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LibreOffice Community announces broad program for its Berlin conference

Tracks on development, marketing, migration and community success
The Document Foundation to host official ODF Plugfest and ODF Plugtesting

The LibreOffice community today announces the program for its Berlin conference (October 17th to 19th). Taking place at the conference center of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi), and sponsored by leading players Canonical, Google and SerNet, it is not only the annual gathering of the worldwide community, but also meeting point for governmental and corporate adopters and innovators.

“With three tracks in parallel, plus the ODF Plugfest, including ODF Plugtesting, this years’ LibreOffice Conference is the major event for everyone interested in the development of free office suites and the OpenDocument ecosystem at large”, says Volker Merschmann, member of the program comittee.

Jacqueline Rahemipour, lead organizer from the host Freies Office Deutschland e.V., states: “Our program reflects the broad engagement and diversity of the community, and includes talks and workshops from various areas of the project. Interested users, developers, marketeers, as well as corporate and governmental adopters are invited to come to Berlin, to exchange ideas and jointly work on shaping the future of free office suites.”

Interested participants are required to register no later than October 8th at http://conference.libreoffice.org/registration

Following the project’s principles, the conference system has been implemented exclusively using free software. Board member Andreas Mantke has been developing an addon, based on Dexterity for the Plone CMS.

Meet the Membership Committee

The Members of The Document Foundation have just elected the new Membership Committee, with five members – Sophie Gautier, Fridrich Štrba, Eike Rathke, Cor Nouws and Jean Weber – and two deputies – Simon Phipps and Leif Lodahl.

I think that there are a couple of significant facts to underline here: the number of the original TDF founders is lower than the number of new TDF members (although several of them have been active in the project for a long time), and the number of independent members is higher than the number of people affiliated with companies sponsoring TDF.

I suppose that people are curious about the activity of these seven people, inside TDF and outside TDF.

I think that the best way to meet them is to link their web presence, as everyone has at least a blog. Of course, it will be soon possible to find them on the Membership Committee page on TDF website, and meet them at LibreOffice Conference in Berlin.

Sophie Gautier does not need any introduction: she is the history of the project, a TDF founder and a pillar of several projects: French localization, QA and certification. She has a website, a blog and a Google+ page.

Fridrich Štrba is a SUSE developer, with a passion for hacking filters (Visio and Corel Draw), who speaks a large number of languages including Italian. He has a website and a Google+ page.

Eike Rathke is a RedHat developer, and a longtime Calc hacker living in Hamburg where he has breathed the OOo code for the last twenty years. He has a website and a blog, while here you can learn about his erAck programmer name.

Cor Nouws is a TDF founder and a long time member of the project, active in several projects: Dutch localization, QA and certification. Together with Sophie, he brings a huge amount of wisdom and sense of community to TDF. He has a website and a blog.

Jean Weber is the leader of the documentation project, and the representative of the southern emisphere inside the Membership Committee (she lives in Australia). She has a blog and a Google+ page.

Simon Phipps is the President of the Open Source Initiative, and has been the engine behind Sun’s open source efferts for 10 years. He has a website and a Google+ page, and is featured on Wikipedia.

Leif Lodahl is a TDF founder, and has been instrumental in the first large migration to LibreOffice at Copenhagen Hospitals. He has a blog and a Google+ page.

Of course, the best way to meet the entire Membership Committee and discuss with them will be the LibreOffice Conference in Berlin.

Election of the TDF Membership Committee – List of Candidates

Dear Community,

as previously announced, all members of The Document Foundation are called to vote on a new Membership Committee.

Members of The Document Foundation as of 2012-07-01 are eligible to vote in the elections. The nomination period is now over, and we have received the following candidacies, in order of receipt:

  • David Emmerich Jourdain
  • Sophie Gautier
  • Fridrich Štrba
  • Simon Phipps
  • Leif Lodahl
  • Jean Weber
  • Eike Rathke
  • Cor Nouws
  • Florian Reisinger

If you nominated yourself for elections, or have been nominated by someone else, and are not mentioned in the above list, please get in touch with us as soon as possible at elections@documentfoundation.org

From all candidates, we also need full name, e-mail, corporate affiliation (if any), and a description of your reasons for wanting to serve as a committee member. If you didn’t send in any of these so far, please do so as soon as possible to elections@documentfoundation.org

We’ll soon reach out to all of you with further details. As previously announced, the actual election period will start at 2012-09-09 00:00 UTC and end at 2012-09-16 23:59 UTC.

We are looking forward to the elections, and would like to thank you for your work, engagement and dedication for The Document Foundation!

Meeting Richard Stallman

Following his speech the day before at the University of Munich, TDF Chair Florian Effenberger and admin team member Alexander Werner, together with a group of students, had the chance of meeting Richard Stallman. It was a fun day getting input from the President of the Free Software Foundation, who alongside many others, are a key member of our Advisory Board. The picture below shows the group enjoying some Italian ice cream. 😉

Meeting Richard Stallman

LibreOffice 3.6 Bug Hunting Party – July 6 & 7

TDF announces the LibreOffice 3.6 Bug Hunting Party to improve the quality and stability of the best free office suite ever

Berlin, June 29, 2012 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces the LibreOffice 3.6 bug hunting party, to be held in a virtual environment on July 6 and 7, 2012.
Volunteer bug hunters will gather on the Internet from the five continents to spot software problems of the upcoming new major release, featuring a large number of improvements and new functions, in order to make LibreOffice 3.6 again the best free office suite ever.

Participating is easy, and fun.
Details are available at the wiki of The Document Foundation, where one can also find a comprehensive list of LibreOffice 3.6 new and improved features.

All you need to join is a PC with Windows, MacOS X or Linux, and LibreOffice 3.6 Beta 3 (or Beta 2), plus a lot of enthusiasm.
The LibreOffice 3.6 Beta is to be downloaded from the pre-releases web-page.

Filing bugs will be easy, thanks to the improved bug submitting assistant and the help of several experienced people who will be around to help users and supporters with tips, on the QA mailing list (libreoffice-qa@freedesktop.org) and IRC channel (irc://chat.freenode.net/libreoffice), where many people are expected to join from 8AM to 10PM UTC on both days.
And of course there is a webpage withinformation on filing bugs.

People joining the LibreOffice Bug Hunt Parties not only do so for hunting new bugs. Checking and possibly categorising already submitted bugs also is a popular and interesting activity.

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