SFD Hong Kong, we had so much fun!

I have been helping to organize a lot of SFD events in mainland China for almost a decade now. Being born and raised in Hong Kong, I was indeed very exited to organize my first SFD in my home town. It was a half day event starting at 13:15, we arrived at the venue at 11:00 to set it up and did some last minute promotion. As for myself I hosted a BoF about building communities in Hong Kong. Since I was told it lacks strong FLOSS communities locally we are considering to start one. Nick Jones from Network Box offered us a venue while Michael Iannini offered to run meetings in Wan-chai (different area so we still need to bridge the two proposals). There are still a few details to be ironed out but it’s a very positive start. Besides, from Naruhiko’s presentation, we learnt that the LibreOffice Japanese team is made of 50 people, so not so much in proportion to the project.

Below you can find snapshots of the great moments, please enjoy!

A huge thank you go to our sponsors, our speakers, our workshop hosts, our exhibitors and especially our volunteers, they are Graham, Michael, Mathieu, Jacqueline, Oi-to, Amity, Ray, See-ming, Messy, Cameron, Guo-feng, Hu-zhou, Xi-lin, etc. Right after the event, I received a lot of thank you notes from our speakers and volunteers for organizing the event and having them to participate. In fact without YOU it would have been impossible to have such a wonderful event! THANK YOU!

There were seven booths including LibreOffice, Stroke5, Blender, GNOME, Fedora, LinuxPilot and HKLUG.
Our exhibitions included LibreOffice, Stroke5, Blender, GNOME, Fedora, DFF, LinuxPilot and HKLUG.
Fedora 20 with GNOME 3.1 was demonstrated in our SFD HK 2013 event.
Fedora 20 with GNOME 3.10 was demonstrated in our SFD HK 2013 event.
An old friend from Beijing, Michael who is the BLUG founder. He was good in bringing the atmosphere up.
An old friend from Beijing and the BLUG founder, Michael was good in bringing up the atmosphere!
Graham from PolyU and DimSumlab, helped us in getting the venue for free and gave an introduction speech to kick start our event.
Graham from PolyU / DimSumLabs, helped us in getting the venue and gave an intro-speech to kick start the event.
Naruhiko Ogasawara, LibreOffice Japan team, came all the way to share with us their project and community in Japan.
Naruhiko from the LibreOffice Japan team, shared with us the project and community in Japan.
TK Kang talked about OLPC and announced his upcoming OLPC BaseCamp event in Malacca on 16-18 November 2013.
TK Kang talked about OLPC and announced the OLPC BaseCamp event in Malacca on 16-18 November 2013.
Nick Jones introduced us how NetworkBox Corporation is profiting from Free and OpenSource software.
Nick Jones explained how Network Box Corporation is profiting from FLOSS.
Fred introduced the Google Summer of Code program to some students during the event.
Fred introduced the Google Summer of Code program to students to join.
A BoF was hosted to discuss about building a stronger FLOSS community in Hong Kong
A BoF was hosted to discuss about building a stronger FLOSS community in HK.
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At the end of the event we invited all the speakers to come to the stage to do a wrap up.
We finished the event with beer and local food in Tsim Tsha Tsui East and heading home at 2am with big smile on our face.
We finished the event with beer and local food in Tsim Sha Tsui East and left at 1am with big smiles on our faces.

 

GNOME booth in SFD HK 2013

GNOME Booth, photo by http://blog.fedora-fr.org/public/bochecha/Nounours/IMG_0640.JPG

As a GNOME user and fan, knowing that the next major version GNOME 3.10 will be released two days after Software Freedom Day on 23rd September, we are happy to have a booth to showcase GNOME 3.10 on Fedora 20 at our Hong Kong SFD event which will be hosted at PolyU on 21st September, meanwhile I encourage every SFD team to celebrate the new release as well!

While I am still running Fedora 19 with GNOME 3.8.2 I can’t wait to check out the latest version myself with the new features such as maps and music applications, thanks for all the hard works by the GNOME developers, thanks Mathieu for running the booth and of course I will upgrade mine soon! How about you?

SFD Hong Kong getting in shape!

This photo is licensed under an open license - CC-by See-ming Lee

It is with great pleasure that we are opening an optional registration for our Software Freedom Day event in Hong Kong on September 21 at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. It means that first the schedule is positively progressing, while knowing how many of you will attend will allow us to plan accordingly. We are aiming to target both the university audience and the young workforce, on top of presentations and workshops, we (assisted by various communities) will be holding booths (e.g. Fedora, LibreOffice, Blender, Stroke 5, Greenboard) to allow for more individuals discussions. All in all it’s been a joy working on this event, allowing us to talk and plan resources with people from the US, Netherlands, France and Japan, not to mention discovering a great bunch of passionate FOSS people like us in our backyard.

Still, almost 4 weeks to go and plenty of time to get great surprises! If you happen to be in Hong Kong on 21 September, please do register and drop by!

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SFD Hong Kong 2013

Thanks Henry Lawford for the nice picture

21 September 2013 Saturday (1:30pm to 6pm)
Lim Por Yen Lecture Theatre N002, N114, N115
Hong Kong Polytechnic University

We are organizing a Software Freedom Day event in Hong Kong which will be hosted by the nice people at the Polytechnic University! We have just confirmed the location and there will be presentations, exhibitions and workshops during the half day event. We are already in touch with different FOSS oriented companies and communities in Hong Kong to participate.

Considering the great news we have added a special section in our Hong Kong website where we will continue to provide more details. In the meantime if you are in town you can already start reading and get ready to come and join us! A big thank you goes to PolyU for the energy and the venue!

We are organizing SFD in HK

2013 SFD Team Packs shipped!

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They’re finally off! Yes, you read well, all the SFD team packs have left DFF office and are now on their way to your event. All registered teams before July 31 this year will receive the great stuff we have prepared for them. In total we packed and shipped about 200 packages together with our local community. This year every team pack includes not only our usual stuff which are three t-shirts, twenty t-shirt stickers, twenty balloons, twenty small-size stickers, a two-meter banner, and a A4 flyer, we also added three A3 posters and twenty big-size stickers.

A big thank you goes to GoogleCanonicalLinode, the Free Software FoundationFSFELinux MagazineUbuntu UsersSmart DeveloperAdmin magazineLinux JournalFreeBSDJoomla!Creative Commons and Open Clipart.

For those who missed the deadline, subscribe to our announce or discuss mailing lists to get notified next year and rush to our artwork page to download all the source files and produce your own goodies!

HAPPY PREPARATIONS TO ALL!

Celebrate SFD with us on September 21, 2013!