Talking about the Internship program from oooES

This week I would be doing some talks about the programs for the schools about opportunities for students that want to make a difference in their carreers by participating on the programs within OpenOffice for schools.

I also did a pretty funny video advertising the OpenOffice internships. Helping the open source community and their carreers as they move forward.

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Rescate de videos de conferencias en OpenOffice.org

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Recently we are at the task of generating more social awareness of OpenOffice, one of the things is look on our great legacy and reach out, reclasify and generate new content for developers and people that need our help.

Here we find some of the new video sources from the different OOoCon Editions:

Hope more content keeps getting pouring out.

OpenData and XML

I have been working with XML for a while, OpenOffice is full of XML, from the XCU to the filetype OpenDocument Format, worked as an umbrella format for many other types of XMLs, including popular w3c proposals like the Dublin core as well as other URIs and schema.

OpenOffice actually has an XForm editor, that is somewhat misleadingly named as XML document.

A few days back I gave a talk on Bitcoin which turned me on to check out OpenData initiatives as well as the importance of open standards. Looking at the local OpenData initiative I found it a bit odd that the implementations were so shallow. As they focused more on systems than on actual key elements like defining structured data and implementing interactive APIs for it.

This sent me to research defined standards for common organizational logic including geospatial, e-business, legal and financial standards. Adopting these standards play an important role and also a good way to produce code that can help the OpenOffice platform as well as systems built for it.

The importance of XML and the lack of awareness of the importance of interoperability for data is something key to the OpenData movement as well as increasing the knowledge of productive stacks that can generate interactions with it. Not just to create, consume, and convert but also to standardize on it and create the business cases for it.

This pulled me into looking back into my own domain of standard. The OpenDocument format and OpenOffice XForm as a medium to expand the applications and interaction of the suite to generate more compatibility with this.

Looking at this, I will work on generating new and exciting projects aimed at creating the extensions, components and filters for making OO a more intelligent platform designed for OpenData improvement.

First internship success story

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Yesterday I was able to participate in a talk during a University event about the virtual internships through OpenOffice.org, project named “WayOOo”.

The WayOOo project is a incentive to build the infrastructure of creating contracts with the universities about creating relationships and getting kids into the project.

OOo might not be the best project to start but is certainly a powerful and and popular open source platform to do so.

So the project has already produced a successful intern with a tangible result, and during the conference he was able to create a UNO naturalization to a popular OOo extension. OOo2Gdoc is an extension that will connect and exchange documents with Google Docs, Zoho and Webdav through their API.

So the presentation was a bit rocky, I got a bit lost explaining the concept of the presentation through a very awkward example of how traditional internships fail. However things improved when the intern talked about his extension and finally I think the QA was great since we were able to talk more fluently with the audience. At the end, I enjoyed it but the people attended was fairly reduced and I guess I was competing with other great talks, I only wish this talk was worth it for the few and will talk about it with their peers.

I am leaving the original presentation so you can check it out and comment on it, if you like it or have any suggestions please comment on it.

OpenOffice.org 3.3 esta aquĆ­ y lista para ser descargada.

 – La suite de productividad libre usado por mas de 100 millones de usuarios ahora incluye muchas nuevas mejoras a las empresas.

Germany, 25 January 2011.— El proyecto de OpenOffice.org anuncia hoy el lanzamiento de OpenOffice.org 3.3, la mejor versión a la fecha. Con las mejoras y funcionalidades ajustadas a las necesidades que se necesitan en las empresas, la suite entra en una nueva área. El usuario empresarial, en la administración publica y privada, encontraras una compatiblidad mejorada con MS Office, la hoja de calculo y avances en el componente de presentación, y las muchas nuevas funcionalidades en las contribuciones comunitarias que han sido bienvenidas. Una lista de Proyectos comunitarios que han sido alcanzados pueden verse aquí <http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.3/>.

OpenOffice.org 3.3 marca un hito en la madurez de la suite. Diez años despues que Sun Microsystems iniciara el proyecto de productividad, la suite ha crecido de ser una “alternativa libre” a ser la opción predeterminada y demandada por más de 100 millones de usuarios que han venido a valorar la calidad, estabilidad, y extensiones así como los estándares abiertos usados en una suite con un formato abierto como OpenDocument Format (ODF). Desde el lanzamiento de 3.0, hemos contado mas de 192 millones de descargas, la mayoria de estas en Windows. Y una extraordinario numero sería una baja estimación.

Con OpenOffice.org 3.3, hemos trabajado para alcanzar y participar en el futuro que este centenar de millón de usuarios alrededor del mundo demandá en las organizaciones públicas y privadas que migran a OpenOffice.org y ODF, al mismo tiempo que una simple preferencia de la suite que haga de todo manteniendo un grado de personalización. La lista de nuevos elementos es extensa, pero algunas mejoras resaltan a la vista.

