOffice users, advocates and contributors (not only development, but also localization, PR/marketing, documentation, quality assurance, … etc.) from different countries in Asia, to exchange and share experiences and knowledge.

During the conference, we will discuss LibreOffice related business such as supporting and training, migrating to LibreOffice and the ODF true standard format, developing, and any other community activity in Asia. In addition, we will have guests from the core team at The Document Foundation, which is a charitable foundation and the home of LibreOffice.

LibreOffice Kaigi, the traditional local event for Japanese speakers, will be held in parallel with the conference. So, there will be an English track and a Japanese track.

Any topic related to LibreOffice and ODF, such as LibreOffice user cases, contribution experiences in different areas, technical analisys of LibreOffice code development, success stories of migrations from proprietary software, or tips and tricks about LibreOffice usage, and so on, are all welcome. All talks will be 25 minutes long, including Q&A.

We are planning to reimburse expenses to accepted speakers, based on TDF reimbursement rules, including:

  • Flight or bullet train tickets (please note that tickets for local trains will NOT be reimbursed)
  • Accommodations for two nights in a hotel (please note that luxury hotels will NOT be reimbursed)

Do not hesitate to send your proposals, even if you live far from Tokyo or in another country in Asia.

To submit your talk proposal, please send an e-mail to libo-asia-contact@libreoffice.jp with:

Subject: [CFP] Title of your Talk

Your Name:
Your e-mail address:
Your profile:
Title of the Talk:
Abstract: (around 300 words)
Estimate of expenses to be reimbursed (if you will be asking for reimbursement)

In order to allow everyone to plan in advance their travels and accommodations, the deadline for the call for papers is on March 10th (Sun) 23:59:59 JST (UTC+9).

We will inform all approved speakers by March 22nd (Fri) JST.

First LibreOffice Asia Conference

The First LibreOffice Asia Conference Will Be Held On May 25-26, 2019 In Nihonbashi, Tokyo, Japan

This is the first ever LibreOffice conference covering Asia, a rapidly-growing area for free and open source software. The call for papers will be launched soon.

Berlin, February 18, 2019 – After the huge success of the LibreOffice Conference Indonesia in 2018, members of the Asian communities have decided to raise the bar in 2019 with the first ever LibreOffice Asia Conference in Nihonbashi – the very center of Tokyo, Japan – on May 25-26.

One of the main organizers, Naruhiko Ogasawara, a member of the Japanese LibreOffice community and The Document Foundation, can’t hide his excitement: “When we launched the LibreOffice Mini Conference Japan in 2013 as a local event, we knew little about communities in other parts of Asia. In recent years we have attended the LibreOffice Conference and other Asian events like OpenSUSE Asia, COSCUP etc. We have realized that many of our colleagues are active and that our community should learn a lot from them. We are proud to be able to hold the first Asia Conference with our colleagues to further strengthen that partnership.”

“It’s a real leap of faith,” says Franklin Weng, an Asian member in the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation. “Asia is a rapidly-growing area in adoptions of ODF and LibreOffice, but our ecosystem for LibreOffice and FOSS has not been good enough yet. In this conference we’re not only trying to make the FOSS ecosystem in Asia more healthy, but also to encourage Asian community members to show their potential.”

Several core members from The Document Foundation will attend this conference, including Italo Vignoli, leader of the marketing and public relations community (and co-chairman of LibreOffice Certification Committee), along with Lothar Becker, who is also co-chairman of the Certification Committee. In addition, there will be community members from Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and probably China attending.

The main focus areas of this conference include:

  • Business workshop – which will be hosted by Lothar Becker and Italo Vignoli. Lothar and Italo will discuss business services: what are the fundamentals of LibreOffice business services, the current status of LibreOffice business in Europe, Asia and other geographies, and how we can support each other, etc.
  • CJK Hackfest – which will be led by Mark Hung, a LibreOffice Certified Developer in Taiwan, to discuss and hack CJK issues in LibreOffice.
  • Certification Interview – the second LibreOffice Certification Interview in Asia will be held during the LibreOffice Asia Conference, hosted by Italo Vignoli and Lothar Becker. So far total four or five candidates will be interviewed for LibreOffice Certified Migration Professionals and LibreOffice Certified Trainers.
  • Asia Local Certification for LibreOffice – which will be hosted by Franklin Weng and Eric Sun, two TDF members from Taiwan, to introduce the concept of having LibreOffice skills and trainer certifications in Asia.

The call for proposals will be launched soon in February. Besides the topics above, other LibreOffice and ODF-related topics are also welcome.

Announcing the dates of LibOCon Almeria

LibreOffice Conference 2019 will be hosted by the Spanish city of Almeria during the month of September, from September 11 (Wednesday) to September 13 (Friday).

On Tuesday, September 10, there will be the usual meetings of the community, to discuss topics of general interest for native language projects, such as localization, documentation, quality assurance, design and marketing.

Collateral events such as the social dinner and the hackfest, which are a tradition of the LibreOffice Schedule, have not yet been scheduled.

If you want to be regularly updated about LibOCon Almeria you can subscribe to the LibOCon Discussions Telegram group or the LibOCon Announcements Telegram channel.

(Image credit: José Juan Sánchez, CC-BY-SA, Wikimedia Commons)

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.2 with NotebookBar, the office suite which offers the most flexible user experience

LibreOffice 6.1.5 also released, for enterprise class deployments and mainstream users looking for robust productivity

Berlin, February 7, 2019 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.2 with NotebookBar, a significant major release of the free office suite which features a radical new approach to the user interface – based on the MUFFIN concept [1] – and provides user experience options capable of satisfying all users’ preferences, while leveraging all screen sizes in the best way.

The NotebookBar is available in Tabbed, Grouped and Contextual flavors, each one with a different approach to the menu layout, and complements the traditional Toolbars and Sidebar. The Tabbed variant aims to provide a familiar interface for users coming from proprietary office suites and is supposed to be used primarily without the sidebar, while the Grouped one allows to access “first-level” functions with one click and “second-level” functions with a maximum of two clicks.

The design community has also made substantial changes and improvements to icon themes, in particular Elementary and Karasa Jaga.

LibreOffice 6.2 new and improved features:

  • The help system offers faster filtering of index keywords, highlighting search terms as they are typed and displaying results based on the selected module.
  • Context menus have been tidied up, to be more consistent across the different components in the suite.
  • Change tracking performances have been dramatically improved, especially in large documents.
  • In Writer, it is now possible to copy spreadsheet data into tables instead of just inserting them as objects.
  • In Calc, it is now possible to do multivariate regression analysis using the regression tool. In addition, many more statistical measures are now available in the analysis output, and the new REGEX function has been added, to match text against a regular expression and optionally replace it.
  • In Impress & Draw, the motion path of animations can now be modified by dragging its control points. In addition, a couple of text-related drawing styles have been added, as well as a Format Table submenu in Draw.
  • LibreOffice Online, the cloud-based version of the suite, includes many improvements too. On mobile devices, the user interface has been simplified, with better responsiveness and updates to the on-screen keyboard.

Interoperability with proprietary file formats has also been improved, as with every major and minor version of LibreOffice, for better compatibility with Office documents, including old versions which have been deprecated by Microsoft. The focus has been on charts and animations, and on document security features, with agile encryption and HMAC verification.

LibreOffice 6.2’s new features have been developed by a large community of code contributors: 74% of commits are from developers employed by companies sitting in the Advisory Board like Collabora, Red Hat and CIB and by other contributors such as the City of Munich and SIL, and 26% are from individual volunteers.

In addition, there is a global community of individual volunteers taking care of other fundamental activities such as quality assurance, software localization, user interface design and user experience, editing of help system and documentation, plus free software and open document standards advocacy at a local level.

A video summarizing the top new features of LibreOffice 6.2 is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HUnR5IoAQk.

LibreOffice 6.1.5 for enterprise class deployments

The Document Foundation has also released LibreOffice 6.1.5, a more mature version which includes some months of back-ported fixes and is better suited for enterprise class deployments, where features are less important than robustness as the main objective is individual productivity.

Enterprises willing to deploy LibreOffice on a professional basis should source value-added services – related to software support, migrations and training – from certified people (https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/) and a LibreOffice LTS (Long Term Supported) versions provided by one of the companies sitting on TDF Advisory Board (https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/).

Sourcing enterprise class software and/or services from the ecosystem of certified professionals are the best support options for organizations deploying LibreOffice on a large number of desktops. In fact, these activities are contributed back to the project under the form of improvements to the software and the community, and trigger a virtuous circle which is beneficial to all parties, including users.

Availability of LibreOffice 6.2 and LibreOffice 6.1.5

LibreOffice 6.2 and LibreOffice 6.1.5 are immediately available from the following web page: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Builds of the latest LibreOffice Online source code are also available, released as Docker images: https://hub.docker.com/r/libreoffice/online/.

LibreOffice Online is fundamentally a server service, and should be installed and configured by adding cloud storage and an SSL certificate. It might be considered an enabling technology for the cloud services offered by ISPs or the private cloud of enterprises and large organizations.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate.

LibreOffice 6.2 is built with document conversion libraries from the Document Liberation Project: https://www.documentliberation.org.

Press Kit

The press kit is here: https://tdf.io/lo62presskit.

[1] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/12/21/the-document-foundation-announces-the-muffin-a-new-tasty-user-interface-concept-for-libreoffice/