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Quick report: LinuxDays and OpenAlt in Czech Republic

Want to help spread the word about LibreOffice, free software and open standards? Attend a local computing event, and tell people about it! Stanislav Horáček writes about some recent events in the Czech Republic…

With our LibreOffice booth, Zdeněk Crhonek and I attended the two biggest Czech FOSS events, LinuxDays in Prague and OpenAlt in Brno. We would like to share some of what we experienced:

– as usual, generally positive feedback from users, interest in new features and what is going on

– many questions about the status of LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice, the role of The Document Foundation etc.

– low awareness about LibreOffice Online; people were surprised that it is ready and that people are using it; some in interest in how to install it, others sharing experience that its deployment is too complicated

– more advanced users aren’t using LibreOffice so much, replacing it by simpler things like Markdown docs

– it’s nice that videos from the marketing team are available (about LibreOffice, join the community, new features…), showing them on the screen attracted visitors to the booth; but we’re missing a video about LibreOffice online (maybe an idea for the marketing team)

– discussion with someone from the National Technical Library in Prague (enthusiastic about FOSS, migrated client computers to Linux and LibreOffice, encouraging us to spread the word about it) and a representative of an organization trying to coordinate using FOSS in Czech municipalities (two towns running LibreOffice, with the intention to pay for some bug fixing)

– a meeting with the Slovak community (Miloš Šrámek and Andrej Kapuš) in Brno

– a meeting with the Czech localization community (Mozilla, Linux distributions), discussing mainly the possibility of a new Czech dictionary

– and a discussion with a marketing specialist who suggested ways to simplify the LibreOffice webpage (there are too many confusing subpages).

So in summary, we informed Czech FOSS people that there is active development of LibreOffice and that there is even some Czech community – thanks to organizers for the opportunity and to TDF for the support!

Thanks to Stanislav and Zdeněk for their help! Find out more: here’s the Czech LibreOffice website, Czech Ask site (for user support), and Czech mailing lists.

Munich Hackfest, October 2018: Roundup and photos

Hackfests are great opportunities for LibreOffice developers and community members to meet face-to-face, work on new features, fix bugs and enjoy good food! In late October, CIB hosted a hackfest in Munich, Germany, with 25 participants over the three days.

Check out the achievements section for full details on the results, but in summary: many bugs were fixed, some features were polished, and knowledge was shared. Two participants learned about building LibreOffice from source code, while others discussed non-technical topics such as marketing and local events.

A big thanks to everyone who took part – it was great seeing you! Here are a few photos, starting with the first evening, when a few quick presentations were given. Andreas Kainz discussed his work on the NotebookBar user interface design (also check out his blog):

Then it was time for pasta – penne all’arrabbiata and fusilli radicchio and gorgonzola…

On the second day, developers worked on various features and bugfixes:

Izabela Bakollari from the Albanian LibreOffice community worked with Bjoern Michaelsen to build the source code and commit some code changes:

Then it was time for more Italian food – this time, pizza!

On the final day, participants presented their achievements:

Most people headed home after that, but a few stayed around for a quick city tour and beer at the world-famous Hofbräuhaus:

We’ll be organising more hackfests next year, so keep an eye on this blog for updates!

Quick report: LibreOffice training in İstanbul

Gökhan Gurbetoğlu from our Turkish community organised some LibreOffice training earlier this month. Here’s his summary:

It was a two-day training, 2-3 October 2018, from 10:00 to 17:00. The training took place in İstanbul, as part of the Open Source in Public Institutions Conference’s local sessions (Kamu Açık Kaynak Konferansı).

There were 25 trainees on both days. The first day started with a quick introduction to LibreOffice’s interface and continued with Writer. Then the second day was for Calc. In Writer I focused on:

  • Introduction to Writer’s interface
  • Selection methods
  • Working with documents
  • Formatting: text, paragraphs, pages, styles
  • Referencing: index, table of contents, etc.
  • Tables, images and other embedded objects
  • Settings and customization

While in Calc I focused on:

  • Introduction to Calc’s interface
  • Working with spreadsheets: moving inside the spreadsheet, cell referencing, hiding, locking cells, etc.
  • Numbered lists and series
  • Formula bar and functions
  • Formatting: cells, pages, styles
  • Charts: creating and modifying
  • Data and filters
  • Ended with telling the most used functions in Calc

Thanks to Gökhan for organising the training and his report! Learn more about LibreOffice training and certification options here.

Coming up on 25 – 28 October: LibreOffice Hackfest in Munich

The LibreOffice community organises regular Hackfests, where developers and community members meet up, work on new features, fix bugs and enjoy good food! Later this month, we’ll meet in Munich, in the south of Germany. Munich is situated just north of the Alps, and is known for its cosy old town, churches and beer halls.

Interested in joining? Click here for the full details – and add your name to the list if you plan to attend!