OpenOffice.org 3.3 no solo es más rápida al iniciar y en general, también:

      • incluir fuentes estándares en PDF

      • incrementar la protección de documentos en Writer y Calc

      • provee mas de 1 millón de filas en una hoja de cálculo

      • ofrece nuevas opciones para CSV (Valores separados por coma)

      • permite insertar objetos de dibujo en Charts

      • mejora la presentación de las diapositivas en Impress

      • mejoras y una barra de búsqueda universal

La lista continua, y con la comunidad contribuida por un repostorio de extensiones, las mejoras implementadas, la cantidad y las plantillas especificas, diccionarios, idiomas de OpenOffice.org esta constantemente creciendo. Les invitamos a ver que existe y descarges lo que mas te interese. OpenOffice.org es sobre productividad: Su productividad.

Como Andrew Southworth, coordinador de redes, Congreso del trabajo Canadiense, escribe “Nunca ha sido sobre los ahorras. El congreso del trabajo Canadiense selecciono OpenOffice.org en apoyo a lo que hace y como lo hace. Su soporte completo del formato ODF que nos libera de comprometernos a un proveedor en especifico. Sus extensiones, el elemento empresarial que el codigo abierto le da a todos los que representa y trabaja en Canada, desde escuelas a hospitales a librerias al sector privado, las organizaciones gozan de una libertad y productividad real — sin estar encerrados a un proveedor o compañía que forcen como deben ser las cosas. Ahorrar dinero es grandioso. Pero OpenOffice.org, con su soporte de ODF, es mas que el resultado final. Es sobre libertad de escoger el mejor.”

Adicionalmente a las mejoras, tambien incluimos actualizaciones de seguridad, y estamos recomendando a todos los usuarios actualizar a la nueva versión tan luego como puedan. También, como siempre, recomienda los usuarios siguan las practicas de seguridad.

OpenOffice.org esta completamente soportado alrededor del mundo por una comunidad de empresas profesionales, ambas pequeñas como grandes. Oracle continua el patrocinio del proyecto y hace bienvenido las contribuciones de todos.

Una guia completa de las mejoras estan disponibles en <http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.3/>. El boletín de seguridad con detalles del potencial de vulnerabilidades arregladas en <http://www.openoffice.org/security/bulletin.html>.

Para descargar OpenOffice.org 3.3 de forma gratuita: <http://download.openoffice.org/>.

 

*Paquete de prensa: OpenOffice.org <http://marketing.openoffice.org/press_kit.html>

* Casos para OpenOffice.org: <http://why.openoffice.org>

 

**Contactos

Alexandro Colorado (UTC +-06h00), Cancun, Mexico

Líder de proyecto OpenOffice.org Español

jza @ openoffice.org

+1 (347) 414-9315

 

