The LibreOffice Conference 2019 begins! Before the main talks start tomorrow, we’re having a community meeting to talk about translating LibreOffice and spreading the word. If you’re near Almeria, Spain, come and join us…
Category: Conference
LibreOffice Conference 2020 Proposals
The Document Foundation has received two different proposals for the organization of LibOCon 2020 from the Turkish and German communities. When this has happened in the past, in 2012 (Berlin vs Zaragoza) and 2013 (Milan vs Montreal), TDF Members have been asked to decide by casting their vote.
This document provides an outline of the two proposals, which are attached in their original format.
TURKEY: ISTANBUL
City. Istanbul, formerly known as Byzantium and Constantinople, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country’s economic, cultural and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosporus strait (which separates Europe and Asia) between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. With a total population of around 15 million residents in its metropolitan area, Istanbul is one of the world’s most populous cities, ranking as the world’s fourth largest city and the largest European city. (Source Wikipedia)
Entity. Tubitak Ulakbim (Pardus) will handle legal and financial responsibilities on behalf of LibreOffice Turkish community. Tubitak Ulakbim is a research institute which support FOSS (mostly Pardus Linux and LibreOffice) and ODF in Turkey, targeting primarily public institutions. Each year, it funds and/or supports many FOSS events in Turkey.
Tubitak Ulakbim (Pardus) has agreed to support the event by covering expenses up to an amount of approximately 25,000 Euro.
Venue. Boğaziçi University (BOUN), İstanbul. The main venue has three conference rooms of different sizes and a foyer area, plus other conference rooms in a nearby building (at walking distance) which can be used in case of need. All conference rooms are in the same campus. Almost all areas in the venue are wheelchair-accessible. BOUN is extremely sensitive to this topic.
Team. Muhammet Kara: main contact. Nurcan Tür, Enes Kıdık, Furkan Tokaç, F. Ahmet Kara, M. Çağrı Dolaz, Ülkem Kasapoğlu, Ömer Çakmak, Doğa Deniz Arıcı, Berkay Aktunç.
We are a group of enthusiast volunteers who love LibreOffice, and would like to see LibreOffice/ODF widely used and known in Turkey, along with other FOSS projects. We see LibOCon as a very good opportunity to integrate the local and the global community, with a positive impact on the local community.
GERMANY: NUREMBERG
City. Nuremberg is the second-largest city of the German federal state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, with 511,628 inhabitants in 2016. The city lies about 170 kilometres (110 mi) north of Munich. (Source Wikipedia)
Entity. The organization is lead by the openSUSE community and it’s legally supported by SUSE.
Dates. The proposal is to organize the conference during week 42, from October 12 to October 18, 2020, including internal pre-meetings and conference. The geek number 42 is the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”.
Venue. Z-Bau, a large building with many rooms of several sizes, and a large outdoor area with a beer garden. With four event rooms, two outdoor areas and various project rooms, there is plenty of room for events of all kinds. The entire area is barrier-free and the various rooms are equipped with basic technical equipment for events and day-to-day operations.
Team. Douglas DeMaio and Marina Latini: main contacts. Andrew Wafaa, Axel Braun, Simon Lees, Christian Boltz, Gertjan Lettink, Richard Brown.
2020 will be an important milestone date for both the LibreOffice and the openSUSE project. LibreOffice will celebrate its 10th birthday while openSUSE will achieve the 15th anniversary of the project. One more notable connection between the two communities is the historically strong relationship between the core LibreOffice development team and SUSE, given that a big number of core developers were all working together at SUSE.
Video presentations from the LibreOffice Asia Conference 2019
LibreOffice developers love to hack on code – but they also love to meet up, exchange ideas, share information, and enjoy good food! The LibreOffice Asia Conference 2019 took place on 25 and 26 May, and now the videos from the presentations are online. Check them out – there are 16 videos in total, and you can browse the playlist using the button in the top-right…
(Note: the videos are also hosted on a PeerTube instance.)
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The First LibreOffice Latin America Conference is a success and achieved important community milestones.
Linguistic challenges, women’s participation in FOSS, interoperability, professional training, migration, scripting and much more were hot topics in the conference held at the Facultad Politecnica of the Universidad Nacional de Asunción, Paraguay.
By Daniel A. Rodriguez.
The event started internally on Thursday 18 with a translation sprint of the LibreOffice Guarani team, with the assistance of Olivier Hallot (Brazil), LibreOffice volunteer translator for Brazilian Portuguese.
The Conference opened to public on Friday 19 in a ceremony that gathered the Minister of the Secretariat of Linguistic Policies (SPL), Ladislaa Alcaraz de Silvero, Prof. Limpia Ferreira Ortiz, FP-UNA Vice-Dean, members of the Guaraní Culture Atheneum, Prof. Mag. Alcides Torres Gutt, Coordinator of the Translation Team together with Italo Vignoli and Gustavo Pacheco representing The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice Community.
“The LibreOffice Latin American Conference is an event not only of technology, it is also a space for the study of new forms of productive organization. It will deal with technical topics such as development and quality control, but also with successful cases of migration and, with special attention, the translation into Guaraní, native of the American continent and official in Paraguay,” said the Vice-dean in her inaugural speech.
The conference initiative was declared of “Scientific and Technological Interest” by the Honorable Chamber of Deputies of Paraguay.
