The LibreOffice project is on Mastodon, a free, open-source and federated social media service (with similar features to Twitter). Specifically, we’ve been on the Fosstodon server since April 2019 – and now we have 10,000 followers! A huge thanks to everyone who supports us there 😊
Female volunteering, interoperability, professional training, migration, Python based macro development and much more were highlighted themes at the event held at the Catholic University of Brasilia in the capital of Brazil.
Daniel A. Rodriguez writes:
The Latin American LibreOffice Conference gathered around 400 people, among them students and IT professionals, and was opened to the public on Thursday August 25th in a ceremony presided by Prof. Wesley Sepulvida, representing UCB, Lothar Becker (formerly on the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation) and Olivier Hallot representing the LibreOffice community.
The conference was organized entirely by volunteers, and followed up on the first event held in the city of Asunción in Paraguay in 2019. Brasilia was chosen to host the conference in 2022 because of its importance in the Latin American context and its excellent infrastructure. The lectures and workshops were given by members of the LibreOffice community from Italy, Spain, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, on August 25 and 26 at the Catholic University of Brasília, on the Taguatinga campus.
Italo Vignoli (Italy – TDF) and Olivier Hallot (Brazil – TDF), founding members of The Document Foundation, opened the lectures, presenting the sustainability of free software projects and the history of LibreOffice in Brazil, respectively. At the end of the morning, the participants took the official photo of the event.
In the early afternoon, Daniel Rodriguez (Argentina – TDF / UNAU) spoke about the implementation of a version of LibreOffice Online at the Alto Uruguay National University in Argentina, and Rafael Silveira (Brazil) presented the migration project to LibreOffice at Nuclebrás Equipamentos Pesados (NUCLEP). Simultaneously, in the computer lab Henderson Matsuura Sanches (Brazil – TDF) gave a workshop with practical tips about how to do an End of Course Paper in LibreOffice.
Xisco Fauli (Spain – TDF) presented the testing procedure of LibreOffice, followed by Lothar Becker (Germany – TDF) who talked about entrepreneurship with free software. Roberto Salomon (Brazil – Chief architect for Latin America at SUSE) spoke about the future that opens up with the technological innovations that are arriving in Brazil. In the closing of the first day, Prof. Andre Lima (UCB) spoke about open source solutions for LGPD compliance. In the workshops, Rafael Lima (Brazil – TDF) led the work on python scripting with a full room.
On the second day, Gustavo Pacheco (Brazil – TDF) shared with the audience details about the importance of being careful when investing in cryptocurrencies and how LibreOffice can help in decision making. He was followed by Olivier Hallot who presented the different ways of documenting software projects. Tulio Macedo (Brazil – TDF) presented the challenges of more accessible documentation. Simultaneously, Xisco Fauli led the session on software bug identification and confirmation. At the same time, Felipe Marra, Rafael Osiro and Giovanni Favorim from UCB led a workshop on software versioning control with the git tool. Prof. Remis Balaniuk (UCB) gave an introductory workshop on python.
In the afternoon, Italo Vignoli spoke about digital sovereignty. Followed by Olivier Hallot who presented migration strategies between office suites. Eliane Domingos (Brazil – TDF) talked about female volunteering in the LibreOffice project. At the same time, Mauricio Baeza (Mexico – TDF) gave a workshop about creating extensions for LibreOffice. In parallel, Prof. Cleto Spotto (UCB) analyzed snippets of LibreOffice code in a C++ workshop.
Henderson Matsuura showed how to install and use Mendeley in Writer, followed by Olivier Hallot who covered first steps in developing code for LibreOffice. Jackson Junior (Brazil – TDF) presented his experiences in standardizing documents at the Secretariat of Environment and Urban Planning (SEMAPU) of Olinda, Pernambuco, and Prof. Cleto Spotto (UCB) conducted an introductory workshop on LibreOffice Math. Finally, Prof. Hially Vaguetti (UCB) showed how to make academic presentations in LibreOffice Impress.
The conference was closed by Prof. Wesley Sepulvida, who thanked The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice community for their presence. In return, Olivier Hallot thanked the Catholic University of Brasilia for its hospitality and the volunteers and speakers for their participation in this first face-to-face event after the pandemic.
Now we look forward to meeting more people at the LibreOffice Conference 2022 in Milan, at the end of this month!
The Document Foundation is the non-profit home of LibreOffice, and its Membership Committee (MC) administers membership applications and renewals following the criteria defined in the Foundation’s Statutes.
The election process for a new MC is underway, and we’ve had three live Q+A sessions with the candidates! Check them out in this playlist, using the icon in the top-right to switch videos (and we’ll put them on PeerTube very soon):
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Today we’re talking to Jean-Baptiste Faure from the LibreOffice localisation community…
I am Jean-Baptiste, living in a small town near Lyon in France.
I retired in 2021, and until then I was working as a researcher in hydroinformatics in a public research institute. I was developing numerical simulation software for the study of river flows and their dynamics: mainly floods and pollutant transport.
Currently my main contribution to LibreOffice is the French localization of the UI. So I am less active in Quality Assurance than previously, but I continue to build several versions of LibreOffice for my own use and QA needs.
Note: it is very easy to build LibreOffice on Linux – do not hesitate to try.
Well, from my point of view, LibreOffice is the natural continuation of the OpenOffice.org project. I started with StarOffice 5.1 in 1998 because I needed a word processor able to write mathematical equations under Microsoft Windows, and I never liked Latex. 😉
In 2008, I was elected to succeed to Sophie as lead of the French speaking community. I managed the QA tests for the French localized versions of OpenOffice.org.
When LibreOffice was launched, it was clear for me that it was the future. Joining the project was proof.
Let’s not lie to ourselves, the experience is not a smooth one. Current debates about LibreOffice Online are an example, but certainly that will not be the last crisis. But LibreOffice is too central and important to be stopped by such crises. I want to believe that the community is strong enough to overcome theses problems.
More concretely, I think that the development effort of LibreOffice should focus in particular on the elimination of regressions, and on the frugality of the software to reduce its ecological impact.
Many thanks to Jean-Baptiste for all his contributions. All LibreOffice users are welcome to get involved, learn new skills – and make LibreOffice even better for millions of users!
Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…
The Document Foundation is the non-profit home of LibreOffice, and its Membership Committee (MC) administers membership applications and renewals following the criteria defined in the Foundation’s Statutes.
The election process for a new MC is underway, and we’ll have live Q&A sessions with the candidates!
Please do follow-up with any questions – and we’re looking forward to meeting many of you in the next three days!
