Tonight I got interviewed in a Mexican podcast sociedadlibre about the new Document Foundation and LibreOffice. The interview starts around the minute 21 and talks about the evolution of OpenOffice.org until now and how OOo turns into LibreOffice in an intend to consolidate a community outside of the shadows of Oracle.
Certification will be out before 2011
This week a new goal has convinced me and a new vision to the waiting project. The certification efforts would be restarted and hope we can get the pieces settled before the year end.
The project would start with the recruiting of editors and people that has the skill set proper to generate intuitive material. The goal is to have a level 3 Writer certification ready to be used by colleges and training center. The goal is that the working pre-license would be enough to engineer and achieve this goal. The stage two of income would be set through the training of the cert. Something we can do remotely through web conference.
Third stage will be more focused on promoting the cert outside of the floss world and we could be eligible to additional funding and general income from paying members. This will allow us to shortcut the continious building of a publishing plan that will help us expand the network.
Freedom for your Documents – Software Freedom Day
Saturday, September 18 2010 | 11:00 AM (Mexico Standard Time)
Teacher: Alexandro ColoradoPrice: Free
Duration: 90 minutes
Language: Español
Type: Public Class Celebrando el Software Freedom Day, esta presentación sera una presentación especial de la comunidad de OpenOffice.org sobre la libertad de documentos y como tener la libertad de nuestro trabajo y escuela. Usando OpenOffice.org para diferentes tareas en el trabajo o la escuela. También compartiremos historias donde la libertad de software ha resuelto problemas. http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/371940-freedom-for-your-documents-software-freedom-day
Back to searching for new artists and Wu promoter
Recently restarted a piece of software I should had been playing more often. The last.fm client for my N900 is actually quite cool. Searching for the right artist might bring you the right ammount of new music. By searching what I consider an obscure artist I got a whole new collection of new artists some that I actually loved.
I haven’t really talked much about HipHop lately and even though I have been listening to a lot of hiphop, and even participated on some events. So one of the coolest things lately was befriending G the promoter on facebook which seems to be with the Wu staff since forever. He has pictures from the 92 era up to the recent rock the bellz show. I really liked the pictures he has posted on the sites. So check out his FB and add him.
Software Freedom Day and engaging on virtual events
So the Software Freedom Day was fun, and even thought we didn’t had enough time to pull it off, it was great to see how we got organized and everything actually went quite well. The virtual talks were NOT on schedule and sometimes we messed up when announcing the events. I think a bit more coordination would have help. However we enjoyed some of the talks and was great to be able to publish it online as well as report it. I think with better practices we can improve much better with the next one.
We started by creating a blogpost which was treated like a Wiki which is probably something to consider in the future, and use a wiki as opposed as static posts with no history. We came to a bit of disagreement between having tables for the roster or just a list. At the end list proved to be much better. So avoid tables at all cost because they are easier to debug. Another thing which could come great is to inform the speakers about how to drive their presentations beforehand. We did had a ‘practice session’ beforehand so it helped a lot. Actually it was the biggest win.
Technology is not great, and bugs can happened, this is what happened to me during my talk. A small formatting I tried before my talk,I hit a bug where the object (a text box) start experimenting a loop for non-right users to use the text box, however since it was a loop it just kept looping through my attendees list. This made it impossible to use the chat, and some whiteboard switching messed up the presentation, killing us at the demo and Q&A which got cancelled. Just some hours after the presentation I came with a solution which was not that hard to imagine, by just killing the whole whiteboard and re-uploading the presentation would — in theory — got rid of the bug. Pretty bad luck huh?
The rest of the lessons where also to spot and make spokespersons. People with large networks endorsing the event might do a great PR on social networks. So accessing these networks could be easier without us to do all the work. Finding the hispanic Leo Laporte, Dvorak or Scobble could put a huge impact on your marketing. At the end it was a great efforts, and hope that next year we start earlier and make it much better organized.
Day three of OOoCon 2010
So far I haven’t been going to any technical talks, and today (the last day) was a now or never. I went to the Juerguen talk about extension, he talked about the metadata of the extension integration. New things like update information with a more custom icons options, license, and descriptions of the extension. He show the the anatomy of the description.XML Things like version, identifier language, and xlink:href to the text files.
Option page and help integration makes also added support for complex user interfaces. The help-files can be useful, a tip is use the parameter HELP_DEBUG=1 (environmental variable) to display help identifier, this makes it easier to make a relationship between the help id.
Option page will be integrated in the OpenOffice.org Writer section so it’s possible to make it more seamless with the OOo interface. The same goes with help integration.
