Native Language, Community and Certifification
State of the Project
By Italo Vignoli, Michael Meeks, Florian Effenberger
The Document Foundation and LibreOffice after five years: what we have achieved in term of awareness and reputation, development and quality assurance, infrastructure and organization. The project figures - developers, other core volunteers, native language projects - and a look at the future.
Bio: Italo is a founding member of the LibreOffice project, and a former BoD member. He has been involved in free software marketing and communications since 2004, is in charge of marketing and PR at The Document Foundation since the early days, and oversees the certification program.
State of the Project Youtube Video
One year of Associazione LibreItalia
By Gabriele Ponzo and Andrea Castellan
"Retrospective and perspective"
Associazione LibreItalia ONLUS was founded on August 2014. As of today it has more than 200 members and animates "LibreOffice Italian Community" on Google+ with about 2.600 users. Goal of this Association is indeed to aggregate all users of LibreOffice Italian Community to accelerate the deployment and promotion of LibreOffice and all FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software). Moreover the Association supports the dissemination of digital culture, Open Data Formats (just like ODF - Open Document Format), Open Data and Open Knowledge. Yet in the first year LibreItalia has been recognized as the unique italian association having the status of “Affiliate Member” of OSI (Open Source Initiative) and has been selected as part of the “National Coalition for Digital Skills” established by AgID (Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale - Digital Italian Agency). During the talk they’ll be explained and shared some main activities brought forward by the Association, including:
- Schools support (primary and high) on choosing Free Software to be used for didactics and administrative purposes, through workshops and free trainings;
- Training to teachers and students on FLOSS and LibreOffice through a formative project called “Grow up with bread and free software”, included in AgID’s national platform for digital skills;
- Publishing an e-book useful as a giude in schools which presents FLOSS migration’s adavantages in schools and gives useful tools to adopt LibreOffice in didactics and documents management;
- Production of teaching materials on LibreOffice (slides, manuals, guides and tutorials) released under Creative Commons license;
- Supporting to ECDL (European Computer Driving License) based on FLOSS products through the arrangement of teaching materials, exam preparation exercises and on-line simulations;
- Organization of seminars open to students, parents and teachers about the importance of digital freedom;
- Promotion of meetings in schools (but not only) about conscious use of Internet targeted to parents and teachers; …and much more, including positive news about huge migrations on which the association is giving massive support.
Bio: Andrea Castellani IT Advisor, free software specialist, TDF Member, co-founder and BoD member of LibreItalia ONLUS association, works at Umbria Region in ICT department. He worked on Open Source Competence Center of Umbria Region (CCOS) and in LibreUmbria project (http://www.libreumbria.it), a regional initiative to widely adopt LibreOffice productivity suite on regional and local government, schools and authorities in Umbria Region.
Gabriele Ponzo: Early adopter from StarOffice time, he joined Progetto Linguistico Italiano OpenOffice during the 2009 Conference in Orvieto, and has been part of OpenOffice.org community until LibreOffice was born. Training and support are his most activities and he's working on LibreUmbria project as a teacher. TDF member since september 2013, currently in Membership Committee, co-founder of LibreItalia ONLUS, where he's also in the BoD. Certified Teacher and Migration Expert (by TDF) since January 2015.
One year of Associazione LibreItalia Youtube Video
New extensions and templates repository
By Andreas Mantke
The new LibreOffice Extensions- and Templates-Repository The talk will give an overview on the new LibreOffice extensions- and templates repository that will improve the way for contributors to provide their LibreOffice extensions and templates. It will also show the implementation of new messaging features for contributors, reviewers etc. and the new more shiny design and structure of the websites view (and presentation to the plain user).
Bio: Born in 1959, I'm working for a social insurance institution in Germany. Since autumn 2002 I support LibreOffice and it's antecessor. Currently I'm one of the members of the Board of Directors at The Document Foundation and working on admin task for LibreOffice and The Document Foundation, especially on Plone related tasks.
New extensions and templates repository
Amazing hidden features of Writer
By Németh László
Easter eggs have been removed from LibreOffice, but as a standard office suite, LibreOffice still has got (too) many secrets. As a developer of hidden or not so hidden LibreOffice features (for example, Hunspell, LibreLogo or the new Emoji short name replacement support), and as a Writer consultant of an academic journal and other publications, I will show amazing Writer tricks and solutions for typesetting and graphical design, introducing also new hidden features of LibreOffice 5.0.
