Followed by Beijing, the second GNOME.Asia Summit was successfully hosted in Ho-Chi-Minh, Vietnam from 20 – 22 November 2009. I am always happy to join International Open Source events, especially outside of China, I got to talk to the local communities from all over Asia like core members from Saigon LUG, Hanoi LUG, Phnom Penh LUG, Taiwan LUG, Open Institute Organization in Vietnam! I even got to talk to the Chief Director of the Government Information Center in Vietnam and learned that all the government officers will start to use Open Source Software like OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird in 2010. Implementation will begin with massive training. The main reason for the migration is that the government wants to reduce illegal use of Windows. Isn’t it cool?
There were a lot of presentations and workshops covering many topics other than GNOME during the whole summit! The full schedule can be viewed here. As a woman leading the Beijing Linux User Group, I gave three talks and led one panel discussion:
- Women_In_IT / FOSS
- Building Communities
- FOSS Deployment in Schools
- Panel discussion about Women Participation in GNOME
I was very impressed by the whole GNOME.Asia Summit! First, Vietnamese participants asked really a lot of questions which is not so common in China. Second, there were a lot of volunteers from different Universities, students of different domains like Computer Science, Trading, Economy and so on. They were very energetic and helpful. Third, there were a lot of girl volunteers as well which is very rare in Open Source conferences! I can see that the GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 is just a start in Vietnam, with all of these young students’ energy, community building and government support, I am sure 2010 will be a great FOSS year in Vietnam!
I too personally enjoyed the talks from the Beijing LUG, and more especially the private ones with its leaders! 😉
This conference was definitively great. And at the end it really made me feel it was too short… But at least it made everybody meet together, which is the first and most important step!
I wish we get plenty of other occasions to reproduce such enjoyable regional event! 🙂
Wish the best to you, Fred and all the BeijingLUG members,
your friendly LUG’er from Hà Nội, Việt Nam. — progfou
Hey Jean Christophe! It was really a great pleasure to know you! I like your talk “Migrating to Linux”! Yeah, it was definitely a great event! We are even thinking to make the 5th or 6th GNOME.Asia Summit back to Vietnam in Hanoi instead! What do you think?
All the best to the soon to be President of Hanoi LUG 🙂
Pockey, the panel of “Women in IT/FOSS” is awesome. This is a great idea from you and you are great MC!
I just updated and added the presentation of “Building Communities” in my post, please feel free to download 🙂