Juerguen later showed the netbean project to show how the license worked as well as the options integrated with the stored options interface of OOo.
He later talked about the external libraries and how to handle external libraries through a getClasses() function to load external files.
Secure connections through HTTPS and certification handling is now supported which allow you to validate and verify the the validation of the certification so there are many functions develop for the handling of the connection.
Other feature was the password container which integrates with the internal password manager. The passwordContainer() interface under the star.tasks.Password container uses the interactionHandler().
The new UI controls looked great including the TreeControl, GridControl as well as tool panels that are more accessible. This will make the extension presentation much appealing to users. All of them are on the com.sun.star.ui.XUIElementFactory/XUIElement/XToolPanel. The XCU to be used under the Factories.xcu which will include the new element under the “FactoryImplementation” reference. Another xcu is the custom WriterWindowsState.xcu.
Next talk was also another developer talks about UNO components by Mihaela Kavikova. This time it was the new AWT UNO visual components that where mentioned during the extension presentation. The grid control could be the star of the presentation, the AWT means abstract window toolkit the api is at com.sun.star.awt.
The way Dialogs are handled and explained using the AWT service with the different interfaces like UnoControlDialog, XControlModel, and the different properties using the XPropertySet like the position values like the setPropertyValue(“property”, Integer(value)); example:
sPSetButton1.setPropertyValue(“PositionY”, new Integer(230));
She showed the different controls and later went into more complex UI’s. She went on into the use case which I thought was quite neat, and how an application that drop info into a listbox, then she address the issues of what a listbox could have including the lack of flexibility. That’s when the grid control came to show, the control is quite neat, it allows you to create columns and rows, the code comes from the com.sun.star.awt.grid.GridColumn which you intangible through the xMultiComponentFactory.createInstanceWithContext();
There are some methods to the grid columns such as setTitle setColumnWidth, or setResizable(flase/true). The grid also supports integer and graphics, which I thought was quite neat. Other properties includes the propertyValue such as column, grid data and others like the Tabstop to be able to browse through tabstop. Other optionals properties includes background color, line color, text color, and alignments on vertical or top. Most of the Grid stuff can be found here(http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/API/UNO_AWT/Grid_Control). Future improvements include sort columns edit cells and more complex data input such as tab control, frame control. Biggest drawback is that is not usable from basic, just Java which probably is not available on the scriptable framework.
After the conference I had a good talk with Juerguen about the things that we might need to cover to really improve the development environment. It seems that we have the issue that everyone is contributing on their own little bubble but don’t really communicate with the rest of the community. Things as simple as adding a commenting functionality to the development documentation seems to be a daunting task that he can just not provide. Yet like other comments from the talk happened, if the users are asking for it, it becomes more important than what it seems.
The ODF Framework sounded a bit jargony, it was a study on quality assurance for ODF. First it was a study on the client, the vendors and the Developer for ODF based products. The ODF alliance seems to be in the middle of this and they pushed the technology across the industry. The study had specific goals to each profile, includes the comparison of products based on their quality, vendors evaluate the increase of costumers based on a clearer whitepaper report.
To build the report they identify the requirement against the evaluation process, took the existing evaluation and measured the process against the requirement. After a bit I had to change the presentation to a lighter one about Italo’s PLIO organization and how OpenOffice.org. The talks seemed great since he explains some of his encounters with Microsoft. He faced the Microsoft organization and how the whole standards debacle. He also document the whole process and show the likes and the unlikes on the article. He even put the google search to albergati and openoffice.org and the document comes first and he is listed 12 on the google images from the search.
Day two of the OOoCon
So the day started a bit shaky, I thought I missed my talk because the sun was shining pretty bright. I find out I was fine, so I took it easy and had enough time to start working on my talk which was the first one of the day. I had some breakfast and then took off to downtown Budapest. However, I forgot which station I need to get off and I find out that I left too early, I was worried that I was late for my talk because I heard that today we will start at 8am. I got off the sub around 7.56 and walked in circles since I couldn’t find my way to the University. I was relief when I find out that the day actually started at 9am. Since I arrived at 8.16 I had enough time to sit and prepare my slides for the talk.
Since it was early in the morning and other interesting talks were going on I had a relative few people, just 4 people came to the talk. However thanks to the Bulgarian recording every talk, this one will be available for others to see on the stream and later on. The talk went quite well, I caught myself babbling a bit but pulled myself together.
Future plans for the drupal sites in OOo are unify the user accounts to OOo. So maybe OAuth could be implemented although he didn’t mentioned about it.
