Category: SFD

SFD Countdown ready!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

Celebrate SFD with us on September 15! The SFD countdown is ready for usage in English. We are therefore informing translators of 2011 and also people willing to add a new language that translation can start right now. All the instructions are available on the wiki at this page: http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/CountDown.

For those who already want to add the countdown on their page/blog/website the code is almost the same as last year (we’ve chosen a smaller size image this year) and has the same support for time zones. So if for example you’re living in Paris (GMT+2/UTC+2 that would be) then the code to add is: <a href=“http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/”><img src=“http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/countdown/banner1-UTC+2-en.png” border=”0″ width=”160″ height=”90″ alt=”Celebrate SFD with us on September 15!”></a>

Should you want to run the script from your website and customize it to your liking you can find the source code here and you’ll need to add a cron job to run it every 15 minutes if you want to support all time zones. Else every day at 1am is probably fine. Full support available from our mailing list!

Call for proposals to host SFD Summit 2012

Posted on by Pockey Lam

Digital Freedom International (Aka Software Freedom International) is proud to announce it will start co-organizing Software Freedom Days under the name of SFD Summit with one local team each year starting this year, and therefore we are inviting local organizers to submit proposals to host our upcoming and first SFD Summit around September 15th 2012.

The purpose of co-organizing such an event is to raise the profile of our celebrations while bringing a public space for discussions about the future of our movement. Over the past two years DFI/SFI has been through important changes in its governance such as expending community involvement through various committees, tightening our budget to remain cash positive, surveying SFD organizers and enhancing the team pack to enable teams to reuse the materials they receive, just to name a few of our efforts. It is now time to raise collaboration efficiency by getting together!

While this will be the first occurrence of a SFD Summit we are still very open on the details and expect proposals to enhance our views on the matter. Our current vision is to initially organize a great local SFD bringing in international speakers and attracting both sponsors and media attention, thus boosting the reputation and influence of the selected local organizer. Furthermore an extra day or two should be planned to work on the year ahead, programs and actions which could be run under the DFI umbrella and status updates on ongoing activities such as software development, infrastructure, marketing and fund raising campaigns.

If you are interested in hosting the upcoming SFD Summit in September 2012 please submit a formal proposal to board (at) softwarefreedomday (dot) org before July 1, 2012 Sunday UTC 2359. The proposal should address all of the relevant topics listed below:

  • Introduction of the country / city / organizer – why is this a good choice?
  • Recommended venues and logistics
  • Internet access
  • Accommodation choices
  • Local 1 day tour
  • Local community / government / industry support
  • Detail budget estimation and potential local sponsors

The event is recommended to run for at least 2 days in mid September 2012, with a combination of parallel tracks (at least 2 tracks). The planning sessions for SFD contributors should not conflict with other SFD sessions. Other key points which will be taken into account when choosing a proposal, are listed on the Requirement List page . Please check it out when putting together your proposal and feel free to contact sfd-discuss mailing list (or the board) if you have any further question. Also note that all profits from the summit will go to the DFI to further help our actions. We are looking forward to receive your proposals!

SFD’11 Competition is on!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

All organizing teams of a Software Freedom Day 2011 event are invited to submit their event report in order to participate in the Best SFD Event Competition 2011.

For the winning teams we have very amazing prizes! We are very proud to be able to offer in partnership with our sponsors, Lemote, a manufacturer of MIPS computers using only free software and free drivers. Lemote will provide 3 Yeeloong netbooks for the winners of 2011. Besides, the Free Software Foundation will be providing again Richard Stallman Essays and Richard will sign the book himself for the 2nd year. Big thank you to Lemote and the Free Software Foundation.

For the 2011 competition, three teams will be selected as usual by the Software Freedom International board and reading previous years winning entries should give you some inspiration (this was a free tip!).

Submission deadline is February 16th, 2011 2012 (UTC 0500) and the winning teams will be announced in early April the latest. And of course the submission link itself which I shouldn’t forget to remind you about is at http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/cgi-bin/report.py . Join the competition now and good luck to all!

PS: We are very concerned about SOPA and have joined the strike as many others. SFD website will come back from the dark on 19th January.

SFD around the corner!

Posted on by Pockey Lam
SFD 2011 worldwide map, over 430 SFD teams registered!
SFD 2011 worldwide map: 442 SFD teams from 86 countries registered!

2011 Software Freedom Day is approaching, are you ready yet?

To add to the collection of our Software Freedom Day music library (yeah we can call it a library now, we have two) we have another song named Free, A Song For Software Freedom to complement the excellent SFD song “Celebrate Software Freedom Day”. Both songs are licensed under CC-BY-SA, so you should feel free to share it with your friends especially during the Software Freedom Day! A special thanks to Erwin Galang, Meric Mara, Deng Silorio and Karl Ramirez for the composition of those two very cool SFD songs!

And since we are discussing the day itself please do document your event, use the #softwarefreedomday tag, upload photos, make movies, blog, tweet (on identica of course!) and get ready for the SFD 2011 competition. While we haven’t made any formal announcement yet we have some pretty exciting gifts again this year which we are sure will please all your team. Stay tuned!

Celebrate SFD Song and many other resources!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqP6eJd6GZc

2011 Software Freedom Day is approaching, in order to help you with planning, we have set up a few important pages where you can find resources for your SFD event including the brand new SFD song “Celebrate Software Freedom Day”, torrent links to DVDs (OpenDisc SFD version, FreeCulture, FreeDistro), FLOSS application for Mac DVD, logos, slides, videos, templates, all source files of whatever you can find on the wiki and plenty of more stuff. Head to our marketing wiki page to find a list of those. A special thanks to 8LayersTech, Erwin Galang, Meric Mara and Deng Silorio for the composition of the very cool SFD Song!

We will continue working on providing more slides and ideas by the end of the week. Please also feel free to upload your cc licensed slides and other resources to share with other teams.

All the best to your preparation!