archives/2007/Nicaragua

SFD Nicaragua 2007

1. Introduction

The Nicaraguan GNU/Linux User Groups organized for the very first time the Software Freedom Day in Managua, Nicaragua with the participation of the local FOSS community:

• Grupo Ubuntu Nicaragua

• Suse-NUI Nicaragua

• Grupo Fedora-ni

• Debian GNU/Linux Nicaragua

Due to the fact that September 14 and 15 are both local holidays, we decided to hold the SFD event on Thursday September 13th, 2007 in the Universidad de Ciencias Comerciales (UCC).

One particular reason for celebrating this event in the UCC is the fact that this is one of the Universities that has showed a strong support for FOSS in our country, migrating recently several departments to Ubuntu Linux.

2. Organization of the event

On August 3rd. the Nicaraguan GNU/Linux User Groups had their first meeting in order to plan the celebration of the Software Freedom Day 2007 in Nicaragua.

The SFD 2007 Team was composed by 35 members of the local LUGs that were divided in 9 sub-teams:

• General Coordination (responsible for the overall coordination and preparation of the event)
• Logistics (support all other teams as required)
• Multimedia Team (coordinating the games and distro demo and testing area, infoscreen and primary burning station)
• Installfest (installfest area and secondary burning station)
• Accreditation (responsible for developing a registering system, producing statistics of the event and gathering feedback from the participants)
• Sponsorship and Finance (responsible for the fund generation and management)
• PR and publicity (in charge of the press and marketing efforts)
• Methodological Coordination (responsible for the conferences and topics, documentation)
• Corporate Image (producing artwork and the radio spot for the SFD Nicaragua event)

From August 3rd. to September 13th. a total of 11 meetings were celebrated (the last one at 6 am on the very day of the event), an SFD Nicaragua mailing list was setup at the ubuntu.org.ni domain and a news briefing of the activities were posted on the LUGs mailing lists twice a week.

3. Press and marketing

The SFD Nicaragua 2007 event received plenty of press coverage both before and after the event from the Nicaraguan newspapers, radio stations and TV channels:

3.1 Articles in Nicaraguan newspapers (5):

• September 9, 2007: El Nuevo Diario: Día Internacional del Software Libre online version]

• September 12, 2007: Períodico Hoy: Paraíso para Informáticos scan]

• September 13, 2007: El Nuevo Diario: Un geniecito de la informática online version]

• September 15, 2007: Períodico Hoy: Juegos para estudiar scan]

• September 16, 2007: El Nuevo Diario: Celebran el Día de la Libertad del Software online version] scan]

3.2 Interviews in Nicaraguan radio stations (2):

• September 11, 2007: Interview in Radio Universidad

• September 12, 2007: Interview in Radio Ya [still photos: 1, 2]

3.3 Interviews in Nicaraguan TV channels (4):

• September 6, 2007: Interview in Primera Hora/Channel 2: SFD07 youtube link]

• September 10, 2007: Interview in ESTV Channel 11: SFD07 youtube link] [still photos: 1, 2, 3]

• September 13, 2007: Interview in Telenica Channel 8: SFD07 [still photos: 1, 2]

• September 13, 2007: Interview in ESTV Channel 11: SFD07 [still photos: 1, 2]

3.4 Radio Spots

From August 24 until September 13, an SFD radio spot was aired daily (four times a day) on the following local stations:

• Radio Ya
• Radio Maranatha

3.5 SFD in the Nicaraguan websphere:

The SFD Nicaragua Marketing Team launched a successful campaign in order to raise awareness about the FOSS and publicize the SFD event in the Nicaraguan websites.

Web banners were setup on 35 websites (12 commercial sites, 17 blogs and the 6 websites of the LUGs), including two of the top ten Nicaraguan websites: xolo.com.ni and bacanalnica.com.

