1. Description of the Conference and Generals.
The “Festival de Software Libre” (FSL) is one of the biggest and more important FLOSS events in México, this time was its 9th anual edition. The FSL is characterized by bringing together many of free software community in the country to share experiences, ideas, knowledge, promote & publicize FLOSS projects and recruit new talent to join projects, FLOSS culture among new users, professionals, students, etc. The conference is mainly sponsored by the University of Guadalajara (http://www.udg.mx) and a local Linux Users Group GLO (http://glo.org.mx).
The conference promotes exchange of ideas between participants ranging from students to professionals and experts. For students (who is still the majority of the conference attendance) is an invaluable opportunity to learn from the experts, live chat directly with the creators of the software and leaders of national and international projects.
In short: It's a feast for the exchange of knowledge, experience and camaraderie
2. Conference Participation
Juan Navarro and Me as part of Intel, pressented a talk entitled: “La Interoperabilidad: Ques, Comos y Porques”. What Interoperability is, Why interoperability among different systems is important, how to archive, some common problems and how to solve it. In our talk we have the chance to talk with people learning about interoperability, and many of them already faced that issue in their own projects, and already solved in a way, we have the opportunity to share our experiences with them and exchange points of view. The audience were highly participative.
As usual YaCOMAS (A project I led), gained lot of lines of code and improvements. Almost every piece of the data flow at the conference was controled by YaCOMAS allowing the organizers to improve the ime spend on registration, accommodation and payment for the audience attending.
3. What happened in this eddition:
The event has great quality, you can find there a lot of people and personalities, all ready to talk. There were 6 rooms with simultaneous events for 3 days. Which gives us an indicator of the size and importance of the event .
- 595 Attendees (20 foreigners )
- 34 Speakers
- 2 Keynote speakers
- Jon “maddog” Hall President of Linux International
- Francisco Javier Castellón Fonseca, Mexico Senator & president of Cience and Technology committe in México
- 42 Technical events (conferences, workshops, tutorials, informal talks, technical panels, forums etc).
- 76 hours on technical events with 6 simultaneous events for 3 days
FSL Speakers: http://www.fslvallarta.org/ponentes/
FSL Schedule: http://www.fslvallarta.org/programa/
We have the opportunity to meet and exchange experiences with people in software companies: Red-Hat, Debian, SuSE, Mozilla, Electronic Arts, Microsoft; Organizations: Linux International, LinuxCabal, Hackergarage; Universities UNAM, U de G; Professionals, companies and organizations in other fields: 3D animation, Editorial Publications, Concert Pianist, Musicians, designers who uses, develops and advocates for the Free and Open Source Software Culture.
“Building Collaborative Knowledge" a book derived from EDUSOL (Online Meeting of Education, Culture and Free Software) released under Creative Commons Licence was presented in the FSL. Book online: http://seminario.edusol.info/seco3/.
The University of Guadalajara and Mozilla Mexico presented it’s work regarding the software translation to Mexican indigenous languages such as Openoffice to Wixarika (Huichol) http://www.udg.mx/node/15133 and Firefox to Maya, Taraumara and Zapoteco http://mozilla-mexico.org/firefox-en-maya/ promoting digital inclusion.
Latinux an opensource certification entity for Latinoamerica sponsored the conference offering Linux certification to the audience with special prices.
A representative group of the community who have been working to promote the creation of government policies in favor of free software met in the FSL to develop the "Manifesto de Vallarta". The document was presented to Senator Castellón, president of the Science and Technology Committee in Mexico. After debate, the paper was signed by the senator and community members representing business, government, educational and social sectors. Further work regarding this paper will continue in the Mexican Senate next year.
4. Conclusions
The FSL is is a great opportunity to share and learn from people, people who fosters innovation and creative thinking, who is used to embrace and encourage changes with high performance and great quality, people who always challenges the status quo and never stay still.
FSL Press note (spanish): http://gaceta.udg.mx/nota.php?secactual ... &id=23
FSL Press note (english translation): http://t.co/lNG0FX53]]>