Italo the master of PR talked about the OOo Today is growing but still not enough since the buzz is not being pushed in the US. He mentioned about the story of Microsoft and how they screw up when they wanted to push it’s use of a 100% out of a 95% provoking a customer focus. We have to add the advantages besides than saying that is a good product in the market. He presented a chart that show the lifecycle and how they cross the chasm and major adoption happens. Then is the pragmatism is when the userbase matures. Italo mentioned the Google channels and how OOo could basically adopt that same or similar relations with resellers. The conversation connected with the Certification project as well as the BizDev project. This however will permeate to the domestic market.
The next session was the Strategic marketing plan session, an intensive 3 hour session that talked about the future of the marketing teams, it’s goals and the message for the new landscape. We now have Google Docs and other new parallels of collaboration and productivity like the failed attempt of Google Wave. A web 2.0 era, where we have a more detailed project on handling the message and reach out to the users. Other options like OOo as a well recognized brand but the community doesn’t bring themselves up-par with the rest of the context of OOo.
The SMP session really took a lot of my energy from the day so I had to skip the next session and enjoyed a nice nap at the lounge area of the university. Although a more private space could be down at the basement. I’ll see if I can do that tomorrow. So the event went quite well in general and after the talks we went to the boat ride, which I didn’t register but was able to pay at the entrance. I had the unfortunate luck of having a Microsoft Rep next to me during the ride so I wasn’t able to speak freely about OOo. However this allow us to talk about different nationalistic difference within the US and other talks about the impact of technology and information overflow. The chatting was quite good and easy going and the food was really good, nothing spectacular like Orvieto last year but it was really nice to have that while watching the scenery of Budapest at night along the river.
First day of OOoCon 2010
Interesting first day of the OOoCon, I arrived at Budapest quite late to do much that day. However the day was quite productive at the final hour after having met up with my friends from the Koffice who went to the hotel pub for a great talk about my projects and the future models for my O4Biz project and the viability of implementing some concepts on the BizDev project.
The night went into quite good questioning by my friends but maybe some tiresome from the day forced up to call it a night. The next day started very early and a good bath prepared me for the day, breakfast went quite good with Emacs jokes and sharing thoughts about OOo scripting, specifically python development.
After breakfast we had a nice run at the parliament which could have been morel complicated if I have done it by myself. Arriving to the parliament I discover that my name was not on the list even when as a speaker I should be there by default. In the end I manage to attend the talks on the parliament which had a magestic look.
The conferences itself were a bid boring except to the last speaker who talked about proprietary companies practices and impact on society including MICROSOFT and ORACLE. He also contradict some FLOSS believes however it was a big too long for my preference then again it always is. Michael Bremer talked about his relationship to Budapest. He told a story about his motorbike, and how he drove to Budapest from Germany and talked about how OOo fits in the Oracle stack of other products then he just started sounding like a salesguy about the support. OpenOffice.org project evolution from its inception in 2000 up to now 2010.
We had a nice coffee break where I talked to famous OOo author and macro developer Dimitri aka Crazylegs and talked to him about our ideas for python development and other things.
The next talk was about the migration of the Munich government. He talk about challenges and setbacks they experiences as well as some of the reasoning to push organizations to use ODF. So even if they use MS Office they should operate with ODF because otherwise you force them to become costumers of a company. This propell the mandate which now makes OOo more feasable to implement.
The next talk was more focused on ODF and standards. About how they went on comparing microsoft products and questioning the convenience to use OOo. We finally left to the CEU center to the more technical conference. The first one was about the future of OOo by Charles Schultz where we got to question the OOo project as we advance in the use of technology. I got to suggest think about completely modify the OpenOffice.org web into a data authoring tool.
We went to lunch followed by a talk by Rosana about OOo branding and guidelines and trademark currently addressed for the project. Then it was Rafaella Braconi on the future of l10n and how we will get faster and quicker translation during the development cycle and a new server for pootle and new testing platform.
Histeria e historia de Monterrey: Charla a propósito de Madoff
Por FEDERICO ARREOLA
LA NOTA dada a conocer por el Wall Street Journal, en el sentido de que algunos inversionistas de Monterrey figuran entre los estafados por Bernard Madoff, actualmente sujeto a un proceso judicial por haber presuntamente orquestado y ejecutado el fraude financiero más grande de la historia, ha calado hondo en las estructuras empresariales de esta ciudad que, desde hace tiempo, dejó de ser el paradigma mexicano de éxito en los negocios.Ayer hablé acerca de eso con importante ejecutivo regiomontano. Voy a reproducir, tal como lo recuerdo, el diálogo que sostuvimos (las preguntas obviamente yo las hago y las respuestas son de él). No daré a conocer su nombre porque expresamente me lo pidió.