Web sites (12):

• http://www.xolo.com.ni/

• http://www.bacanalnica.com/

• http://www.muchobacanal.com/

• http://nicaraguaonline.com.ni/

• http://electronica-uni.blogspot.com/

• http://www.artcafenica.com/

• http://www.nicatech.com.ni

• http://www.carloslaguna.com/

• http://www.simas.org.ni/

• http://moviereviewnica.com/

• http://www.nicaraguaysublog.com

LUGs (6):

• http://www.linux.org.ni/

• http://www.ubuntu.org.ni/

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NicaraguanTeam/

• http://suse-ni.blogspot.com/

• http://debian-ni.blogspot.com/

• http://mifedoracore.blogspot.com/

Blogs (17):

• http://blog.nicaraguaopensource.com/

• http://batuosfera.blogspot.com/

• http://normangaguilar.blogspot.com/

• http://josernestodavila.blogspot.com/

• http://eos87.blogspot.com/

• http://rz0r.blogspot.com/

• http://igordevlog.blogspot.com/

• http://byroncorrales.blogspot.com/

• http://marconipoveda.blogspot.com/

• http://fitoria.blogspot.com/

• http://edgarin.com/

• http://leogg.wordpress.com/

• http://javierreyes.blogspot.com/

• http://igordevlog.blogspot.com/

• http://atmarumsik.blogspot.com/

• http://alexio44.blogspot.com/

• http://glanzas.blogia.com/

• http://bacanalnica.com/blog.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=1510

3.6 SFD and the Linux Tour 2007

The Linux Tour is an ongoing all-year-round activity of the Nicaraguan GNU/Linux User Groups. Several public invitations to assist and celebrate the SFD were made on the August and September Linux Tour events at:

• Universidad de Managua

• Universidad de Managua (campus in León)

• Instituto Pedagogico La Salle

• Instituto de Informática y Sistemas

An estimated number of 250 people assisted to these four pre-SFD events.

3.7 Other marketing efforts

• 2,500 flyers were distributed in the 10 major universities (both public and private) of Managua.
• Movie Review, a local magazine that is distributed freely in supermarkets, gas stations, malls and movie theaters printed an SFD ad for free in their Sept. 8-15 issue. Movie Review distributes 20,000 copies of their magazine weekly in the Managua area.

4. SFD Nicaragua 2007 Activities

4.1 Conferences

The conferences were divided in Education (three lectures in the morning) and programming Languages (three lectures in the afternoon) plus one conference on LDAP+Postfix. In addition there was an open debate on FOSS at the end of the event.

4.1.1 Free Educational Software

The first conference of the day was "Free Educational Software" by two of the youngest members of the Ubuntu-ni LoCo Team; Sharon Gómez Mora and Elkrin Mayorga, both 12 years old.

This was one of the highlights of the event, the purpose of this lecture was to give an insight of the free educational software available on multiple platforms and to demostrate the ease of use of GNU/Linux and Free Software.

It also served as a way to integrate the younger ones in the activities and efforts made by the local FOSS community (see 7. Conclusions).

On a personal comment, all I can say is that it was just amazing to see that the kids *really* knowed what they were talking about. Their professionalism made one think that they were giving this kind of talks every day in front of hundreds of people. To see the face of the attendees to the event while the kids gave their lecture was just priceless.

4.1.2 Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP)

Edgar Guzman, 16 years old and from Guatemala, gave a lecture on the "Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP)".

The LTSP aims to allow resource-poor environments to maximize their available (older) equipment.

Guzman is well known in the Latin American FOSS community. He has been invited to and has participated as a speaker in several conferences in Venezuela, Mexico and Guatemala.

4.1.3 Linux in the Education

Gerald Lanzas, from the Ubuntu-ni LoCo Team, talked about "Linux in the Education" and the Edulinux Project. Edulinux is a distribution based on Fedora aimed at schools, and incorporates the LTSP thin client architecture, as well as education-specific applications.

From Chile, and via voice conference, Luis Sepúlveda, one of the leaders of the Edulinux Chile project talked about their experience in Chilean schools and answered multiple questions from the audience.

