FreesB 2010 Conference

ProjectsPublished March 13, 2010 at %I:%M %p No Comments

FREESB10

On Sept.11/12 2010 Flossk.org with flossal.org and Universiteti i Vlorës is organising the first Software Freedom in Balkans Conference.

The Free Software in Balkans (FreeSBalkans) conference is an annual event, which will gather a regional audience once a year for lectures and presentations by a variety of international and national professionals who will present the latest developments in the global FOSS community. It will travel from country to country, year to year to different locations. The first conference of this kind is going to be hosted by the University of Vlora, in Albania. By starting in Albania, we hope to help create a community there that will continue next year to host it’s own conference.

Invited are be speakers from and speeches from the whole Balkan area. Special focus will be on FLOSS in public administration.

Software Hacking Rooms for different projects are planned. The SFK09 had speakers from 16 countries, mostly from the Balkans, we hope that they will come again and bring more people.

The conference Free Software in Balkans is aiming to be an annual meeting of the free software users, developers and supporters in the Balkan countries. It will travel from country to country, year to year to different locations. The Conference will gather professionals, academics and enthusiasts who share the vision that software should be free and open for the community to develop and customise to its needs, and that knowledge is a communal property and free and open to everyone.

The conference will be a traditional event, which will gather a regional audience once a year for lectures and presentations by a variety of international and national professionals who will present the latest developments in the global FOSS community. The conference should bring all the activists from the Balkans to one place for cooperation.

The conference will also be used as a meeting point for a network of individuals, associations and companies with the aim of sponsoring and initiating projects which benefit the people of Balkans, by establishing it as one of the European centers of FOSS, which should result in commercial benefits for the Region.

Other aims of the conference are to introduce Balkan businesses and public to low cost alternatives to expensive proprietary software, to train local people in the latest developments in software and social-collaboration tools, to promote respect for legal licenses, and introduce the public to the best methods for localization of software and knowledge. The first conference of this kind is going to be hosted by the University of Vlora, in Albania. The idea of the Balkan conference comes from Flavia Marzano and James Mike DuPont.

The organizers are the University of Vlora, the FLOSSK (Free/Libre Open Source Software Association of Kosova), FOSS-AL (Free and Open Source Software Association of Albania), and the Albanian Academy of Sciences.

Why should you come to Albania to promote free software, open knowledge and open society?

The Albanians are a very interesting people with a long history. Their land is mountainous, but with a wonderful Adriatic Coast and the country is very beautiful. It is well worth the trip and the people are also very friendly and welcoming.

Albania has been unfortunately historically cut off from the world, there has been very little contact with the “West” before 1992, since then they have been working on establishing better relationships with the rest of the world. History_of_Albania#Recent_history_.282001_to_present History_of_post-Communist_Albania. The reason why I mention this in the beginning is that it is very important to understand why there has been so little collaboration with the FLOSS world, it is, I believe, because there has been very little contact and interaction in the past. The exchange of ideas and free travel has been limited, and there is very little knowledge for example in America, where I come from, about Albania. I have been working the past two years on improving this situation and helping people there make positive and enriching connections with others, and that is also the reason why I am writing this letter. I would like to encourage you all to find our more about this great place and people.

The people of these regions cannot travel to Europe, most of them cannot get a visa to enter Europe, even if they are working on EU integration, they cannot visit the great free software events and even if they have a visa, the cost of travel is prohibitive. That is why we have to create events in the region, ideally there should be many events and also training possibilities for the people. If we cannot come to these events, we should make videos and also a document for translation that can be presented instead.

The purpose and goals of the conference are:

To be a pleasant experience for all the participants and speakers.
To help the free software users and developers in Balkans to exchange experiences and ideas between them, to set contacts and relations, and to increase the collaboration and cooperation between them.
To promote in the Balkan countries Free and Open Source Software, open and participatory knowledge, information technology education, free culture and open society using open and free communication standards.
To introduce Balkan businesses and public to low cost alternatives to expensive proprietary software, to train local people in the latest developments in software and social-collaboration tools, etc.

Considering the pioneering nature of this conference, the focus will be on the following topics:

Albanian language talks.
What is free software and open source
How can free and open source software help in economic development.
How can public and private institutions benefit from free and open source software.
Copyrights, licensing and patents.
Wikimedia and Free Culture.
OpenStreetMap, and Open Source Geo Information Systems.
Use of free and open source software for schools and business.
How to work with Microsoft using Free Software and Open Source.
Developers presenting work on projects.
Use and development of free and open source software
Use and development of Free and Open Source Software for:

What you can do

We would like you to consider to come to Albania to speak and visit the region at our conference this year. Ideally you would come to the conference in Vlore and the second one in Prishtina http://kosovasoftwarefreedom.org/ and we would also make some workshops in the one and one half weeks in between. Ideally we will be able to find sponsors who will provide donations to cover the travel expenses. For that we need to have a list of good speakers to present to the possible sponsors. This dilemma can be solved by finding people like you who would be willing to speak in September on the 11/12 in Vlore Albania.

We would like you to create videos lectures that can be shown at the conference, if you cannot come in person. A lot of the people in the region do not have good skills in reading and writing English, and having to use texts written in English is difficult, we want to translate and localize the documentation of key projects into Albanian, but also create training videos. The plan is to produce introductory videos so that people don’t have to read but can watch and listen. The ideal is to have the text of the videos spoken and written so that we can create localized videos based on that.

our goal is to create more awareness for FLOSS in the (South eastern Europe/Balkans) we have been working with the regional groups. Of course many of the other countries are far more ahead than Kosovo and Albania and have already established legal entities. We want to get representatives from the various free software groups come to our conferences, both international and regional groups should be represented.

Authors are encouraged to also submit papers on any other topic not listed above but related to free and open source software. Although the scope of the conference is the region of Balkans, speakers from any part of the world (especially from EU and US) are welcome as well.

See the Conference registration page here:
http://freesb.eu/index.php/FreeSBalkans/FreeSB2010/

Facebook Page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/FREES-B/255314116446

Location of the UNI: http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/634110108

Location of camping : marine academy campus
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/772630912

We will provide tents for all people who want to camp. There are showers and toillettes at the marine academy campus.