Peter Junge (UTC +08h00), Beijing, China

Líder del proyecto de OpenOffice.org Marketing

pj @ openoffice.org

Louis Suárez-Potts (UTC -05h00), Toronto, Canada

OpenOffice.org Community Manager

Chair, Community Council

louis @ openoffice.org

+1 (416) 625 3843

Final Malaga report

This post comes from the train on my way to Barcelona but I might continue it from the bus since we just got noticed that other train got derailed and we will have to move to buses. I guess now I have time to talk a bit about what the OpenOffice.org and the conference in Malaga was all about day one, two and three. I hope this could become a full report since there were some significant topics going around the conference.Frist let me start by saying that this has been one of themost inpsiring events I have ever been. Only comparable to my first Linux event on LinuxWorld 2001 in New York City or ExpoLinux in Monterrey.Besides that I have to tell you that this event was much bigger and with much better talks than those before. Now we are launching into how many governments are usin FLOSS and seen the results not just in software but also in society.So day one was very important, it had more of an angle of overal governance of the floss use across the EU. My first talk focus on OSOR.eu which intends to hold best practices in FLOSS for government acquisition. Many things were discussed but also the networking of procurement practices were not too defined but enough to the extend of having parties involved between the project an the government entity.After that session a great keynote by Tim O’Reily where he mentioned the importance of the free culture transending open source while at the same time questioning it and comparing it versus the Web 2.0 world and the open contribution. Also he went on to encourage developers to develop beyond FLOSS into other topics like ecology, further resources, etc.O’Reily’s talk pretty much served as a point to quote many of the discussions through the conference. Other talk through the day were interesting, also focused on sustainability on governments and free software projects. However I also noticed that they were all too focused on creating new software rather than improving the software. While is true that general users can’t get in the source code and modify it, a governement or company with a good budget could.I met with the people of CENATICs and the development of the Mobile ODF reader. Something very interesting yet something that got me a little upset since they reach the OOo community to later develop it on their own ‘reinventing’ the efforts of the community. Althought is free is a bit illogical to have a close process of development where so much is done on the open. However I am very happy that ODF for mobile is now a reality and hopefully we can integrate now and start developing towards an ODF editor on mobile. BTW somehting I notice is that I really need to get a SIP number so that people can reach me.As I reviewed the program I think there were other meetings that I would have loved to attend and I wonder if I would be able to see the video of them. Specially the ones on Services for opensource businesses.The end of day one was very important since there was a debate on open source sustainability and the debate really went through different phases. Simon Phipps really emphasize on the freedom aspect of the model. Things really need to be done to further freedom which seemed very good coming from an open source guy rather than free software.At night I miss the buss and got on with the rest of the crew to attend the ‘exclusive dinner’ with the partners which eventually got me in touch with Nahim, a mexican guy in charge of AMESOL. We had a couple of talks on how to improve FLOSS in mexico an some funds that he can get for FLOSS however there is this feeling of investing my time in these things just to get money. However what I really want is to start talking on what to do in order to get FLOSS developed. I talk with one of the Apache guys on the way to correctly contribute to FLOSS Good development practices and architectual changes in order to be more distributed and easy to contribute. Also some ideas on the things that need to be done to make cleaner and better code. He was very impressed after watching the video on ODF@WWW developed by Kay Ramme.Other talks on ODF with Jomar which also got different aspects such as how can ODF be compromised by Microsoft now that he wants ISO to control the standard as opposed to OASIS. MS got a mayority in ISO and could potentially break the standard as well as intentionally. Badly supporting ODF on MS Office can also severly scrutinize the standard adoption and development. One thing is that they want to take the standard from 1.0 as opposed to the current 1.2.At the end of the meeting was a big rocky way back to the hotel since we decided to walk back home which was pain in the ass and my feet got very sore. However after a good bath I was relax enough to just pass out on the bed.Next morning was a good ride to the conference, by now I have met many people and recognized others. I had also start thinking about all the experiences, discussions, issues about floss nowadays. It was also the day of my talk so I was also thinking about that. We were supposed to meet with Louis and Claudio in order to get ourselves inline to a process for the meeting… we never did. However the meeting itself turned out to be a good thing and in the end everyone was happy. There are some things I noticed however, one is that Br-OO and Open for Business could colide now that we are both in Spain. Claudio and I have to put our heads together and come up with a solution. Louis seemed pretty happy about my talk and was surpringly no later comments on it however there needs to be further talks now that O3 is released and how will it affect the rest of the internal projects.That day was mostly rainy but the conference was pretty live an vibrant, I spend also a further talk with Joman about ODF as we watch the sky pouring. The real development of ODF and the different ODF communities around. From Fellowship, to friends of ODF and OpenDocument Foundation which unfortunately die after Gary couldn’t capitalized on that. He did mention what happened on the ODF Workshop and also a great project called pod developed on Python. The need for an C library that process ODF and also a better and more robust toolkit on how to integrate ODF with your project. Currently OOoES is very commited to ODF and I think is a good opportunity to get developers from different areas. Currently we need something like this:

  • 4 Java developers
  • 5-10 PHP developers
  • 3 VBA developers
  • 1 ActiveX developer

Is there any budget on research and development in any of these countries we could get some of the project started. We can also develop with our OpenOffice.org A.C. centers in these countries having partially funded by either governments or industry associates.I need to define how governments hire companies or individuals from abroad. I know most of them had a budget for research and development, also that they have organisms that can concentrate FLOSS companies. Finally I know that there are fundamental needs comming from the project itself and that there are developers willing to contribute to further the use of FLOSS. Key is how to make them work together.

OOo Innovation Package

For a while we been working on this innovation package from OOo. Call it Open for business or new strategy for education market. But OpenOffice.org Innovation Package looks real good the way we are assemble it. It looks very very ambicious but as technology evolves and SAAS allow us to deploy services faster and make the impact more dramatically to the organizations.So what is this innovation package? At this time we are evaluating a series of products and services that OOo has had for a while and looking for a way that we can assemble them in a stack. This will allow organizations to adopt the software as an organization.For a while many organizations had required lots of studies and documentation for a way to adopt OpenOffice.org and Open source in general but a lack of commercial leverage on this product hard to deploy for some invisible reason. Training their staff, integrating to their infrastructure and making it run smoothly are definetly challengsesthat can mark OOo as ready or not for their needs however the offer needs to be set loose  and continously improved.At this point the offer has just became better with this innovation package. Training and giving solutions had make our strategy to make it easier for business to get a better response from business. I’ll be blogging more about it as we solidify the offer and we experience the soon announced deployments. For more information about this innovation package feel free to contact me.