We use our social media channels to raise awareness about our work, share information and encourage new contributors to join us
(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2022 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)
Social media
In January 2022, our English-language Twitter account @LibreOffice had 45,802 followers; by the end of the year, we had grown this to 52,808. Our most popular tweets were for major releases, but we also tweeted customised images for “Community Member Monday” interviews with short quotes, encouraging more users to get involved with LibreOffice projects.
In addition, we focused not only on our own tweets, but also retweeting announcements from the LibreOffice ecosystem and community members. We liked and retweeted messages of support from end users – many of whom were surprised and thankful that a large project would show them support. To keep the content flowing, we retweeted popular older tweets, and responded to individual messages.
On other social media platforms, we focused on growing our account on Mastodon, a Twitter-like open source, federated and self-hosted microblogging service. In 2019 we set up @libreoffice and started posting content, often more focused on technical users, compared to our tweets and Facebook posts. In 2022 we worked more on expanding our activities here, and from January to December, we grew our follower base from 6,844 to 16,500.
Our Facebook page growth was smaller, from 59,241 page likes to 60,209. We’ve noticed a gradual reduction in activity on Facebook over the last few years, which reflects its changing audience, and the move towards newer mobile applications. Nonetheless, Facebook still provides a good opportunity to interact with end users of LibreOffice, and every day we checked in to answer questions, get feedback, and post announcements/tips about the software.
YouTube channel
Our YouTube channel grew from 15,015 subscribers and 2,420,699 video views in January 2022 to 17,964 subscribers and 2,858,092 video views by the end of the year. The “LibreOffice 7.3: New Features” video (a fantastic production by the Indonesian community) had over 196,000 views – while the video for LibreOffice 7.4 had over 47,000. We also added videos from FOSDEM and the LibreOffice Conference 2022.
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Meanwhile, our community helped out with tutorial videos – in particular Harald Berger of the German community, who continued to produce a series of professional-looking step-by-step guides to installing and using LibreOffice.
Want to expand your skillset and gain experience with UX, marketing, documentation, QA or translations? Join the Month of LibreOffice, May 2023! Over the next four weeks, hundreds of people around the world will collaborate to improve LibreOffice – and you can help them. There are many ways to get involved, as we’ll see in a moment.
And best of all: everyone who contributes to LibreOffice in the next four weeks can claim a cool sticker pack, and has the chance to win extra LibreOffice merchandise such as mugs, hoodies, T-shirts, rucksacks and more (we’ll choose 10 participants at random at the end):
How to take part
So, let’s get started! There are many ways you can help out – and as mentioned, you don’t need to be a developer. For instance, you can be a…
Handy Helper, answering questions from users on Ask LibreOffice. 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 11 and LibreOffice 7.5.2”.
Drum Beater, spreading the word: tell everyone about LibreOffice on Mastodon or Twitter! 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 your stickers.
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.
Docs Doctor, writing documentation: Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.
We’ll be updating this page every few days with usernames across our various services, as people contribute. So dive in, get involved and help make LibreOffice better for millions of people around the world – and enjoy your sticker pack at the end as thanks from us! And who knows, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to win bonus merch as well…
OK – let’s go! We’ll be posting regular updates on this blog and our Mastodon and Twitter accounts over the next four weeks – stay tuned!
The LibreOffice Conference is the annual gathering of the community, our end-users, developers, and everyone interested in free office software. In 2022, it took place in Milan, Italy
(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2022 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)
Due to the COVID pandemic and travel restrictions our conferences for 2020 and 2021 had to take place online. For 2022, however, we could finally meet in-person again – although we live-streamed sessions, for participants to watch remotely (and they could ask questions in our chat channels too).
The conference took place from September 28 – October 1, in the Fondazione Culturale San Fedele, in downtown Milan. Four rooms were made available for the event: the auditorium, along with Ricci, Loyola and Saverio.
