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Author: Mike Saunders

The Month of LibreOffice starts here!

Every contribution to the LibreOffice project – whether it’s a large code patch or just a small bug report – makes the software better for everyone. Over the last few years we’ve had many thousands of contributions from all around the world, and in May 2016 we really want to highlight all the effort goes in to LibreOffice. So we’re running a new campaign to credit everyone who contributes to the project!

Barnstars

If you’re involved with LibreOffice development, design, documentation, translation or QA, and want to show your appreciation for someone’s efforts, award them a barnstar on our special wiki page. This is a bronze, silver or gold icon that shows your thanks for that person’s help or contribution, like so:

To award a barnstar, all you have to do is visit the wiki, log in, and copy and paste the template. Fill in the details for the person you want to credit and show your appreciation!

Badges

Meanwhile, LibreOffice contributors can earn badges throughout May by doing various jobs. These include: confirming a bug report, having a code patch committed to the LibreOffice source tree, translating a string in the interface, helping users, and more. They look like this:

Every time a contributor completes one of these jobs, we will add them to the list of badges on our wiki. Everyone who earns a badge can proudly show it off on their blog or social media accounts! At the end of the campaign we’ll make a high-score list for the contributors who earned the most badges.

How do I get a badge?

There are six badges covering many aspects of LibreOffice:

  • Help to confirm bugs: go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 10 and LibreOffice 5.1.2”. Make sure you’re using the latest version of LibreOffice!
  • Contribute code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started. Once you’ve submitted a patch, if it gets merged we’ll award you a badge!
  • Translate the interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.
  • Write documentation: Another way to earn a badge is to help the LibreOffice documentation team. Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.
  • Answer questions from users: Over on Ask LibreOffice there are many users looking for help with the suite. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you’ll get a shiny badge to add to your collection.
  • Spread the word: Tell everyone about LibreOffice on Twitter! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and we’ll award you with a badge.

Can you get all six badges? Good luck!

So let’s go

The campaigns run until the end of the month, so you have around four weeks to award barnstars (or earn them!) and pick up badges for your contributions. We’ll be posting regular updates on our Twitter account, and of course keep an eye on the wiki pages to see the progress. It’s going to be awesome!

Coming up: the Month of LibreOffice

Month of LibreOffice header

There’s so much fantastic work going on in LibreOffice at the moment, in all areas of the project: development, translations, bug fixing, documentation, user support and much more. The community is doing stellar work to make the software better, faster, more reliable, easier to use, and available for everyone.

In May, we want to really highlight the efforts of everyone involved, so we’re going to run a special campaign: the Month of LibreOffice. This campaign will give contributors the opportunity to thank members of the community for their work, by awarding them barnstars like so:

Month of LibreOffice barnstar

But that’s just the start of it! We’ll also be awarding badges for contributions to LibreOffice. Every time someone has their code merged, confirms a bug, submits documentation updates, helps users on Ask LibreOffice or just spreads the good word on Twitter, we’ll award them a badge:

Month of LibreOffice badges

There are multiple badges to collect, and at the end of the campaign we’ll see who got the most. Maybe you can get them all!

The Month of LibreOffice will kick off on Monday 2nd May, so stay tuned to this blog for the full announcement and information on how to get involved…

LibreOffice at CeBIT 2016: wrapping up

Last week LibreOffice was present at CeBIT, and it was a good opportunity to meet users, listen to their suggestions, and talk about the future of the project. Our stand in hall 3 was well-staffed by The Document Foundation team and members of the German LibreOffice community.

CeBIT focuses primarily on IT in business, so we had a lot of inquiries about large-scale migrations to LibreOffice and what can be done to make them as smooth as possible. Our flyers about LibreOffice in the enterprise helped here, but it was also good to speak face-to-face with IT managers who are considering LibreOffice, pointing them to the many successful migrations that have taken place in recent years.

But it wasn’t all about big business. Our stand received lots of visits from people who use LibreOffice at home or in other places such as churches and mailing rooms. It’s fascinating to see how the software is being used in so many different scenarios. Many visitors to our stand simply wanted to say thank you for working on LibreOffice – but of course, we were just a tiny sample of the wider LibreOffice community, so we’d like to pass on those thanks to everyone who has contributed to the suite!

And, of course, we had lots of merchandise to give away. Our sweets and stickers were especially popular, with some visitors asking for handfuls of the latter to adorn every computer and gadget they own. Thanks to everyone who visited us!

TDF and LibreOffice at CeBIT 2016

CeBIT, the world’s largest computer expo, is just around the corner. CeBIT 2016 will take place as usual at the Messegelände in Hannover, from Monday 14th to Friday 18th of March – and the LibreOffice community will be there. So if you’re attending the event, come by and say hello! We will have a stand (D30) in Hall 3, and many of us from The Document Foundation will be present along with other LibreOffice users, developers and supporters.

CeBIT is a great opportunity for us to spread the word about LibreOffice and open document formats. We’ll be explaining how the software is developed, talking about what’s new in the foundation, and (hopefully) encouraging new developers to get involved with open source projects. With over 300,000 people expected to attend over the week, we’ll be very busy.

So we hope to see you there – have a chat, pick up a leaflet, and maybe even buy a T-shirt to support LibreOffice. And when you’ve talked to us, why not post the image above (large version here) on your Twitter account or blog to let others know that we’re here!

LibreOffice 5.1 Videos: Analytics

For LibreOffice 5.1 we created a playlist of short videos highlighting some of the new features in action. At the time of writing, these videos have been viewed over 50,000 times in total. Here’s the breakdown:

  • Calc: 15,346
  • Impress: 12,275
  • Writer: 25,229

Let’s take the Writer video and look at some of the viewer analytics data behind it. Interestingly, Spain currently provides the most viewers – whereas for the Calc and Impress videos, the USA is in first place. This chart shows the breakdown of the top 10 countries where the Writer video is popular:
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Marketing Project: New Marketing Assistant

I’d like to introduce myself as the new Marketing Assistant at The Document Foundation. My name is Mike Saunders, and some LibreOffice followers may have already seen the 5.1 New Feature videos that I made for Calc, Impress and Writer. Others may have come across my work in Linux Voice magazine in the last two years, and other computing publications such as Linux Format before that. (I’ve also written a book about Linux.)

I’ve been using, developing, writing about and advocating open source and Free Software since 1998, when I took the plunge with Red Hat Linux 5.1 from a magazine coverdisc. Around the same time, I discovered StarOffice, the commercial office suite which, of course, eventually became OpenOffice.org and now LibreOffice. I’ve seen the Free Software community grow from a grassroots movement to a major force in the computing world, and along with writing about and promoting FOSS, I’ve tried to give a little bit back with my own Free Software project: MikeOS.

So I’m really excited to be joining The Document Foundation – helping to promote and spread awareness about LibreOffice. Not only is LibreOffice a hugely versatile and useful piece of software, it represents much more: the growing importance of open standards and document formats. It’s clear that companies, communities and local governments are starting to recognise that fully open formats are the future, so it’s great to see adoption of LibreOffice all around the world.

I’ll be working on a part-time basis, helping The Document Foundation with various tasks and projects. We’re going to be at CeBIT in mid-March, we’re working on our Annual Report for 2015, and we have many ideas for presentations, events and social media promotions in the pipeline.

So far I’ve met lots of great people involved in LibreOffice and TDF, and no doubt I’ll be meeting many more – either in person at events, or collaborating on the wiki and mailing lists – over the coming 12 months. I look forward to working with you!

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