SFD 2006 in Ethiopia
Press Release – Lucynix in association with Ethiopian Free and Open Source Software Network (EFOSSNet), will be celebrating Software Freedom Day (SFD) at the British Council from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm. SFD is a worldwide effort to promote the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and is globally celebrated on September 16,2006…
Software Freedom Day in Ethiopia started at 8:30am on September 16th 2006 at the British Council located in central Addis Ababa. It was set up in two separate rooms each across from each other.
A number of dignitaries including H.E. W/ro Hirut Deleb, Minister of Women Affairs; representatives from UNECA; Network of Women’s Associations (NEWA); German Development Cooperation; ICT Professionals from private and government organizations; University & College students and young ICT professionals took part in the event.
Each participant signed in on arrival and took with them a goody bag that we prepared, which included a calendar, t-shirt, Ubuntu live CD, and EFOSSNet & LinuxChix brochures all corresponding to the days event (SFD). An SFD presentation was running on the background on a big screen all through the event. After the participants were seated, Hanan Abdulrashid, Lucynix Coordinator gave the opening remark and was followed by our guest speakers.
The most interesting part of our program was the Software demonstrations which included various software demonstrations by students from different universities and colleges which we thought gave the students a good opportunity to show their work. There were also demonstrations on Redhat, fedora and Ubuntu & OpenOffice.
After the software demo, we got 4 volunteers (2 females, 2 males) to take part in the Questions & Answers competition we had organized. This Competition was divided into two groups. The first competition focused on basic Linux where as the second competition focused on Linux System Administration not forgetting SFD related questions for both groups.
We closed the program by awarding the Q&A competition winners (one male & one female!) as well as the software demo organizers an interesting book each- Guide to UNIX using Linux.
In conclusion, we had 115 participants not counting the organizers; we distributed commentaries and got many ‘Keep it ups.’ We had a Lucynix registration desk in order to recruit new members. We had 57 new members! Almost all female participants registered including a lot of male participants. We had good media coverage. In other words the event was a blast beyond our expectations. It was fun!
Oh, one more thing - We are already looking forward to celebrate SFD 07!!
Our Sponsors
- British Council
- UNECA
- CATIA
- EITPA
LinuxChix Africa
Our program for the day looked like this:
- Welcoming Remark by Hanan Abdulrashid, Lucynix Co-ordinator
- Opening Speech by H.E. W/ro Hirut Delebo, Minister of Ministry of Women’s Affairs
- Keynote address by Ato Abebe Chekol, EFOSSNet Secretariat
Open Source & E-learning by Zinash Shikur, GTZ
- Software Demonstration
- Tea Break
Q&A Competition
Closing & Award