Conference Tracks and extra sessions
Following the opening session, presentations and talks were given across various “tracks”, or categories: Development, Advocacy, Marketing, Design, OpenDocument Format, Quality Assurance, Documentation and more. There were highly technical talks focused on specific areas of the software and source code, along with more open discussions about community building and recent updates from The Document Foundation.
In addition to the talks, where was also a community dinner evening, in which various kinds of pasta were served, along with a walking tour of interesting parts of the city. On the final day, the conference wrapped up with a closing session, headed by Italo Vignoli who helped to organise the event.
Sponsoring and merchandise
The event was sponsored by Collabora, allotropia, Net Service S.p.A and Passbolt. Thanks to this sponsoring, attendees could get merchandise at the conference, including T-shirts with the conference logo.
Full Programme
Full details about the event are available on our main conference website. For a quick overview of all the talks, including links to PDF versions of the presentations, see the schedule.
Videos from most of the talks are available in this playlist:
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Conference in 2023
Planning is already underway for the LibreOffice Conference 2023, which is due to take place in Bucharest, Romania in September. The local organisation team has already found a suitable location, and is now working on other preparations for the event, including visas for attendees, catering and merchandise. We at TDF are helping them to get things ready, and are very grateful for their work.
The Brazilian Community Gave a Presentation at the FLISOL-DF event (Festival Latino Americano de Instalação de Software Livre) about the LibreOffice Project.
Translation by Timothy Brennan Jr.
With the participation of Luciana Motta, Henderson Matsuura, Túlio Macedo and Timothy Brennan Jr., all members of The Document Foundation, the Brazilian LibreOffice community had the opportunity to give a presentation on the dynamics of LibreOffice in Brazil and their interaction with the international project.
Timothy and Luciana gave a lecture in conjunction entitled “I Don’t Know How to Code: How to contribute?” demonstrating how the LibreOffice project benefits from the volunteer and participative work of those who have foreign language skills, professional proofreading in Brazilian Portuguese, marketing and the promotion of software products, as well as coding in various modern computer languages where the gains acquired by individuals is always the unique experience of working alongside a team of professionals, both domestic and international. FLISOL was, additionally, an opportunity for a personal get-together of the Brazil team. This event focused on interaction and the exchange of ideas.
Team Brazil
FLISOL-DF, in the Federal District of Brazil’s capital, Brasília, took place on April 15, 2023 at the campus of Taguatinga (one of the Federal Districts satellite cities around Brasília) in the Universidade Católica de Brasília with the presence of Professor Wesley Sepulveda, and was organized by a team of volunteers lead by Henderson Matsuura.
Every major release of LibreOffice includes new features, thanks to our community of volunteer and ecosystem developers. But what can you do, if you want a new feature in LibreOffice but don’t have the technical know-how to implement it?
If you’re in a large company, you can engage with the LibreOffice ecosystem to get professional support. Or if you’re a regular end user, you can support individual developers for their work. For instance, Andreas Heinisch recently improved LibreOffice’s AutoText dialog with pre-filled text and a shortcut name, based on selected text, like this:
If users want me to fix a certain issue, they can fund me to fix a bug or implement an enhancement, like I did for a fire department in Italy (create Table of Contents from the current chapter level only), or some small changes for TDF (fixing a redraw bug in Calc, and the renaming of macro libraries).
Andreas has worked on 173 other fixes and improvements, as you can see on the bug tracker. Many thanks for all his work! And to other developers in our community: you too can consider setting up a Patreon page too (or similar system), to get financial support for your work, and provide a way for end users to fund the improvements they want.
In 2022 we had with elections for the foundation’s Membership Committee, along with regular Advisory Board calls, and support for other projects and activities
(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2022 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)
Election of new Membership Committee
The mission of the Membership Committee (MC) is to administer membership applications and renewals following the criteria defined in The Document Foundation’s Foundation’s Statutes. It initiates and supervises the election of the Board of Directors, and The Board of Trustees elects from among its members the Membership Committee for a period of two years.