Bio: Software engineer at Collabora, TDF member, activist of FSF.hu Foundation, Hungary.
Community Lobby: Yes, We Can (Influence)
By Italo Vignoli
The LibreOffice project represents the best alternative to Microsoft Office, and is the champion of the ODF standard file format. Because of this situation, the LibreOffice community is often involved in interactions with politicians. Although we do not have the same economic leverage of Microsoft, we can nevertheless influence politicians using communication tools. The presentation will summarize the experience of the Italian community in this area.
Bio: Italo is a founding member of the LibreOffice project, and a former BoD member. He has been involved in free software marketing and communications since 2004, is in charge of marketing and PR at The Document Foundation since the early days, and oversees the certification program.
Community Lobby: Yes, We Can (Influence)
A case study on Vietnamese localization
By Nguyen Vu Hung
The past, current status and and how did we engage the community.
In this session, I will talk about how the LibreOffice community was united, what we have been doing and the highlighted topics in community engagement as well as current status and where we are going from now. Some interesting cultural findings will be shared here with the hope that they are useful for those who works between the West and the East.
A case study on Vietnamese localization Youtube Video
Localising to Tamil and its deployment in Malaysian Tamil-medium public schools
By Elanjelian Venugopal and Arun Kumar
The presentation will cover the following subtopics:
- Challenges faced by Tamil Community in localizing free software in general and LO in particular, including the issues surround the lack of standardization of technical terms in Tamil.
- Challenges in localizing due to the difficulty in understanding the context of term usage (i.e. different words need to be used based on context, but as context information is not readily available, multiple iterations are required before the terms are translated properly).
- Progress achieved in implementing LO in Tamil across 72 schools serving 29,000 children annually. How this was achieved with limited budget and manpower, and why it has proven popular among the low-income communities. Nonetheless, due to limitations highlighted above the likelihood of LO being used higher-end work remains limited, without serious investment from a Government or a large charitable Foundation.
Bio:Elanjelian Venugopal joined the free software movement
in 2002, when he led a team effort to localize Mozilla to Tamil. He also
became the OpenOffice.org Tamil localization project co-owner in 2003.
In 2004 co-founded Thamizha.org, which promotes Open Source software
among Tamil speakers worldwide, and coordinates its localization to
Tamil. Elanjelian is also the owner of the LanguageTool Tamil project.
Arun Kumar has been active participant of Tamil Free Software movement
since 2007. He has been a co-lead of Ubuntu Tamil localization project,
and currently co-heads the localization of all Mozilla projects to
Tamil.
Localizing to Tamil and its deployment in Malaysian Tamil-medium public schools
LibreOffice Community in India
By Rajesh Ranjan and Chandrakant Dhutadmal
Opportunity under Digital India Initiative Abstract: The Digital India programme is a flagship programme of the Government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. Digital India is a rich and complex program. Recently a policy document is launched in which huge importance is given to open source solutions. In the same document, under "3.22 Annexure - II Illustrative list of OSS" LibreOffice is the preferred application for documentation. The Digital India initiatives aims at reaching to 250000 villages of India by 2017. The above perspective is important for LibreOffice and as an organization, it should try to spread its wings in different parts of India with the help of Indian community. The presentation will try to showcase the need of the LibreOffice Community activity in India in the new scenario. Also, the talk will try to discuss and brainstorm with the libreoffice global leads and participating Indian community about the approach that will be beneficial for the LibreOffice and Indian community both. We will also show some of our efforts done till now. We will also be able to talk about efforts of various organizations in India like NeGP, C-DAC, IIT's, Language Communities, e-Learning module of Jharkhand Police and several others to spread word about LibreOffice.
