Meet the Guangzhou LUG

guangzhoulugWe happened to be in Guangzhou earlier this week and spent a wonderful evening with the core members of the local GNU/Linux user group in Guangzhou. They gave us an overview of their group history and progress: basically it is a two years old group with over 700 people subscribed to their mailing list and around 5 core members to manage the group activities. They host regular meetings on a monthly basis in different locations such as restaurants or classrooms. They also organized Software Freedom Day events the past two years and recorded over 100 participants in 2012. While we shared our experiences of how we ran and grew the Beijing GNU/Linux User group with them.

They also mentioned that half of their members are interested in “free” hardware highlighting the growing connection between two movements that we feel very linked. In fact we cannot ignore the fact that hardware needs software to operate and a bit of free culture to make those logos, the documentation and the potential courses that go together to bring it to more people. Each of the movements (software, hardware, culture, OER) should care equally about each others in order to exist as they need one another to thrive. I truly believe that bringing those concepts as one within our communities and to the world will create a bigger impact for everyone.

To conclude, Guangzhou LUG wants to grow in terms of attending members and meeting frequency so we offered to put them in touch with the Shantou Linux Association as they are planning for their upcoming activities right now, and sharing ideas can’t hurt. Besides, there are five universities in Guangzhou with computer science classes which are located in the same area and could become a very prosperous ground for cooperation and activities. That’s another lead right there!

In light of all those discussions and plans we will be hosting a round table discussion mid December on our next visit to Guangzhou. We hope that getting members from each university and setting up a plan together will create a more diverse group in the area with a more balanced workload for everyone.

I am always very happy to meet passionate people from different communities and can’t wait to meet them again soon!

Phnom Penh LUG and Open Institute in Cambodia

The trip to Cambodia was amazingly excellent! Not only I went to the Open Institute Organization to know more about how they spread Open Source in Universities, joined the newly re-established Phnom Penh LUG first initial meeting, but also had a lot of great Cambodian food in Phnom Penh, as I never had any Cambodian food ever! As an animal lover, Phnom Penh is a paradise,  full of wide life too!

Open Institute focus on Universities doing localization, generate textbooks and train teachers / volunteers!
Open Institute focus on Universities: doing localization, generating textbooks of OpenSUSE / Firefox Thunderbird / OpenOffice.org and training teachers / volunteers
Phnom Penh LUG meeting: Fred presented Reprap 3D Printer Project
Phnom Penh LUG meeting: Fred presented Reprap 3D Printer Project and of course we discussed about how to grow the Phnom Penh LUG here in Cambodia
Cambodian Traditional Breakfast: Soup Noodle
Cambodian Traditional Breakfast: Soup Noodle
Cambodian lunch, look tropical!
Cambodian lunch, look tropical!
Monkeys inside a temple, we fed them bananas
Monkeys inside a temple, we fed them bananas
My favourite reptile, lizards everywhere~
My favourite reptile, lizards everywhere~
It's a very relaxing city, people are very nice and friendly! Highly recommend you to go!
It's a very relaxing city, people are very nice and friendly! Highly recommend you to go!

GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 ROCKS!

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:

  1. Women_In_IT / FOSS
  2. Building Communities
  3. FOSS Deployment in Schools
  4. 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!

GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 in Veitnam
GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 in Veitnam
GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 Workshops
GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 Workshops
A lot of interaction with audiences
A lot of interaction with audiences
GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 Panel Discussion: Women Participation in GNOME
GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 Panel Discussion: Women Participation in GNOME
GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 Speakers from all over the world
GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 Speakers from all over the world
GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 has over 100 volunteers full of energy
GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 has over 100 volunteers full of energy (a lot of girls as well)

3 days in Hangzhou

放生池
An army of tortoises basking on the island border, some are trying hard to climb up

It’s my first time visiting Hangzhou! Since I was a kid I heard a lot about the West Lake which is a very famous spot for poet writers to make a lot of nice pieces here. The lake is indeed huge and lovely! No matter day time or night time, the view is fabulous. Unfortunately it was National Holiday, a lot of tourists that kind of disturbing due to the crowd and the noise. Night time in the West Lake, I saw a lot of locals singing and dancing together in groups, a bit like the night life in big parks in Beijing. Same hobbies!

My other impression about Hangzhou is that most taxi drivers are very tricky to tourists, luckily we have GPS to avoid a lot of problems. Foodwise it is so-so, we tried a lot but without much luck so far. Otherwise with such a nice lake if I live here I would go there everyday to enjoy the fresh air.

For the 3 days in Hangzhou, what I enjoyed most is the “放生池” (a pond to free captive animals)  next to the LeiFeng Pagoda 雷峰塔. There is a big pond with a nice island in the middle accommodated with thousands of fishes and tortoises there. It’s really a paradise for them ,:) they all look healthy! I even went back to feed the fish and tortoises with a lot of bread.

turtles
My pets, they are at least 6 years old now

To see all these happy tortoises basking and swimming in such a big pond, it makes me think of my own. At home I have 4 red-heared sliders as pets. I got them when I was managing a factory in ZhaoQing City in 2004. Since it is a small city, nothing much to do except work, I decided to buy a few fishes and tortoises to accompany me. When we moved back to Beijing they came along with us by plane! I have them for 5 years already, we changed 3 fish tanks as they are adult size (30cms long) now. When I visited the pond full of happy tortoises, I asked myself if I am willing to free my tortoises there? Knowing a bit of myself, I am not sure… would you?