In August, we had live town-hall meetings with the Membership Committee candidates, in multiple timezones, to ensure that as many people as possible (both candidates and TDF members) could take part and ask their questions. We made video recordings of these meetings, and posted them on our video channels and blog, for those who couldn’t take part live:
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Voting tokens were sent out to TDF members at the end of August, and then the voting process began, running until September 7. Then, on September 9, TDF’s Board announced the preliminary results, along with a confirmation period.
On September 17, we announced the final results, with the following confirmed as Full MC Members: Miklos Vajna, Marina Latini (tied for first), Gustavo Buzzatti Pacheco, Gabriele Ponzo, Uwe Altmann. Deputies: Shinji Enoki, Balázs Varga, Ahmad Haris.
TDF would like to say thank you to all past and new members of the MC for their service to the community, and to all candidates for running.
Advisory Board members and meetings
The Document Foundation relies on its Advisory Board Members in order to receive advice and support. The Advisory Board’s primary function is to represent The Document Foundation’s supporters and to provide the Board of Directors with advice, guidance and proposals. Current members are Adfinis SyGroup, allotropia software GmbH, Red Hat, Hypra, Collabora, GNOME, Google, Kopano b.v., City of Munich (Landeshaupstadt München), CIB Software, IHC Invest Inc., Software in the Public Interest (SPI), KDE e.V., UK Government Digital Services, and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
Throughout the year, TDF had regular calls with representatives of the Advisory Board. Staff and Board members at TDF provided updates on the foundation, software and community, and described plans and activities for the future. Advisory Board members were invited to provide valuable feedback on TDF’s work, and various ideas and proposals were discussed during the calls. TDF would like to express its thanks to all of the members for their help and support.
Highlights of activities
Throughout the year, TDF supported – and provided information about – various campaigns and events, via this blog and our social media channels. For instance, in January, we supported a “bug bounty programme” for finding and fixing security holes with European Commission funds. With help and coordination from their recently formed Open Source Programme Office (OSPO), the European Commission started a series of hackathon and “bug bounty” programmes to help selected projects find (and potentially fix) security issues.
The Commission’s OSPO set aside €200,000 to reward developers and researchers who find critical security vulnerabilities in free software projects (such as LibreOffice and Mastodon). TDF got involved, and as Paolo Vecchi from the foundation’s Board of Directors said:
We at TDF and our community are grateful for the opportunity that has been provided with to make LibreOffice even more secure and ready to potentially become the preferred open source office suite also within European institutions.
In April and November 2022, we supported an open letter about the universal right to install any software on any device. Earlier in the year, together with more than 100 European organisations and companies, The Document Foundation signed this letter, and encouraged others to do the same. The signees of this open letter recognised that free access to hardware and software determines how long or how often a device can be used or reused, and declared that the increased longevity and reusability of their devices are inevitable for a more sustainable digital society.
In September and October, TDF announced that it was directly providing LibreOffice on the Mac App Store (Apple) and Microsoft Store. The announcement reflected the project’s new marketing strategy: The Document Foundation is focused on the release of the Community version, while ecosystem companies are focused on value-added long-term supported versions targeted at enterprises. The distinction has the objective of educating organizations to support the FOSS project by choosing the LibreOffice version best suited for their needs, instead of the Community version generously supported by volunteers. Of course, TDF will continue to provide LibreOffice free of charge from the LibreOffice website for all users.
Finally, throughout the year we celebrated our community of translators, which provide LibreOffice in over 110 different languages (with more hopefully becoming available in the future), more than any other software. This helps us to fulfil one of the most important objectives of The Document Foundation: “to support the preservation of mother tongues by encouraging all people to translate, document, support, and promote our office productivity tools in their native language”. Today, there are over four billion people in the world who can use LibreOffice in their native languages. We are very thankful to our hard-working community, which makes all of this possible.
