Category: FOSS

SFD 2010 registration is open!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

Software Freeom Day 2010

As a board member of Software Freedom International (and Secretary), it is with great pleasure to announce that Software Freedom Day 2010 registration is now OPEN!

For its 7th inception, the team at Software Freedom Day has finally opened registration for SFD 2010 teams to get free goodies to prepare their event. For those not familiar with SFD, it’s an annual event happening on the third Saturday of September (September 18th this year) which purpose is to reach out to the public to educate, discuss and demonstrate the virtues and benefits of Free Software. With around 800 locally managed events in 2009, SFI (the non-profit organization behind SFD) hopes to reach more than a thousand teams this year and hundreds of thousands of people. Indeed within less than 24 hours, there are already over 100 teams registered!

I personally started to get involved in Software Freedom Day since 2007 when I was the Vice President of Beijing Linux User Group. Organizer and winner of the Best 2007 Event Competition in 2007, I have then been involved in three events in 2008, two in Beijing and one in Qingdao. In 2009, supporting 86 events in China as well as a founding member organization of the SFDChina.org. Since, I have also been helping Software Freedom International to ship all the goodies worldwide, while making funny videos of it. I have to say it’s a great fun to organize and join all those SFD events! So will you also participate and join this passionate community in their world domination effort?

A thousand registrations within 85 min. for COSCUP / GNOME.Asia 2010

Posted on by Pockey Lam

After months of preparation and working with  COSCUP team (a local co-organizer from Taiwan), COSCUP / GNOME.Asia 2010 is going to be hosted next month on August 14th and 15th in Taipei. I would like to share with you a few updates. Firstly, a total of 90 talks were received before June 25th, 2010, thanks a lot for all the speakers who submitted their talks! Due to the limited time slots, only 60 of them could be accepted. Final schedule will be announced in a week from now. Secondly, the online registration opened on July 5th, 2010, and over a thousand participants registered within the first 85 minutes. That is very impressive! I would say it’s a very good start for the joint event! We’re now looking at ways to accept more people or make the event available also to people who couldn’t get a seat at the conference.

Travel assistance application for GNOME.Asia 2010

Posted on by Pockey Lam

GNOME.Asia SummitAs you may know that GNOME.Asia 2010 will be hosted in mid August in Taipei. If you are interested to join this annual GNOME event and be one of our speakers, please find below the sponsorship program. Feel free to apply if you need it. See you there!

Dear GNOME friends,

The GNOME Foundation provides travel sponsorships to individuals who want to attend GNOME.Asia 2010 and need financial assistance.

We are happy to announce the Travel Committee is ready to receive applications for sponsorships to attend to GNOME.Asia 2010. This year, GNOME.Asia is jointly held with COSCUP (Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters) in Taipei, Taiwan on August 14 and 15, 2010.

For event detail please visit http://2010.gnome.asia/

For instruction of  the travel assistance application, please visit  http://live.gnome.org/Travel

Deadline: June 25 2010 14:00 UTC postponed to July 9 2010 14:00 UTC

Some additional request for GNOME.Asia:

  • We target to sponsor speakers (If you intend to go, why not give a talk? )
  • Limitation of $400 for people flying inside Asia and $800 for people from Europe/US/Other.
  • Only pay for transportation, not lodging cost. However, if you need help with accommodation, the GNOME.Asia Committee will book the hotel or hostel for you. Any questions, feel free to drop us an email.
  • Asking for sponsorship does not guarantee you will get sponsored;
  • A good application with good information will be processed faster;
  • If you are GNOME Foundation member,  Google Summer of Code participants, contributor or speaker on GNOME, most likely you will get the sponsorship;
  • The Travel committee should reply back about receiving your application within 2-3 days. After that we would accumulate all the sponsorship requests and process them together. So please do not panic (have any butterflies in your stomach) if we take some time to reply on the status. Affirmative/Negative you would surely get a response;
  • No personal emails. Please keep travel-committee Cc’ed on all your replies.

Any questions, feel free to send email to the travel-committee : <travel-committee AT gnome DOT org>. Thank you!

GNOME.Asia Committee

COSCUP / GNOME.Asia 2010 Call For Participants

Posted on by Pockey Lam

GNOME.Asia SummitAs part of the organizing team of GNOME.Asia Summit, I would like to post the Call for participants of the GNOME.Asia Summit 2010 here and let all the communities in Asia know that we are looking for speakers, exhibitors and participants this year. Please find below the announcement and don’t hesitate to pass the message along!

Dear GNOME friends,

For this third edition of the GNOME.Asia Summit we’re delighted to partner with the organizers of the largest annual community-based Open Source conference in Taiwan, COSCUP (Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters). The event will be held on August 14th and 15th at the International Conference Hall, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica in Taipei (Taiwan).