Bio: Mr. Rajesh Ranjan, Open Source Community Manager, NeGD, Govt of India. Mr. Rajesh Ranjan is a community strategist, localization professional, journalist and writer. Currently he is working as an Open Source Community Manager, National e-Governance Division (NeGD), Govt. of India. He worked as Language Maintainer, Hindi with Red Hat for more than 10 years. He is the vision behind the FUEL Project and he is coordinating the project since he started it in 2008. He has done pioneering work in bringing FOSS Computer in Hindi. Also, he is coordinating Hindi language community of Fedora, Mozilla, and LibreOffice. He is associated with GNOME and KDE along with several open source projects. He is a Fedora Ambassador and Mozilla Reps as well. Rajesh also mentored Maithili Localization community to bring Maithili Computer. Before joining Red Hat, he worked with reputed media company like The Indian Express Group and Literate World, Inc as a journalist. Recently he wrote a techincal book on how to make your own computer in your language titled 'Apna Computer Apni Bhasha Mein' in Hindi, published by Samayik Prakashan. Email - rajesh672@gmail.com
Mr. Chandrakant Dhutadmal, Senior Technical Officer, C-DAC, Pune. Mr. Chandrakant Dhutadmal is a post graduate in computer engineering from university of Pune. Starting his career as a University of Pune approved
faculty in computer engineering stream, he served various engineering colleges for a period of five years before joining Centre for development of advanced computing (C-DAC) in January, 2006 as Member Technical Staff.
Currently he is working as Senior Technical officer, in Graphics and Intelligence based scripting technology (GIST) group of C-DAC and coordinates Translation activities related to Open Source Software for various Indic languages. His specialization includes Localization and Internationalization, Project Management, Software and Quality Engineering and is currently working on various research projects of State and National importance. He is a Certified Localization Professional (CLP Level 1) from The Institute of Localization Professional (TILP) since 2010 and Distinction holder in online certification course in eGov of Govt. of Maharashtra. He is an active member of free and open source projects like LibreOffice, Mozilla Firefox and FUEL project. He also likes to spread word about Localization and Open Source softwares by holding talks in conferences and other gatherings. He has recently started an Task Force of Software Testing and Quality Management within Mozilla India community. During his tenure at C-DAC, Mr. Dhutadmal has been instrumental in getting and executing various projects like Marathi Vishwakosh and others from state govt. He has participated in various National and International events like elitex, agis , "16th Annual LRC Internationalisation & Localisation Conference" in Limerick, Ireland and "Hindi World Conference" at Johanesburg, South Africa.
LibreOffice community in India Youtube Video
LibreOffice in Asia
By Danishka Navin
Most of the Asian countries actively take part in upstream contribution of FOSS projects and also run local events to promote FOSS products and services. But the presence of LibreOffice in Asia is really low. How can we build stronger LibreOffice community in Asia?
Bio: Danishka Navin is a DevOps Specialist by profession and he is engaged in public speaking, community building/development and conducts awareness sessions on Free and Open Source Software. He is a member of The Document Foundation. Danishka is also an active participant of several FOSS projects including Fedora, LibreOffice and OLPC/Sugar. In 2009 he founded Hanthana Linux Project to promote an Open Source culture in Sri Lanka.
LibreOffice in Asia Youtube Video
Translation process used in LibreOffice project
By Christian Lohmaier
this is a lighning-talk style short overview of the translation process used in LibreOffice project.
- from source to pootle
- what is master, the different projects
- processing and merging back into the code → why devs should not commit to translations repo
- what if you want to compile version with your own translations/most-up-to-date ones
Localization of Paraguay's indigenous language Guarani
By Giovanni Caligaris
The social and political impact LibreGuarani will have on the Paraguayan culture. Finally the distribution of LibreOffice.
Bio: I was born in Paraguay, and moved to the United States when I was 13. I lived in North America for 15 years and graduated in Business out of Toronto, Canada. I moved back to Paraguay last October and began my work on LibreGuarani and promoting open source culture in Paraguay.
Localization of Paraguay's indigenous language Guarani Youtube Video
Using phpList to distribute TDF/LibreOffice press releases
By Italo Vignoli
A tutorial about the new distribution system for press releases (and other announcements) based on a hosted phpList instance provided by the phpList project. How to create a "campaign" to distribute a press release, and how to manage mailing lists to further improve the distribution quality.
Bio: Italo is a founding member of the LibreOffice project, and a former BoD member. He has been involved in free software marketing and communications since 2004, is in charge of marketing and PR at The Document Foundation since the early days, and oversees the certification program.
