This time though we had some great idea! Because the community is growing in Athens and Thessaloniki we decided to host a double release party! Also we would be connected through video to greet ourselves

The party started at the same time on Athens and Thessaloniki and we had a nice chance to get to know new people and spread the word of Fedora as we always do!

Fun is always part of our events and we sure did have some great time with old and new friends. I presented some new features of Fedora 13 and the One Page Release Notes proved to be very handy!

The “Fedora Cake” that we had thanks to Thalia was wonderful! It vanished in no time!

We would really like to explore more the possibility of multiple parallel release parties interconnected through the internet That would be some great fun!

See ya on the next release party

Anyway, the Day 2 found me as a member of the stuff trying to polish the WiFi and make sure everyone has Internet connection

We followed many talks and workshops on exciting design software like Inkscape and many font talks (Font SIG guys should be here)

The scope og the day though, was about contacts I had a nice chance to catch up with Hong Phuc Dang who is organizing FOSSASIA, a very promising event in Vietnam and possibly this could interest Fedora Project and Mozilla Foundation (more updates on that will come) Expansion to Africa and Asia are starting to forming up as main goals for foss communities I guess

After the first sessions we headed back to the hotel to prepare for the LGM Dinner but first we needed to stop by the Japanese figures store so that Nicu can look for 1535th time some figures

Dinner was great and we had a nice cross-distro discussion with Steve Conklin (Canonical Employee) for their views on upstream dev and background projects

Then it was party time! Grabbed some beers and had many chit-chats with various projects (convincing them to pack for fedora also :P) like RawStudio (nice project for RAW btw!)

3rd day is gonna have some nice workshops and Blender will be on the mainline! Can’t wait for that!

ps. Blame nicu for no photos…

Me and Martin outside the venue :)

The organizing team did an *excellent* job welcoming us and making us feel like home! We then registered and had our badges with our names and also our project’s badge They were three fedora-badges (one for each one of us).

Also the organizing team had a very nice button-badge making machine that we could also use to have our custom ones! Believe me that was really addictive! As a matter of fact I am thinking of buying one for the fedora project (they pay-off by doing 500 of them) so we can finally have the merit badge idea implemented

We need one like this!

The venue is an old piano-factory restored and nicely equipped in order to be a cultural centre.

The nice meetup loft !

The talks started and we had a first session that was kinda of technical one(Python, ScriptFu etc) then came the workshops and during lunch Nicu had the chance to brainstorm around Design Team workflow with other attendees.

After a short coffee-brake at the loft (nice place!) it was Nicu’s and Martin’s turn to present the Fedora Design Team!

Nicu and Martin on an inspiring talk!

They gave an excellent presentation about the history, present and promising future of the Design Team within Fedora Project! We had an impressive reaction from the audience that keep comparing us to other distros citing the lack of other Design Teams Join Fedora is the answer!

Room was full of people!

Another talk that was really interesting was the ‘How to run an Art School on Open Source” I wish my school would be like this (but at least I now have a prototype )

Also Hong Phuc Dang gave us an inspiring presentation on how to get contributors from Asia. That seems like a very interesting concept and we (as fedora) have to take a look on it! (l10n, packaging,testing etc)

Dinner time was on so after a quick snack on frite-shop we headed over at Delirium for another late night drinking beers! (that’s our speciality with Nicu I guess :P)

Cheers to our next time in Delirium!

See ya tomorrow with more talks and more news on Fedora’s presence on LGM 2010 and my views on this exciting conference !

On the train station of the Brussles airport

My trip was pretty calm and by the time I got to Brussels, Nicu dragged me at Delirium (not that I resisted at all :P) so we had our first Delirium night

Martin and me having some discussion...(not that I remember that :P) CC Nicu for the photo :P

Swag are ready for tomorrow and we are certain we are going to hit LGM the fedora way

I really had a great first day with the guys! Can’t wait for tomorrow!

We helped with setting up the venue (although Gorjan had made a wonderful job )

The soul of the event! Thanks for all Gorjan!

The talk started and we (and the Skopjans that were there) had a very nice chance to catch up with the latest technologies behind Mozilla and get the spirit of the open web!

William and Seth were heading the event and they did a great job!

After Alina’s presentation of Drumbeat (spread out the word of open-web!) we had a really nice time playing a game that involved us to move into positions depending our option on a given phrase. Some nice discussions sprung out of this!

Meanwhile Kadir and me had the chance to work on SUMO and we did some brainstorming on the upcoming version of Sumo KB. I was very excited on that project and I should probably devote some time on it! Thanks Kadir for diving me in!