Right now the joint conference of COSCUP / GNOME.Asia 2010 is calling for papers. With a tagline of “Open Web and Mobile Technologies”, it emphasizes the exciting development in these two areas as well as the GNOME desktop environment, and leverages the world-leading hardware industry in Taiwan.

Call for Paper
Submit a Talk!

Important Information

The deadlines:

  • Submission: June 25th 2010
  • Notification of acceptance: July 4th 2010

Conference:

  • Conference Date: August 14th – 15th 2010
  • Venue: International Conference Hall, Humanities and Social Sciences Building, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

Main Topics
Possible topics include, but not limited to:

1. The latest GNOME 3.0
The three big things about GNOME 3 are user experience, accessibility, and apps. The most coolest apps on GNOME 3.0 etc.

2. GNOME library and application development
Development involves many different projects, on the GNOME Desktop Environment and the GNOME applications.

3. Desktop deployments and customization
Deploy and customize GNOME desktop in your country

4. Mobile platforms and thin clients
GNOME desktop on mobile platform, like on phone, thin clients like Sun Ray

5. Localization & Internationalization
Translation, Input Method, Dictionary, anything related to L10n and I18n is welcome

6. GNOME Communities
Organize local Users Group, spreading the knowledge of GNOME and building a vibrant, thriving community around GNOME

7. GNOME Accessibility
Accessibility enables people with disabilities to participate in activities such as work and the use of services, products, and information.

8. Testing
Automation testing framework, test cases developement, bug management and all kings of topic related to QA.

9. HTML 5 and the Web Technologies
Topics around web technologies including demonstrations, tips and applications etc. It would be best if it was related to HTML 5 and front-end technologies but is not a requirement.

10. FOSS & Hardware
Hack your devices using FOSS! The term “devices” include embedded systems, home electronics, set-top boxes, wireless base stations, e-book readers, automotive electronics, mobile phones, and PDA/MIDs etc.

11. FOSS Business, legally
FOSS legal issues which include standard processes on FOSS  commercial usage, FOSS business model research, and reverse engineering for GPL compliance check.

12. Other topics
Any FOSS related topic which not listed above is still welcome. Your participation can help us make the conference better, and that’s how Open Source communities work!

13. Lightning talks
A five-minutes presentation to demonstrate your work or promote an interesting topic. Reservation and on-site application are both accepted.

The sessions at the COSCUP / GNOME.Asia 2010 will be scheduled for two time blocks:

A: 45mins talk + 15 mins Q&A

B: 25mins talk + 5 mins Q&A

Please take into consideration any time you will need for preparation. The session could be a technical talk, panel discussion, or BOF.

If you’d like to share your knowledge, experience, or opinion at COSCUP 2010, please fill in the form here before June 25th, 2010. The program committee will contact you before July 4th, 2010 to inform you whether your submission has been accepted or not.

All interested contributors are highly encouraged to send in their talks. Please help us to spread the invitation to other potential participants. Even you do not plan to be a speaker, please consider joining COSCUP / GNOME.Asia 2010. This is going to be a great event!

Sincerely,

GNOME.Asia
Organization Team

Hello Planet GNOME

Posted on by Pockey Lam

As a new poster on Planet GNOME I suppose presentations are in order: my main contributions to GNOME are to try to grow the Asian community and I do this by taking part in the GNOME.Asia Summit organization since its inception in 2008 in Beijing. Last year I actually even gave some talks at the Vietnamese chapter in Ho Chi Minh. Together with my friend Emily Chen we also started a GNOME User Group in Beijing after the first Summit end of 2008 and we do a lot of advocacy to get young Chinese students to take over some Gnome projects.

We’re actually in the middle of the call for host for the 2010 edition and you can find my post about the topic right here. So if anyone in Asia is interested to take up the challenge and be the lead organizer of a great Open Source technical conference showcasing GNOME technologies this is the chance. Note that the whole GNOME.Asia Summit committee will be behind you and we’re now strong of two successful years experience. So please do help spread the word.

I am also part of the localization team of a few GNOME projects especially the educational ones like GComrpis and Rur-ple. I spent a lot of time building a total FOSS solution for schools that included the OS with different educational apps for teaching and learning, tutorials for teachers, training and textbook for students. Of course we use a lot of GNOME and GNOME apps in the solution.

And when not doing GNOME things, I actually also happen to be the President of the (famous!) Beijing LUG (should you be in town please do contact me), on the board of Software Freedom International and very much involved with women in technology and students open source groups.

I hope that by now you have a better idea of who I am and should you have any idea on how to strengthen the Asian GNOME community please do get in touch. Also feel free to browse my previous post to get a better idea of the other things I’m involved with.