LibreOffice Asia Meetup in A+A Space, Taipei, Taiwan

Community members from five different countries had a good time, and talked about holding a LibreOffice Asia Conference in the future

Event report by: Wally Lian, PR & Marketing Consultant, Software Liberty Association Taiwan

This summer is hot in Taiwan, and so are the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) communities! From the end of July to the middle of August, there were several big FOSS events in Taiwan. The first one coming on stage was the Debian Conference, which was held in Taiwan and Asia for the first time, and lasted for two weeks. Then, this year three big Asian FOSS events of COSCUP, Gnome Asia Summit, and OpenSUSE Asia Summit decided to merge together and held an event at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology on 11 and 12 August.

Besides these global and Asian FOSS events, there were also many interesting opportunities and plans going on. One of them was: LibreOffice community members in Asia planned to have a meetup during the joint COSCUP/Gnome Asia/OpenSUSE Asia event, and discussed holding a LibreOffice Asia Conference.

Before the meetup started, SLAT and A+A Space prepared a lot of food

This meetup was held in the evening on 11 August in A+A space, which is a nice and friendly space for FOSS communities, also a community made up of several artists who use FOSS as their tools to create their artwork. The attendees included LibreOffice and other FOSS community members from Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Taiwan.

The organizer, Franklin Weng, the current President of Software Liberty Association Taiwan and current board member of The Document Foundation, said that this meetup was an important milestone. “Now the Taiwanese government is going on adopting the Open Document Format and related office suites. It is very important to link our government and our people with international communities. Besides sharing our experiences of adopting ODF and using LibreOffice, we can also learn from many different countries and help each other,” said Franklin.

At the meetup, Franklin introduced the 30-second animation for LibreOffice Android Viewer, which was generated by LibreOffice Taiwan and A+A Space. He explained that the original idea was to raise the awareness of visual design in FOSS communities. Then he explained the meaning and special Easter eggs hidden in the animation, and showed a “behind the scenes” documentary for it. Then, the host of A+A Space, Michael Wu, introduced the wonderful work from A+A Space, including 3D graphs, 3D models, VR work, classes in universities, and so on.

During the meetup

Then everyone started to share their work and experiences. Rania Amina, who was responsible for visual design in the LibreOffice Conference Indonesia, showed his wonderful artwork to attendees. Ahmad Haris also shared his experiences holding LibreOffice Conference Indonesia, which was a huge success. Shinji Enoki shared the current status of Japanese support in LibreOffice, and many events held in Japan. Daehyun Sung introduced himself and shared some interesting things in Korea, including the system North Korea is using.

Also, Bobby Tung, a senior FOSS member in Taiwan who also contributed a lot to W3C standards, shared the current status of Unicode support for CJK. Kevin Lin, a LibreOffice Migration Professional in Taiwan, showed his work on LibreOffice Online and Web form API usage. Shelandy Ting shared his interesting artwork using Gimp.

After sharing, attendees split into different groups and talked with each other. During this meetup, members from Japan and Indonesia showed interest in holding a LibreOffice Asia Conference. Besides conferences, attendees also exchanged experiences migrating to LibreOffice in organizations and public administrations. We believe that the adoption of the Open Document Format and migrations to LibreOffice will advance hugely in Asia.

Mark Hung (Left 1st), Bobby Tung (Left 2nd) from Taiwan, Shinji Enoki (Right 2nd) from Japan, and Daehyun Sung (Right 1st) from Korea.

A big thanks to the LibreOffice communities in Asia for organising this event! If you love LibreOffice and want to help spread the word in your location or language, check out our native language communities. Together we can help to spread the word about free software and open standards!

Recap: Free Software and Linux Days 2018 in Istanbul

Native-language projects around the world help to promote LibreOffice by translating the software, building communities, and attending events. Muhammet Kara reports on a recent event in his home country of Turkey…

I am back at home after the Free Software and Linux Days 2018 in İstanbul. It was a small and cozy event. The number of attendees was lower than the previous years, but on the plus side, we had more time for each visitor. It was also a good opportunity to break the ice between different segments of the Turkish Free Software community.

We had a nice booth, jointly run by LibreOffice Turkey and GNOME Turkey community members, next to the Pardus booth. We gave out stickers to the visitors, answered their questions about LibreOffice, GNOME, and Free/Libre Software in general. Community members also had a lot of time to chat, and to discuss the current situation and the future of our community in Turkey.

We also had three LibreOffice related presentation/seminar sessions:

  • LibreOffice Geliştiricisi Olmak (Being a LibreOffice Developer), by Muhammet Kara
  • LibreOffice Sertifikasyonu (LibreOffice Certifications), by Muhammet Kara
  • Açık Belge Biçimi (The Open Document Format), Nurcan Tür

And we now have all materials to set up a complete LibreOffice booth in any upcoming event in Turkey, thanks to The Document Foundation for funding the booth stuff, and the travel costs of the booth staff.

Please see the wiki page for more details, photos, and links to related tweets.

Many thanks to Muhammet and the other attendees and organisers! If you use LibreOffice and want to help promote it in your local region, join our marketing community and we can help you with ideas, presentations and materials.

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