Pascal did a great introduction to Mozilla Project

The day was pretty successful and we ended up on a local night center with some contemporary Balkan music

Finally, Mozilla Balkans was a very fun, exciting, engaging, inspiring experience to me and though we have to sort out the whole “Mozilla Balkans” thing, I would definitely *love* to be on an event like this again with all those guys! Till then hard and fun work awaits us on Mozilla and we are only getting started!

Jump in

Developers meetup on the way :)

After my last post I got stated with Ghanaians Developers Meeting. Ben introduced us the gtk+ and gnome libraries and we had the chance to get some code written Then I gave a talk on Fedora’s latest technologies and fedorahosted.org and how can someone contribute to fedora project. I also showcased some projects that were developed within Fedora Community like Moksha and Transifex. Then it was time for me to talk about Mozilla Labs, Everyone was excited about the structure of the project and the new technologies that we are working on right now on the Labs. Weave, Raindrop and Concept Series were analysed and unfortunately I had a plane to catch so I stopped there.

Issac and Maddog escorted me to the airport and when the wheels stopped touching Africa it was time for me to sleep.

On Kotoka International Airport

Three flights, two layovers and 15 hours after i was setting my foot in Skopje, in a rush to catch up with Mozilla Balkans 2010 that was already started.

Working with the guys on Goals proposals

Gorjan was kind enough to come by the hotel and pick me up When I finally reached the venue the Friday events were kinda over and William had the idea of me presenting Fedora Ambassadors Project as we are interested as a Mozilla Community to probably set up a similar Project (that would be great!)

Gorjan in our meetup room

Finally we had a great brainstorming session about Specific Goals and Roadmap we will have for the next months as the Balkans Community. Our initial thoughts can be found here.

This is what you can find if you walk around Skopje!

Beer and food (real Balkan one :D) was something that I totally needed and I got satisfied going to a traditional little tavern with all of the guys and had some great beer

Kadir and William discussing over EU EMU EC and over stuff with Rakji :)

Cant wait for the Day 2 Sessions (Mozilla Balkans 2010 open to public day) !

Classical foss meetup with beers and food :P

After a couple of hours we managed to get assigned a spot about the workshop during the lunch time.. It was the auditorium and of course we did not manage to fill it up but he had some nice guys from all around Africa and they were hooked by the presentation of our l10n team and our tools we use Akan is now up and running in Transifex and we are in communication with Swahili people to get their locale in Fedora also

Then it was time for our panel on “Non-profit Administration”. Ben Konrath was first and he gave an excellent inside view of the organizational structure of GNOME and Gnome Foundation.

Being on panel with Alex and Ben

Next it was time for Isaac and me to present “Non-profit Administration” the fedora-way I started with some introduction and then it was Isaac’s time to present the “Four Foundations” and he did it in the most flawless and smooth way I have ever seen ! He jumped from one foundation to another expanding them a bit more and then it was my time to explain the Governance structure within the Fedora Project Then Alex from the Kenya ICT Consumers Centre enlightened us about the work that they do and on how they are engaging more people around foss.

Unpaved road and a bunch of foss guys :)

Next it was beer time! (at last!) We took maddog, Jack , Jojo, Ben, Isaac and a couple of guys from Linux Accra to a nice beer place in Osu and had a *lot* of beers… maddog and Jack wanted to continue and so I joined them to the Monsoon Dinner place for some Single Malts (i stayed on beers though). Finally after a long drinking night hearing to interesting stories from maddog we ended up on our hotels to have some good sleep.

Me, Jack anfd Davide

Taxi to Osu = 2 Cedis, Star Beer = 5 Cedis, Having maddog ordering you to drink it = Priceless

Today I woke up early so I could pack my things and check-out form the hotel. We just had a nice launch and we are waiting for the Ghana Developers Meeting to start in which Ben and I are going to present our projects and the ways that someone can contribute Essentially it is gonna be a pool of potential contributors and i have to make sure that we will get a bunch of those great guys working on our fabulous project.

Main auditorium today

After that Isaac is driving me straight to airport cause I am leaving today heading to Skopje for Mozilla Balkans 2010 (which I am very excited about it also !) I will probably post about how the Developers meetup went tomorrow night from Skopje (and how was my travel…not that anyone cares…anyway I am protected from a penguin )

Local food spinach-like and banana-like :P

IDLELO has been for me a strong life experience, and I want during the next weeks to write a post summarizing what we have done, how efficient we were and what’s next out of the moves we made I want once again to thanks publicly Issac for all his support down here and Fedora project for enabling me to help the development of Africa Fedora Communities. We need to work on many things (media, culture, l10n, events, people etc) and we have a long way to go… but the best are yet to come for Fedora, let’s all make it happen!

See ya in Skopje!

