Tag: softwarefreedomday

2010 Best Event Competition Winners

Posted on by Pockey Lam

Software Freedom Day 2010 Best Event Competition result announcements: Africa, Asia and Australia under the spotlights!

Hudson, New Hampshire (July 21, 2011) – Software Freedom International is proud to announce the SFD 2010 best event competition results. Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) with the goal of educating the public about the existence and the benefits of using FOSS in education, in government, at home and in business.

The SFD Best Event Competition is an international recognition of the efforts made by individual organizing teams in regards to spreading the importance of Software Freedom and reaching out to the relevant groups of people in their area. Each year three teams are chosen and the awards given to those teams are meant to help them further in their tasks for the years to come.

This year, two leading organizations from the Free and Open Source Software movements have joined us to reward those exceptional achievers: the Free Software Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the Free Software movement, and Makerbot, a private company pushing the concept of Free Software to physical media and making an fully open source 3D printer.

Among the 40 submissions we have received the three teams that came out as outstanding organizers and promoters of Software Freedom in 2010 are spread over 3 different continents. We would like to name in no specific order:
  • SFD team Melbourne, Australia
  • SFD team Yaoundé QV, Cameroon team
  • SFD team SPCF-CITE, Angeles City, Philippines
As a side note we are very pleased to see winners from different areas this year, especially Africa and would also like to mention some entries which didn’t make it in the top 3 but definitely deserve to be mentioned:
  • CPU & Software Freedom Network team, Manila, Philippines
  • 8layes team, manila, Philippines
  • Limestone Coast GLUG, Mount Gambier, Australia
  • NOSK team, Lalitpur, Nepal

The above teams should be an inspiration to all SFD organizers and help you to prepare for SFD 2011 which will happen on Saturday September 17th this year.

About SFI

Software Freedom International is the non-profit organization at the origin of Software Freedom Day. SFI handles sponsorship contracts, official team registrations, sending out schwags to teams, the annual Best SFD Event Competition and many other things.
For more information please contact:
Software Freedom International
info (at) softwarefreedomday.org
or visit our website at www.softwarefreedomday.org

SFD Team Leader Survey

Posted on by Pockey Lam

Software Freedom International is reaching out to Software Freedom Day team leaders and would like to gather as much feedback as possible to improve our support. Whether you have organized an SFD event in 2010 or the years before, with or without registering, we need your participation. There are 31 questions and it should take you about 5-8 minutes. We’re really hoping to learn a lot from this and therefore count on you. The survey is accessible here and powered by LimeSurvey. We’ll keep it running probably until around end of the year and publish the results afterwards, so please let your team leaders know about it.

SFD’10 competition is on!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

All organizing teams of a Software Freedom Day 2010 event are invited to submit their event report in order to participate in the Best SFD Event Competition 2010 . There is a bit more than two weeks left so you should start to worry a little if you haven’t joined the competition yet!  We went to the extra mile this year to bring you amazing prizes (for the winning teams that is)  and are quite proud to  be able to offer in partnership with our sponsors the Open Source (GPL’ed)  Makerbot 3D printers and the book Free Software Free Society: selected essays by Richard M. Stallman signed by the author himself! 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 October 31st 1200UTC and winning teams will hopefully be announcement somewhere around mid December the latest. And of course the submission link itself which I shouldn’t forget to remind you about is at http://cgi.softwarefreedomday.org/event_report.html. Good luck to all!

Software Freedom Day 2010 – Shantou chapter

Posted on by Pockey Lam

Thanks to the good work from SFDChina, there were near 60 Software Freedom Day events hosted in different cities around China this year!  Some events had to be postponed either a day earlier or a day later due to Nanking Massacre Memorial Day conflicting date. Fred and I celebrated the D-day by joining forces with the one hosted by Shantou University.

As mentioned in my previous post, the event was organized by the Linux Association from Shantou University (STU). It started in the morning with an outdoor exhibition to demonstrate Free Software and followed with presentations in the evening.  Fred gave an overview on why Software Freedom matters, a quick history review of Free and Open Source Software and talked about how the audience could get involved and contribute to the community. Then I introduced some cool Free Software that I use everyday and demonstrated how FOSS helped me to get things done.  Unlike other events I have been involved with in China, we had the pleasure to talk to very active spectators asking plenty of questions such as:

  • How can Free Software sustain without any financial support from companies?
  • Which field / area do GNU/Linux systems apply to?
  • Knowing that Free Software is so cool, why the market share is so little in China?
  • How can we increase the market share of Free Software in China?
  • What are the benefits to use GNU/Linux systems and Free Software in terms of software development?
  • Do you think Free software will dominate the world market in the future?

The event ended with some great performances given by two other STU associations, namely the Guitar Players Associations and the Magicians Associations. This was totally in line with the purpose of SFD which is to make the day as constructive and fun as possible! We totally enjoyed our Software Freedom Day, how about you?

Outdoor exhibition to demonstrate Free Software
Who says Chinese students are shy? At least not the ones in STU!
Presentations given by Fred, Bean and myself in the evening
I introduced a lot of cool Free Software to STU students!
Performance given by Microphone who is also an Android developer

SFD preparation meeting@STU Linux Association

Posted on by Pockey Lam

After moving to Southern China, we have been attempting to meet with local FOSS communities. Finally we got to visit the Shantou University (STU) and talk to the core members of Linux Association, one of the winners of  Software Freedom Day Innovative event award 2009 from sfdchina.org.

Since its establishment in 2005, STU Linux Association has been hosting regular meeting on a weekly basis (except holidays and exam period). They strive to introduce members of different FOSS applications and give technical lessons that their core members are familiar with. They even have members dedicating to help students with difficulty in installing Linux.

It was a great pleasure to meet with all of them due to their enthusiasm towards FOSS. Some of them have been the core members for 4 years, that’s usually not the case in other universities I’ve met. This year they are planning for a double capacity SFD event. Fred and I promised to support them with more goodies and be the SFD speakers. We are looking forward to celebrate SFD with Shantou University and wish everybody Happy Software Freedom Day!