After 48 hours of being a total geek… We’ve safely made it back to reality. Software Freedom Day 2011 in Davao has been a blast. No, two blasts… because there have been 2 Software Freedom Day events that happened in Davao City!
Software Freedom Day USEP September 16, 2011
The first one took place at USEP on the 16th of the month, a Friday. Indeed, it’s off charts when it comes to simultaneously celebrating Software Freedom Day along with the international Open Source Community, but they’ve got their reasons for doing so. “USEP is going to have another important event tomorrow”, said the man in-charge.
The Davao Bloggers were most welcome during the event as one of the supporters to USEP’s celebration of Free and Open Source Software. Talks about Ubuntu, Big Blue Button, Android Development, LAMP, Firefox Add-ons and Open Source in Education have been given.
All talks don’t only emphasize that all these applications can be are Open Source (and therefore free) but also that these programs can match the needs for most people who are accustomed to the proprietary softwares like Microsoft Office and such.
Davao Bloggers win in WordPress Install Fest
There has also been an install fest in which two members of the Davao Bloggers Community took part. One of which happens to be Jin Maning, who’s also an active DevCon volunteer and Philippine Teens Media’s very own Student Blogger, Kevin Paquet. It looked like Jin and Kevin were in a bit of trouble during the WordPress Install fest but managed to finish ahead of the others who, if not mistaken, didn’t made it. Most credit here definitely goes to Jin, while Kevin left a little hit that after Jin had extracted WordPress, installation may proceed in the browser. Sorry for you two though, because you cannot enter next year’s install fest! :p
SFD Ateneo de Davao was supposed to be my first event in the Open Source Community, but then, it happened to be this one. I’d like to congratulate the organizers and all the students behind SFD USEP for a wonderful afternoon in the open source world. I’m definitely going to try some of those programs out!
Software Freedom Day Ateneo de Davao September 17, 2011
This Software Freedom Day was the one that I was most excited about. For one, Kevin Paquet was one of the speakers. Secondly, it was a trip to Ateneo’s CS Division. Kevin has told me a lot about the 6th floor of the Finster Building and was like me, excited to take a trip home at the place where he started his College life two years ago as an Information Technology Student.
SFD Ateneo required a minimal entrance fee of 20 pesos which was well worth it! We’ve come to see awesome speakers introducing us to Ubuntu (which wasn’t all new to me thanks to Iñaki of USEP who talked about it a day earlier), WordPress Basics and Beyond courtesy of Davao Blogger’s WordPress Nina, Kevin Paquet, Gaming on Ubuntu courtesy of Kevin’s former classmate Herc and many, many more talks. Note: This is just a fraction of everything that was going on!
The organizers made 4 classrooms available to all participants of the Software Freedom Day. Each of these classrooms had its own speaker and topic to discuss, thus allowing 4 talks to happen simultaneously making it hard for us to cover them all. All in all there have been 16 different topics divided into 4 different time slots that were discussed with each speaker given an hour to wow their attendees.
Not to be biased but I’ve found Kevin’s talk as the most entertaining. I
Kevin Paquet and his "WordPress Basics and Beyond" presentation
Yet until then I just have to be content with all the information that I’ve gathered out of his talk and the other talks that I attended to.
DevCon also gave their presentation just before everyone headed home. There’s going to be a big event in Manila this coming December 2 and there’s also going to be an Event for Davao in October. DevCon is planning to visit Kevin’s school, the Philippine Women’s College of Davao soon for a seminar, talks are still in progress for that one.
“I’m really looking forward to that. I want people to know that there is quality I.T at PWC. That’s also one of the reasons why I encouraged my fellow I.T Students from PWC to attend to the SFD, kahit late na. Go lang ng go!”, said PWC’s BSIT Student President Kevin himself.
Before I shoo you away with this very long post, I’d like to congratulate the Computer Studies Division of the Ateneo de Davao University for a very successful Software Freedom Day! I really appreciate all the effort you have exerted into it and look forward to return next year to learn more about Open Source programs!
And to you, my dear readers.. Thanks for taking the time to read through this very long blog post of mine. It’s a first! 😀 I hope you enjoyed!
IMAGES TAKEN FROM SOFTWARE FREEDOM DAY 2011 ATENEO (‘di ko nadala cam ko sa USEP T_T):
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I was hoping some sponsors where present on that day just what like USEP was having, ie; DabawGNU, software companies and the like. and unfortunately we were made to stand up during the opening program, I wish there were chairs that I can sit. ^-^
I somewhat expected that the AdDU SFD would be filled with students from different Universities. Sayang. And just like Kuya Faust said, I somewhat expected that the speakers from USEP would also attend the 2nd day of SFD. But it was a nice setting. Speakers were also good…bisan studyante pa sila. 🙂
I somewhat felt that the Open Source community in Davao got split by these two events. SFD Ateneo is not a continuation of SFD USEP, these are two separate events dedicated for Software Freedom Day… for the fact that SFD ADDU was I guess, 90% student powered (I think they barely had some corporate sponsors), I highly salute them for a great outcome.
It was just a bit unfortunate that this 17th of September marked a lot of other events rin.. Like for example examination for most Weekend Classes (My whole IT at PWC wanted to go, but they had their midterm exam to attend to).