Sin embargo la mayoria de ustedes lo conoce, si no en persona, si de nombre. PREGUNTA: Veo a Monterrey en crisis moral. ¿Estás de acuerdo con mi percepción? RESPUESTA: En crisis moral y económica y de seguridad. Pero la peor es la crisis moral de la ciudad, la otrora orgullosa Sultana del Norte. Sus habitantes hemos perdido la sensación de liderazgo que antes nos hacía ver hacia abajo al resto de los mexicanos. Estamos ahora totalmente perdidos. Las grandes empresas están todas en ruinas. La inseguridad es absoluta. La corrupción es enorme. Voy a pasar el fin de año en una playa donde, quién lo hubiera creído, se respira más prosperidad que en Monterrey. PREGUNTA: Alguna vez elogiaste, en un seminario, la grandeza de Monterrey. ¿Existe todavía? RESPUESTA: Las cosas que han pasado recientemente nos tienen a todos convencidos de que la grandeza de Monterrey no existe más… PREGUNTA: Ojalá ya estés arrepentido de no haber votado por López Obrador. RESPUESTA: Hicimos bien al impedir que López Obrador ganara la Presidencia , ¡Pero qué mal nos ha ido con Calderón! Supongo que con el Peje nos hubiera ido peor. No lo sé. En todo caso, nos castigó Dios. Para desalentar a la gente que quería votar por López Obrador, contábamos el chiste de que si el Peje ganaba nos íbamos a ir a vivir a Miami. Resulta que no ganó y como quiera, por miedo, nos tenemos que ir de México. Alejandro Junco (dueño del Grupo Reforma) se fue a Austin, Texas. Por puro miedo a los narcos. Integrantes de la familia Sada, de Vitro, se han ido también por las amenazas de secuestro. PREGUNTA: ¿Tú te vas a ir al extranjero? RESPUESTA: Los que nos quedamos ya estamos buscando la forma de irnos. Si algo me saliera en Estados Unidos o en Europa, lo tomaba y me largaba. Porque aquí en Monterrey se acabaron las oportunidades de hacer algún patrimonio trabajando como directivo de empresa. Porque, ¿En cuáles empresas puede uno ahora prosperar? ¡Si todas están en la ruina! Ya nos enteramos de que Cemex no era una empresa tan sólida como se creía. Me daban envidia sus ejecutivos cuando me enteraba de que les pagaban sus premios con acciones de Cemex. ¡Estaban riquísimos cuando esas acciones valían mucho dinero! Pero hoy no valen nada. Qué empobrecida se han dado. Resulta que debe mucho más de lo que puede generar de ingresos; cuando Cemex compró Rinker, que creo que así se llama la famosa cementera australiana que está arruinando a Lorenzo Zambrano, pagó un precio elevadísimo que hoy supera al valor de todo el grupo de Zambrano. Me explico: si los vendedores de Rinker quisieran, hablo hipotéticamente, podrían comprar con el dinero que les dio Cemex a toda esta empresa regiomontana. ¡A toda! Podrían comprar de vuelta a Rinker y a Cemex México y a Cemex España y a todas las otras filiales de Cemex en Estados Unidos, Europa y África, y todavía les sobraría dinero para adquirir algún otro grupo industrial regiomontano, como Vitro, que ya de plano no vale nada. Pero bueno, Cemex, a pesar de sus problemas, si renegocia sus pasivos podría salir adelante. Es dificilísimo que salga, pero no del todo imposible. Espero que supere su crisis. Sus ejecutivos son talentosos y trabajadores y no tienen fama de deshonestos. En cambio, los de Vitro… PREGUNTA: Los de Vitro son un paradigma, sí, pero de ineficacia… RESPUESTA: De ineficacia y de inmoralidad. Por eso Vitro, por desgracia, no parece tener futuro. Esta empresa ya no vale nada. Y pensar que hace 15 años Vitro valía más que todas las otras empresas de Monterrey juntas. Pero a sus directivos les dio por tirar mil millones de dólares por aquí y mil millones de dólares por allá, y mandaron al carajo a la compañía. PREGUNTA: ¿Cuántos miles de millones de dólares tiraron? RESPUESTA: Muchos. Echaron mil millones de dólares a la basura comprando la distribuidora Anchor, de Estados Unidos. Y dilapidaron otros mil millones de dólares en Serfin, el banco que Adrián Sada nomás no pudo manejar y que tuvo que ser rescatado varias veces por el gobierno. Y ni así los Sada