This regional conferences were carried out for 8 years in Europe and other continents, and for this time Paraguay was chosen as the venue, because it has a vibrant Free Software community, a special interest for the Guaraní language, and was completely organized by volunteers. Talks and workshops were held by speakers, members of the LibreOffice community, from Italy, Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, from Thursday 18 to Saturday 20 of July at the Polytechnic Faculty of the National University of Asuncion in San Lorenzo campus.
The first presentations covered the Hispanic community, the reality of the companies linked to the FLOSS in Paraguay and the difficulties faced by women workforce in the technological field. An official photo of the participants followed.
Starting the afternoon Henry Castro (Bolivia) talked on the development and technical challenges of LibreOffice Online. He was followed by José Gattica (Chile) talk on “Migration to LibreOffice in a vulnerable school”. Simultaneously, Mauricio Baeza (Mexico) gave the workshop on macros in the computer lab.
Xiomara Céspedes talked about the migration to LibreOffice and open document formats at the University of Costa Rica. She was followed by Renato Barsotti (Argentina) experience of the Faculty of Economics of the National University of Misiones (UnaM).
The next day morning, Olivier Hallot (Brazil) shared with the attendees the details about the importance of documenting the software. Simultaneously, Klaibson Ribeiro (Brazil) conducted the Calc workshop.
Italo Vignoli (Italy) talked about the characteristics of the LibreOffice community on a global scale, presenting graphs and figures to support the features and trends of the people involved in LibreOffice. He was followed after lunch by Xisco Fauli (Spain) on LibreOffice Development and Quality Control. At the same time, the certification team reviewed and approved the application of Rute Solipa (Portugal) for Professional Instructor and Xiomara Céspedes (Costa Rica) as Certified Migration Consultant in a video call session with Lothar Becker (Germany), Italo Vignoli and Gustavo Pacheco.
Italo Vignoli returned to give two presentations, the first one explaining the certification policy of The Document Foundation and the second one addressing the importance of adopting and using open documents formats such as the ODF standard.
The conference ended with the testimony of the participating students and the general public about the personal gains from the themes and knowledge presented at the conference and, in particular, the individual commitment to create a genuinely Paraguayan LibreOffice community and focus on LibreOffice translated into Guarani.
LibOCon Almeria Call for Papers New Deadline
Call for Papers deadline for LibOCon Almeria, in Spain, has been extended to July 15, 2019. 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, we want to hear from you! So, if you have not yet submitted your talk proposal and have something interesting to share about LibreOffice or the Document Liberation Project, you still have time to act!
Proposals should be filed by July 15, 2019, in order to guarantee that they will be considered for inclusion in the conference program, which 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)
Annual Report 2018: LibreOffice Conference
The LibreOffice Conference is the annual gathering of the community, our end-users, and everyone interested in free office software. Every year, it takes place in a different country and is supported by members of the LibreOffice commercial ecosystem. In 2018, the conference was organized by the young and dynamic Albanian community at Oficina in Tirana, from Wednesday, September 26, to Friday, September 28, the eight anniversary of the LibreOffice project. Here’s a quick video recap – read on for more details…
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On Monday, September 24, there were the internal meetings of TDF’s Board of Directors and Membership Committee, followed on Tuesday, September 25, by a meeting of the TDF Team in the morning and by the traditional community meeting in the afternoon. This is a unique opportunity for representatives of native language projects and community members to meet face-to-face and discuss localization and other topics.
Over 150 people from across the globe attended the conference, including LibreOffice developers, community volunteers and Google Summer of Code students. For several people, it was their first LibreOffice Conference and therefore the first time they had met other community members in-person.
Conference
The conference started officially on the morning of Wednesday, September 26, with an address by Erion Veliaj, Mayor of Tirana, followed by the “State of the Project” – a talk which outlined some project statistics since the Rome conference – and a Q&A session with TDF’s Board of Directors. The morning track ended with sponsors’ keynotes.
In total, there were around 80 presentations, covering all aspects of LibreOffice, from development to QA, from localization to design, from documentation to marketing, and to broader subjects such as building communities and making the LibreOffice project more inclusive.
The Development Track was the richest one in terms of the number of presentations, in two different rooms, and included the usual face-to-face meeting of the Engineering Steering Committee, the Google Summer of Code Panel and a Lightning Talk Session.
In the second room there were talks about ODF, reports about migrations to LibreOffice and the adoption of the Open Document Format in Israel, Hungary, Taiwan and Turkey, and presentations about the community and other specific topics.
In the third room there was a meeting of the Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA) and workshops about inclusiveness, documentation and certification. Finally, the conference wrapped up on the 28th of September with a celebration of the eight anniversary of the LibreOffice project.
Oficina was a great conference location, thanks to the availability of a large garden where people could relax between talks, enjoy the sunny weather, discuss with other community members about LibreOffice and take a large number of pictures.
Additional Events
In the evening of Wednesday, September 26, all conference participants met for the social dinner to better know each other and discuss – mostly informally – about their activity in the community. The event was also an opportunity to sample some local beer.
During the evening of Thursday, September 27, most conference participants met at Destil for the HackNight, to work and discuss while having some food. This was a good opportunity for people to get to know core developers, and get their opinion about the future development of LibreOffice.
The full program the 2018 LibreOffice Conference in Tirana is still available online. The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice community are now looking forward to the upcoming 2019 event, which is due to take place in Almeria, Spain.