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Community Member Monday: Sokibi, Indonesia

A story about how Sokibi uses LibreOffice and other FOSS to spread knowledge and love

Authors: Ahmad Haris and Franklin Weng

Sokibi (no last name – it’s a typical Javanese old-style name) was born in a rural village, around 45KM away from Semarang City in Central Java island, Indonesia. He now runs a small store residing in a traditional market, working on repairing computers, selling new and used computers, and provided open source solutions for migrations, support and training.

Sokibi has had extensive experience with office suites – from StarOffice and OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice. So besides his daily job, he put huge effort into teaching LibreOffice in schools, from primary schools to high schools. It was not always easy to go to different schools, which were usually very far away from his home town or company, but over the last 20 years, Sokibi has insisted on spreading knowledge about these office suites, without getting students locked in to proprietary software. During these times, Sokibi also wrote 16 books about learning computers from beginner level onwards, including four books for kindergarden kids and 12 books for primary school students.

What Sokibi has done is not only teaching computing and LibreOffice in schools. Many villages in Central Java have libraries but no computers at all. Although Sokibi has just run a small store selling computers, he decided to donate many computers to these libraries to build computer labs there, with Linux and many other open source programs – including LibreOffice – pre-installed.

Several years ago, Sokibi joined the documentation team of BlankOn Linux – an Indonesian Linux distribution founded by Ahmad Haris – writing documents for users who wanted to migrate to FOSS, and also about the daily use of LibreOffice. Now he’s still writing books – including computer learning books for high school students, and several other FOSS applications, like the one pictured above (which covers LibreOffice, Gimp and Inkscape).

In his point of view, currently there is only small or limited documentation and HOWTOs in his local language Indonesian. Therefore he keeps teaching and spreading the knowledge and love, hoping that the number of contributors to LibreOffice and FOSS can grow.

We believe that there are more people like Sokibi, spreading his knowledge and love to people using the power of free and open source software. Let’s applaud Sokibi, and if you know anyone doing the same, please it share with us!

LibreOffice community at Czech free software events

Stanislav Horáček writes:

Like every year, we would like to say few words about our impressions and experiences from our Czech free and open source software (FOSS) conferences in autumn. As in the last year, we participate with our LibreOffice booth at LinuxDays in Prague (me and Zdeněk Crhonek), and at OpenAlt in Brno (Petr Valach and Zdeněk Crhonek).

We appreciated supporting words from LibreOffice users, as well as their questions and critical remarks – it was good opportunity to realise that LibreOffice is a really complex piece of software, and some ways of using it can be unpredictable 🙂 Some notes from the events:

  • LibreOffice Online is better known than at previous events, but still some people are surprised that there is this version, so there is interest in how to install it and get it working. We noticed a demand for an online service with LibreOffice as paid alternative to Google Docs for small companies.
  • Other quite hot topics were macros and (missing) automatic updates in Windows.
  • Examples of special questions: using a stylus and handwriting recognition in LibreOffice; a version for the Librem device; embedding LibreOffice in another application; creating business cards with pictures; saving values of Solver settings in Calc; filtering by colours in Calc…
  • At LinuxDays, I had a talk about a new Czech spellcheck dictionary (which also uses Wikidata as a source), available as a LibreOffice extension.

Thanks to organizers of both events for this opportunity and to The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice, for the support! We can really recommend these types of events, as you get feedback from both end users of our software, and developers/enthusiasts of another communities. Don’t hesitate to attend if there is a similar event in your country 🙂

TDF says: huge thanks to Stanislav, Zdeněk and Petr for all their great work! Native language communities are essential building blocks of the LibreOffice project, helping to share knowledge, spread the word and make LibreOffice even better for everyone. And everyone is welcome to join and help out!

LibreOffice localisation sprint (and other events) in Albania

The Albanian LibreOffice community has been super active in recent years, organising the LibreOffice Conference 2018 in Tirana, and regularly contributing with translation and marketing efforts. Sidorela Uku reports from a recent localisation sprint at Open Labs Hackerspace:

This was the first event I organized for LibreOffice, in collaboration with a friend of mine, Marcela Korreshi (our new contributor). The presentation included an introduction to LibreOffice and how people can contribute to the project in in various ways, while the second part was focused on translations. (In addition, I talked about whatcanidoforlibreoffice.org.)

We had 14 people participating at the event, and as far as I can see from the translations, there are around 460 strings translated to review – and around 200 strings translated and reviewed.

Meanwhile, some more events are coming up in Tirana:

  • On 20 November, for Design & UI
  • On 23 November, for Marketing & Advocacy
  • And on 26 November, another event for Localization

You don’t have to register for the events, and they are free to attend – full details on this wiki page (Albanian language).

