Category: Meetings

The Nepalese community mentored CS50 students in Nepal create their very first resume for securing internships!

Our Nepalese community writes…

LibreOffice is a powerful open source office suite for many users worldwide. One of the major components is the word processing software, LibreOffice Writer, which is a highly effective tool for all levels of users.

We in the Nepalese community recently conducted a CV writing session titled “LibreOffice Writer – Creating Reusable CVs”, delivered by our Liaison for the Nepalese community, Mr Suraj Bhattarai. This session was one of the guest sessions for the first and second year CS50 students at IOE Purwanchal Campus, who went through the CS50 AI course this time. The purpose of the session was to help them articulate their learning from the CS50x and CS50 AI timeline into a presentable resume, together with their other strengths, to get their very first internship into the tech industry.

Suraj shared key insights when writing resume/CVs; he mentioned that the fact that fancy CVs or Canva templates are not yet a trend among hiring managers who happen to be millennials. What sells for a peak career or a first internship is a standard resume template. Apart from online options that generate downloadable CVs after the user simply fills out major details, the offline space has no significant help rather than making one in friendly software like LibreOffice Writer.

Suraj additionally shared that professional CVs/resumes for the purpose of very first internships are always simple, includes no crazy pictures, do not summarise in two or more columns, and mainly focus on experience and education – that’s it! This is equally true at every other level of careers. And for the very specific Applicant Tracking System (ATS), friendly resumes are always the best choice to go with!

He concluded that LibreOffice Writer is a powerful word processing software program that ships with many offline resume/CV templates. Also, more variations and template options could be downloaded from the official extensions site or this third-party one – the best one that resembles your very CV/resume preference. With this powerful word processing program, you can even create your very own template and publish it for millions of other LibreOffice Writer users online or offline.

In the final minutes of the session, Suraj hosted a CV/resume building competition using LibreOffice Writer. The 10 minute-challenge was hands-on for the students to experience LibreOffice Writer and get comfortable with it. A total of 38 students showcased their resumes/CVs following tips from the session. Among them, based on the writing style, formatting, and tone of language, the top three were awarded LibreOffice T-shirts as a gesture.

FOSDEM is one of the largest meetups for free and open source software projects, and it takes place every year in Brussels at the ULB Solbosch campus. This year it’ll be on 1 and 2 February – and, of course, LibreOffice and The Document Foundation will be there! Our stand will be in in K level 1, so come by and have a chat, grab some merchandise (stickers, pens, flyers, beer/coffee mats), and support us with a donation if you like 😊

We also have the LibreOffice devroom on the first day, with 20 talks and presentations about the software, technology and community.

See you there!

On September 21, free and open source software (FOSS) enthusiasts celebrated the 21st worldwide Software Freedom Day. Our community members in Nepal were not behind with the celebrations either: they were active supporting small open source communities and connecting them for the greater good in the LibreOffice community. Here’s their report:

Suraj Bhattarai, LibreOffice liaison in Nepal, was available at the LibreOffice booth at the Software Freedom Day celebration by Open Source Klub (NOSK) at Nepal College of Information and Technology (NCIT), Lalitpur.

He described how the LibreOffice booth was so busy and engaging. In particular, the LibreOffice community supported the event with fun games, swag, candies, and engagement – all while advocating for the best free and open source office suite. The booth included amazing LibreOffice merchandise, such as T-shirts, tote-bags, water-bottles, round pin plastic badges, flyers, a variety of stickers, beer mats, candies, and so forth.

The booth had a LibreOffice crossword game, and showed LibreOffice 24.8 on a display for hands-on testing. There was also a presentation deck for newbies, and some verbal support/assistance to improve the LibreOffice experience and customization for easier navigation within the user interface. Suraj also mentioned that around three quarters of the people who appeared at the booth for a quick “hello” mentioned hearing about or knowing and using LibreOffice in their home or workspace.

The event was mainly joined by students across Kathmandu valley, open source contributors, club alumni, and veteran FOSS contributors/kickstarters in Nepal. Apart from the event itinerary and other activities, the LibreOffice “paper plane contest” received major attention and everyone seems to have enjoyed their paper plane flight to software freedom!

The winner was awarded a 750ML aluminum water bottle, with the LibreOffice logo printed on it. Suraj concluded the competition with the 3R principle and the analogy of releasing paperwork and transitioning to digital open source office suites for document-related work pieces. The college administration expressed some interest in replacing Microsoft Office and migrating the campus computers to LibreOffice suite.

Similarly, Suraj also delivered a recorded talk named “Diversity, Inclusion and Community Model in Free Software Communities” at Birendra Multiple Campus, Chitwan. There, the Software Freedom Day celebration was hosted by the Birendra Open Source Club (BOSC) with support from the LibreOffice community.

The aim of the talk was to deepen and bridge the relationship of the club with the LibreOffice community and LibreOffice activities/contributions in the future. Previously, the club contributed greatly to the success of a local event: the LibreOffice Localization Sprint 2023. Achyut Koirala, the acting president of the on-campus club, represented the LibreOffice community there.

While Suraj himself couldn’t be present, Achyut Koirala together with Shreeram Lamichhane communicated the positive feedback from the recorded talk Suraj had shared. As a closing remark, Achyut thanked the LibreOffice community as a whole for the inclusive community model and for welcoming their community into the project.

And finally, Nirjal Bhurtel, representing LibreOffice’s local community, did the same at Kathmandu University where the celebration was hosted by their own on-campus community. Kathmandu Open Source Community has been the veteran contributor when it comes to the history of contributions from Nepal in the LibreOffice project.

TDF says: Many thanks to Suraj and the Nepalese community for the great work! And as a bonus, here’s a video from the aforementioned paper plane contest: