Software Freedom Day Cancun

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated the Software Freedom Day in Cancun, the first SFD in that city. The development of the event was quite nice since we were able to capture most of the moments of the event and include things that have become a signature of the events from Tequila Valley Cancun including the “Freedom Cake” and some gifts to give out after each talk.

The event was well promoted and included things like TV broadcast of the event, development of new web application and even some streaming. 

Talks included new bleeding edge topics like Bitcoins, Git, and some more traditional topics like Creative commons and recomended books on cyberculture and hacker culture.

• Facebook album

The idea of this event is step away from the traditional Linux OS and their application environment and learning more about the ideals that make software free. The opportunities and empowerement behind open technology and also inspire atendees to innovate.

Storify from “SFDCancun”

This was my talk on BitCoin, Ripple and P2P Banking under the Digital Economy conference. You can get the slides here.

And yes we got cake…

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Great morning today

Today I had the chance to have an early trip to the beach and enjoy the first rays of sunlight and also start my workday there.

The morning was a bit cloudy but as I was chillin in the beach the sun start shining through and had the chance to make this panoramic picture.

 Since I am living in one of the best parts of the planet is good to actually enjoy it, and also take advantage of the flexibility of my work. There are many people that can’t have this luxury and will kill to do this. Cheers.

Interns to me

Today I got emails from our spaniard college where we finally got the documents to work upon the internships in Europe. We won’t be offering payment unfortunately but they will surely be able to be part of the efforts happening in OpenOffice.org as they are starting to generate some code. These students will be able to build and provide documentation on it. Also some will need to be able to code some mid-size code to have an acknowledgement of their program. 

For exmaple:

• Core developers will first need to compile and run OOo from current source. From then they will need to learn about services and interfaces and optimize some parts of the OpenOffice.org suite. Some goals can include – improve the Draw interface, improvde the way calc functions get built, a GUI way to design dialogs for Java, a Python framework for UNO with more RAD driven code.
• Extension development will focus on create new extensions as well as improve some of the ones available. Several projects such as digital signature extensions, improved GUI and instant signature for some specific devices. 

These efforts would be need to start getting accumulated until we can have a productive suite. I was pleased that the spaniard university will assign as much as 6 students per profile (would need to verify) but the skillset will be great for them and for us as well. If the students don’t acomplish their goals, it would still serve for their knowledge of the software as well as me. Working together will allow the patches to be commited and also tested and quality approved in one sole package.

Trip to Quito

Trip to Ecuador was quite intereting with most of the time being available to have a walk and meet new people, the thing thtat got me about Quito is how similar it looks to Mexico city — without all the smog that is. With similar street marts and warnings we spent some good chatting and meals regarding the local free software community and how it’s needed to deliver the services on top of OpenOffice.org. Likewise we also need some kind of refocus on the way software is created and improved.

A revelation that I had was explaining how the communities had been missconstructed. Which, instead of focusing on the product they actually went on to focus on other things such as the marketing, licenses and location. So a name such as “Local community of free software” it will be around a locality and also a name. I suggested a different approach to it and instead of girating around name or locality to girate around a product.

So having a product, it will actually encourage most of the community to girate around a body of work. This gives communities a better structure such as maintenance tasks, documentation, quality assurance, testing, and of course improvements.

How does improvements come around? Well this is a different dynamcis on community, usually there is so much work than is really difficult space to complain and to provoke flamewars. At least these will be more technical and provide a more product driven testing. So you will have a different branch with one solution and another with another. The best will be integrated into the code tree. 
So the goal of the trip was to do a training and I think we did a good job. The client was please with the performance althought negotiations in the end went a bit rocky. I would have liked to provide a good framework of flexibility. One thing that I think we could have improved is definitly better preparation. Set up the system and also comply with the way that the tasks would be handled in the future.

Right now we discussed about new opportunities for doing business in the current situation. We would be able to offer extra training focused in OpenOffice.org itself. Here is where I think we could generate some revenue as soon as possible, this of course have some dependancies such as if the way the trainning will be focused as a third party or as maybe a fourth party to the end client. 
I still got some thoughts on how we can position ourselves to be the most valuable to our client while at the same time building a cash flow to funnel it back to OpenOffice.org.

Everything ready for Software Freedom Day

So we are a couple of days for the Software Freedom Day and everything seems to be settling for a great success. I am very excited to see this event take life of it’s own and also raise the group morale. Definitely this event has made the group excited and also looking forward for the next big thing.
The group in itself will gain the right networking to push members to advance the relations with other universities and companies. Gaining members and also improving the ability to ask for funds and persue the development of the industry.
Accepting corporate sponsors and also being able to push free and open technologies. At the same time educate businesses about the advantages of empowering themselves through that technologies.
I hope we can raise the way cancun embraces technologies and get better information infrastructure.

Rock the Bells

So this is my first post after the show and have to say so far the trip has been awesome, not perfect, but awesome indeed. First of was the great GZA throwing darts after darts from the liquid swords album.
The rhymes were on point and great rhymin at the top of my longues on every song. From cold world, bible, beneath the surface and with the great Mastah Killa, Killa Priest and RZA who came to perform the 4th chamber verse.
Killa priest also rhymed some of the heavy mental tracks, Masta had some great performance. Unfortuately I couldn’t shoot a close up with my new camera. But he was around all day since he showed up for Glacier of Ice later that night.

The Cuban Linx show was a bit strange and funny with ghost getting with the staff. Saying that the mics where unbalanced and they need better lightning. Dude was so picky that even Rae asked him if he wanted a sandwich with that.
In the end however the mics did really failed with raekwon’s mic completely failing. And Ghost being beyond mad he was like, let’s just say goodbye leaving the stage for real.

Another great show was immortal technique and the dude is not only so energetic but so right when talking about people in general. He asked about drugs during peruvian cocaine, about the harlem reinassance and finally about bin laden with mos def. He also presented really great DJs like hassam and Diabolic rhyming with the crew.
Eventually the event was great, lots of walking though as the sets where pretty far from each other. After several walks we were really exahusted. My legs were killing me and even my friend was holding me for extra support during walking. But we had a great time. Loved every minute and the girls in the show were gorgeous. New York has this wild mixes of cultures and nationalities so it was seen hot asians and hot blondes and so on.
I am glad I got to do what I always wanted and can now enjoy it.