Using phpList to distribute TDT/LibreOffice press releases Youtube Video
Marketing LibreOffice for NLPs
By Italo Vignoli
Marketing and advocating LibreOffice is a key endeavour for the project at large, and for native language projects in their geographies. The workshop will present a large number of strategies and tactics aimed at increasing LibreOffice awareness and reputation, and several low cost tools to deploy the tactics at local level.
Marketing LibreOffice for NLPs
How to support LibreOffice with publishing projects
By Sonia Montegiove
How to supporting the diffusion of digital culture and free software? How to introduce LibreOffice and its opportunities? In addition to the many training activities put in place, LibreItalia onlus triggered many editorial collaborations useful to present solutions, best practices of italian migration, news about software and community.
An important channel on free software, edited by several members of LibreItalia, was activated in recent weeks on Tech Economy, an information portal dedicated to managers, businnesmen and professionals who want to learn and understand the impact of technology in business development in small and medium-sized enterprises. Another interesting collaboration was actived with a vertical portal about school (very followed by teachers) where LibreItalia presents particular didactic proposals using LibreOffice. LibreItalia has prepared an ebook "Growing up on bread and free software" where the association intends to recount the experience in schools, and also make available the materials prepared for the realization of training courses in order to help schools choosing LibreOffice as referral program. The ebook will also be printed by a public financing during 2016 and distributed to some schools by a special series "The Notebooks of volunteering". Other ebooks will be published in 2016: security and LibreOffice, open format, LibreOffice's guide for children and LibreOffice's exercise book for ECDL exam preparation. LibreItalia's blog is the primary means of communication of the association projects, advice on the use of LibreOffice and publication of best practices of italian migration.
Bio: Sonia Montegiove is ICT specialist and trainer at Province od Perugia. She's contributor for many ICT magazine like Girl Geek Life and Tech Economy. She worked in the LibreUmbria projetc team and she is cofounder and president of LibreItalia.
How to support LibreOffice with publishing projects Youtube Video
The Symhelper adventure or a crowdfunding tale which really worked
By Maurizio Berti
Symhelper helps the creation of In-books (books in symbols) by the criteria of Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC). The In-books have a particular importance for the youth with communication difficulties, because they are a fundamental tool to enrich their learning experience, their vocabulary and their understanding of what they are experiencing. Symhelper takes as input a PDF file with AAC symbols, draws the square outline around those symbols and places them on an ODF file, so that the parents can now focus on how to arrange symbols or inserting images to create books, instead of on the operation of outlining symbols performed manually until now. Symhelper was entirely crowdfunded and its version 1.0 was released last July under the GPL license. Symhelper includes a python core script, a LibreOffice Basic extension, the ImageMagick and ghostscript utilities. The presentation will show how the idea was born, how the tool works on LibreOffice and the implementation details.
Bio: I was born in Cesena - Italy in the seventies and have a Degree in Microelectronic Engineering and Integrated Circuit Design, which I chose to keep my distance from software. It didn't work since I have been involved in Open Source Software and Desktop migration processes since 2000, focusing mainly on change management strategies for Open Source Office suites.
The Symhelper adventure or a crowdfunding tale which really work Youtube Video
Certification reviews 4 professional trainers and migrators - win/win for candidates & community
By Lothar Becker
The talk will give a short introduction about the possibilities of certification of migrators and trainers and the prerequisites and the procedure to get the certification. It will summarize the Win/Win situation of such a certification status for the candidate as well as for the community. First experiences will be closing the talk with a short look in the future.
Bio: I'm active in the certification committee for migrators and trainers with conceptual work for the certification process and participated in the review sessions as a reviewer of certification candidates. In my bizz I'm doing professional services around LibreOffice like migrations and trainings.
Certification revieaws 4 professional trainers and migrators Youtube Video
LibreOffice Certification in Italy
By Italo Vignoli
A project wide marketing campaign to promote certification, and spread the word about support from certified professionals. The strategy and the tactics to improve the awareness of certification, and to increase the number of people who apply, get certified and help to grow the ecosystem by offering high added value services on top of LibreOffice