Ben and I collaborating on the booth

Today we tried to get as early as possible at the venue because we had to make sure that our booth is polished and nice for the first day of the event. Registration was done and Isaac did a great work on the booth Many people were asking and getting some freshly burnt CDs and DVDs. We even had the chance to meet the Minister of Communications that came by the event.(kinda disappointing cause we were informed about VP coming over). We also made a great contact (which will probably end up in a meeting) with a computers assembler and distribution company that were enthusiastic about the OEM solutions that Fedora can provide to them.

Ethiopia was also a trageted country today :)

Keynotes were on their way and I finally had the pleasure to meet John “maddog” Hall in person just before his keynote.

Street markets are commonplace in Ghana

We then left the event for a while just to go to the nearest road market and buy some really nice local formal dresses that we would later use on the Cultural Dinner.

John "maddog" Hall giving his speech

Returning to the venue again just in time for the inspiring talk by Maddog and the really funny “counter-m$” part of it

When we were done we all left for the Cultural Dinner dressed up but unfortunately without Isaac (we was kinda sick, take care my friend!).

Can I be a citizen of Beerland too Mr. maddog? :P

Apparently the Dinner was held in the State of House of Ghana and on the main Hall Ben and I joined Maddog who was dressed up in his “culture” (peace-love-linux!) We had some great time talking about all sorts of stuff and the dancers and singers were a great show. Unfortunately we had to leave early cause we needed to make the final changes in our presentations, which we did after we adventurously returned to my hotel.

View of the Ballroom

Tomorrow we are going to have a workshop and a talk to give and i hope Isaac is well again to be on his finest fedora-mood

Rain and Hammer :)

Day started late cause everything was stuck on the traffic. We got wet going to the event and started building our booth. He had some problems (no A/C, no extension cords, no suppotive stuff) but they were some nice guys helping as with the setup and Ben and Isaac made some nice job decorating the booth.

Isaac doing his magic on the booth

In fact we did not enjoyed our initial setup so much, ’cause everyone was coming to get some “freebies” and we had to update our policy and our setup. We were surprised by the excited people ready to hear everything about our projects and we gave them what they wanted

"First" in crowding also!

FOSSFA General Assembly was on the way so not having access to it we took some time off and went to prepare some flyers about the Gnome Project and hit the Mall (yeah there is mall in Accra) for some food.

The day ended with brainstorming and building up some nice marketing stuff with Ben back at the hotel.

Isaac and Ben on the mall (in Accra! :P)

So today we made many contacts with virtually every country in Africa, local LUGs, and companies and some it seems that more locales are coming for Fedora Swahili (or Kiswahili) is one of them and we are pretty excited about that

Tomorrow is going to be the start of the conference and we have to be sure that we have enough swag and power for coping with that! So goodnight!

Outside AITI center :)

The spirit of this “un-conference” (sic) was to get to know each other and exchange knowledge in an informal way That sounds as the fedora way of doing things and so was it!

The Main auditorium

Firstly we were given 2 minutes to introduce ourselves and why our project is on IDLELO. I introduced Fedora project and me and stressed out the localization potentials through Fedora, Transifex and foss in general. On the next phase people chose what ideas presented would like to be expanded in group talks. Guess what! Fedora Localization Project was one of the 4 groups I presented hands-on the workflow of our l10n and got some nice feedback and concerns from the people.

The great thing about today was that for the first time in those regions someone presented them a way to have a whole operating system localized and everyone was pretty excited about that! I worked closely with Ben (from Gnome) to make sure we can enable them to do so and I we even managed to get a roadmap on certain cases!

Namely we are speaking about Akan (Twi etc), Ga and Ewe to say the least On Akan we have a handful of people ready to get started and I make the final arrangements on infrastructure side (Tx, MLs etc) to make sure that we gonna get started on the localization workshop on Wednesday Ben is also in contact with Gnome guys to make this happen in Gnome side too…

Accra LUG was happy to be introduced to our local Ambassador Isaac Sanni-Thomas and I pretty sure that now that they are going to have Fedora in their language they gonna embrace Isaac and Fedora!

Chilli Food right ahead!

I had some really interesting conversations with many people ranging from enabling local LUGs to distributing media and  low cost bandwidth solutions.. Comment if you want me to write more about these..

Isaac gets ready for his next events!

We also did some nice brainstorming about what a collaboration between Gnome Fedora and existing translation memories would be and I think that we can set up a process of collaborating and making sure that the end-user in this region has a completely translated system.

I have even brainstormed about community portals (I am very proud about our beta one) and even showcased Fedora hosted Moksha framework (neat and fast

Ocean , beer and foss... and not exactly in that order...

Later on the afternoon we had the wonderful chance to drink some beers by the Ocean in a calm cafe by the sea… We also had dinner in the same pace we did last night (sticking with the safe choice i guess )

Crazy and busy town.. Accra in the night

Tomorrow is booth setup time so stay tuned for some really nice pics!

See ya all!