conservaron Serfin. Y botaron otros dolaritos en sus lujos extravagantes: aviones gigantescos, cacerías fastuosas, yates tamaño familiar y muchas otras frivolidades que ya forman parte de la leyenda del despilfarro de los ricotes mexicanos. PREGUNTA: ¿Quién pagaba esos lujos, los señores Sada o la empresa? RESPUESTA: La empresa, obviamente. Vitro, de plano, ha sido saqueada por sus administradores, los hermanos Federico y Adrián Sada, y por eso es una empresa condenada a desaparecer. Vitro quebró porque sus accionistas principales, estos Sada de los que hablo, perdieron el sentido de la moral. Algún día su caso se estudiara en las clases de ética, si acaso las hay, en las maestrías en administración de negocios, en los MBA. Federico Sada metió en la nómina de Vitro a toda su familia, hasta a su yerno que tantas veces hemos visto en las revistas de sociales, pagándoles sueldos de ejecutivos importantes… Federico Sada le hizo la barba a Marta Sahagún prestándole su avión para cualquier capricho que a la señora se le antojaba. Su hermano Adrián ya lo corrió de la empresa. Demasiado tarde. Pero, además, Adrián Sada no es mucho más ético. No me sorprendería que los Sada perdieran todo lo que tienen, hasta la tranquilidad porque con toda seguridad van a enfrentar procesos judiciales diversos.
PREGUNTA: ¿Y ahora llegó Madoff? RESPUESTA: Bendito Madoff. Ahora nos enteramos que empresarios y políticos tan poderosos como los primos Fernando Canales Clariond, Benjamín Clariond y Eugenio Clariond fueron engañados por Madoff. Pues se lo merecen por ambiciosos. Vendieron su negocio en miles de millones de dólares y, no conformes con eso, quisieron que alguien les asegurara que les iba a dar rendimientos de fábula por su dinero. Los engañaron. A Canales ya lo había engañado Lankenau, también con una pirámide. No aprende. Ellos son de los dueños del PRI y del PAN, ¡Han sido gobernadores dos primos, uno por el PRI y otro por el PAN! Son la pura oligarquía. PREGUNTA: ¿Cuánto dinero les robó Madoff? RESPUESTA: Seguramente decenas de millones de dólares, y no serán los únicos empresarios regiomontanos estafados por la ‘pirámide’ Madoff. Se perdió la prudencia empresarial en Monterrey, y los empresarios dejaron de serlo para volverse apostadores. Esto va a hacer que se pierdan muchas empresas y empleos. Monterrey no es más la capital de los negocios en México. Es ahora un rancho grande dominado por los Zetas, que son los nuevos líderes de la Sultana del Norte, los únicos con méritos para considerarse los herederos del liderazgo de Eugenio Garza Sada, el patriarca asesinado por la guerrilla comunista en los setenta. PREGUNTA: Ya ni me acordaba de que hubo guerrilleros en Monterrey… RESPUESTA: Cómo han cambiado las cosas en Monterrey. Antes a los que había que tenerles miedo era a los comunistas. Nos organizamos los de derecha y los acabamos a todos, hasta a los jesuitas de izquierda se les echó de la ciudad cuando, al finalizar los sesenta, quisieron alborotar a los estudiantes del Tec de Monterrey. Para eso nos trajimos a los legionarios de Cristo, del padre Maciel, quien fue durante años nuestro guía espiritual. Pero a mediados de los noventa se descubrió que Maciel era pederasta. ¡Nos quedamos sin guía! Al principio nos negamos a creerlo, pero era verdad, hasta el Vaticano castigó al padre Maciel. Fue el principio de la debacle. PREGUNTA: O sea, ¿Nada de esto habría pasado si Maciel se hubiera portado bien? RESPUESTA: Lógicamente. Si lo aceptamos como guía y nuestro guía de tantos años era un pillo que abusaba sexualmente de niños, pues lógicamente nos educó, nos educaron sus sacerdotes sobre una base de inmoralidad. Por eso estamos como estamos. Los de la derecha que mandamos en Monterrey (me incluyo porque soy gato de angora de los ricotes) perdimos el sentido de la ética y mandamos mucho al diablo a la grandeza de una ciudad que algún día nos llenó de orgullo. PREGUNTA: ¿Ya no te sientes orgulloso de Monterrey? RESPUESTA: Ya no.
Ideas, thoughts and Free Software 