TDF would like to say thanks to the Albanian community for their help and contributions!

Month of LibreOffice, November 2019: Half way through!

Two weeks ago, we kicked off a new Month of LibreOffice, crediting contributions all across the project. Participants can claim a cool sticker pack, and have a chance to win a mug too!

So, how’s it looking so far? Here’s how many sticker packs have been awarded:

200 – click to see if you’re on the list

We’re doing our best to track all contributions from the LibreOffice community, so if you’ve done something in the project but your name (or username) isn’t there yet, let us know. Or if you haven’t joined in yet, but want a sticker pack – and indeed, a chance to win a mug – then here’s how you can help out:

You can be a…

  • Handy Helper, answering questions from users: over on Ask LibreOffice there are many users looking for help with the office suite. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim your shiny stickers.
  • First Responder, helping to confirm new bug reports: 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 6.3.3”. (Make sure you’re using the latest version of LibreOffice!)
  • Drum Beater, spreading the word: tell everyone about LibreOffice on Twitter or Mastodon! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim a sticker. (We have a maximum of 100 stickers for this category, in case the whole internet starts tweeting/tooting!)
  • Globetrotter, translating the user 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.
  • Code Cruncher, contributing source 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 send you a sticker!
  • Docs Doctor, writing 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.

Keep an eye on our Mastodon and Twitter accounts for more updates over the next two weeks!

Event report: Google Summer of Code presentation in Ankara, Turkey

The Google Summer of Code – aka GSoC – is a global programme focused on bringing more student developers into free and open source software development. In 2019, LibreOffice was once again a participating project, and we describe the results here.

Meanwhile, Muhammet Kara from the Turkish LibreOffice community gave a presentation about GSoC on November 8 at YILDIZ Amphitheater M2, Hacettepe University (Beytepe Campus), Ankara – here’s what he had to say:

There were around 40 attendees, mostly from the Computer Science department. The best part was that they were very excited, and asked many questions – and the event took almost two hours instead of the planned 40 minutes. Many of them seemed ‘sold’ at the idea of spending the next summer (or at least one summer, sometime) working on LibreOffice or another free/libre open source software (FLOSS) project, through GSoC.

I also tried to share my adventure as a FLOSS enthusiast, from a volunteer translator to a professional developer working as part of Collabora’s LibreOffice development team. And I am glad to say that they seemed inspired of the story. 🙂

This is an after-event tweet by Hacettepe University ACM Student Chapter, with photos. Oh, and be prepared to hear more from around here regarding LibreOffice/FLOSS activities in the upcoming days. We have more activities in the planning, and hope to share soon. 😉

Thanks to Muhammet and all the participants for their work! Everyone is welcome to join our community and help to improve LibreOffice – see what you can do to make a difference.

Community Member Monday: Celia Palacios

Today we’re talking to Celia Palacios, who has recently become a member of The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice:

To start, tell us a bit about yourself!

I am a Mexican old-guard user of Linux since 2001. I studied Electronic Engineering, and I have been working in thatfield since 1989. I learnt all sorts of Linux stuff because I love to learn by myself. In addition, I love to read historical detective novels, lots of science fiction, and go to the movies with my husband.

I love philosophy, symbolism and many alternative ideas about everything. I also like to have long, friendly debates about everybody’s presumptions (or assumptions?). I try to be open-minded, specially in this times when everyone’s getting polarized Mexico about our President. I used to be an athletic gal, but now I am a total coach-potato! Thanks, Netflix!

Why did you decide to become a member of TDF?

Because LibreOffice is one the leaders in free/libre software, and it is a real example of a community with many faces and one heart. And also because people in the Spanish LibreOffice Telegram channel are so intelligent, bright, open and charming: many of them working truly to help others. That moved me deeply.

What are you working on in the LibreOffice project right now?

I am helping the Spanish documentation team. I have an idea of asking university students to help us finish the first-steps guides. If we succeed, we will have an updated introductory guide, which is really needed in Spanish.

Anything else you plan to do in the future?

It is too early to answer that without saying “in the regular places”. But it is in my plans to update every module’s guide in Spanish. And also some advanced guides/tutorials, with practical cases, for Calc and Base, specially to equal the outcomes that Microsoft Excel’s Power Business Intelligence is achieving.

Thanks to Celia for all her help and input! If you’re reading this and also want to join our friendly community, see here to get started (or visit the Spanish page). And if you’re already active in the LibreOffice project, consider becoming a member, so you can vote for TDF’s Board of Directors and help to make other important decisions:

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