4.1.4 Programming Languages

There were three lectures on free programming languages in the afternoon, packed with practical examples:

• Java by Edgar Martinez from El Salvador
• Python by José Celvin Rivas, also from El Salvador
• Ruby on Rails, by Aldo Villagra from Nicaragua

Several interesting projects were born from these three conferences:

• Ubuntu Nicaragua and El Salvador agreed to cooperate in a pilot project in order to develop educational software for the OLPC using Python and Java. A prototype of an OLPC GUI-frontend for the wikipedia has already been written.

• On October 5, the first RoR workshop took place in Managua with the participation of 15 members from the GNU/Linux community. Another workshop will be held in mid-October. The workshops are free for the members of the community and the aim is to develop free software made by the local community. The registration software (made specially for the SFD) has already been released on a GPL License. Future plans include working on and improving a free CMS in Ruby (already in use by http://www.ucc.edu.ni/) and setting up a local RoR developers mailing list.

4.1.5 LDAP + Postfix

This was the last conference of the day, by Alejandro Rodriguez from the SuSE-NUI Nicaragua team. This was a practical conference on how to set up an open SuSE LDAP server.

4.1.6 Panel: FOSS

Concluding the main event, there was an open panel about FOSS, in particular technology trends and the adoption of Free and Open Source Software in Central America.

This panel had the participation of Aldo Villagra and Jorge Dávila from Nicaragua, Edgar Guzman from Guatemala and José Celvin Rivas from El Salvador.

4.2 Installfest

The installfest area was open to the public from 8:00 to 17:00, located aprox. in a 10-15 meters distance from the main hall were the lectures took place. A secondary burninig station was also located here.

4.3 Demo Area

Next to the installfest, there was a multiple purpose area with distro demo PCs (six) and four PCs with free games running on GNU/Linux. The main burning station was also located here.

An infoscreen projected a five-hour-long batch of FOSS and GNU/Linux documentaries, ads, video tutorials and interviews.

As the installfest area, the demo area was open to the public from 8:00 to 17:00.

5. Statistics

Some numbers from the SFD Nicaragua 2007 Event:

• Aprox. 500 people attended to the SFD Nicaragua 2007 Event.
• 428 people were registered on the day of the event.
• 428 folders with documentation about GNU, Linux and FOSS were handed out together with GNU/Linux CDs and DVDs, stickers and other goodies.
• 200 CDs that contained all the presentations of the day (in odp format), Free software for Windows (OOo, Firefox, Gimp, Pidgin), videos and photos of the event were distributed at the end of the day.
• 115 CDs and DVDs with different GNU/Linux distributions burned on the two burning stations.
• 22 installations of GNU/Linux (20 Ubuntu, 2 open SuSE).

6. Photo Galleries

• http://picasaweb.google.com/leo.telsen/SFDNicaragua2007

• http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/gallery/2007/SFD_Nicaragua_2007

7. Conclusions

• The SFD Nicaragua 2007 event was a huge success in terms of the attention gained from the local media and the non-geek public. More than two weeks after the event people continued to call and e-mail the local GNU/Linux groups seeking for information about free software.
• The LTSP and Edulinux projects got some attention from a couple of local schools. As of today, we are having talks with the representatives from these institutions in order to figure out how we best can help them with this initiative.
• At the international level, the Central American communities were brought closer together and work has already begun on some interesting joint projects(see 4.1.4).
• Last, but not least, the involvement of the younger members of the community in the SFD event (see 4.1.4) is seen as a huge step forward for the future of the FOSS movement in our country. Future plans, in particular within the Ubuntu community, includes the establishment of a local computer club for kids and young people.

We want to thank everybody who made this SFD possible:

• SFI for supporting Free Software worldwide - You guys rock!
• UCC for providing the facilities for the event
• The sponsors who believed in this amazing project
• The local media for spreading the word
• Our amazing FOSS community for a great work done