rants

Marco ‘mascotte’ aka Madero rocked presenting Advocacy. I’ll ask him to publish his slides because they were clear and straight to the point. His exposition of the project in front of the crowd was very good, too.  During the Q&A time we got many suggestions from other experiences advocating free software in Italian schools.  That’s the good part of having people in the same room listening: you get good suggestions and you exchange lots more information than using just mailing lists.

Overall, it was very positive event, until I had to take the plane.  Take off aborted for a technical problem. It wasn’t fun to feel the brakes at the last minute on the runway and it wasn’t fun to hear that by the time the problem was fixed (rapidly, in 30 minutes) the pilot would have finished his work hours.  So he just left and we had to wait 3 hours to get a new crew.  I made a mistake flying Alitalia again after 2 years boycott.  This company must happily die and make space for better enterprises.

With the final words from the representative of University, ConfSL 2007 has ended.  Shane’s speech was good and clear, I had the chance to introduce FSFE’s activities including SELF, STACS and the italian activities, like GNUvox.  I put the slides here.

Next year ConfSL probably will be in Trento, if there are no more candidates (said by the professor from stage).

Tomorrow will be total community day with the Italian LUGConf and the presentation of Advocacy by Fellow madero.

I’m getting ready to go to Cosenza to the ConfSL conference.  The good news is that Marco will come too: he has been developing Advocacy in Milano and I can’t wait to hear comments and suggestions from other members of the Italian community. 

Dido, president of Assoli, has also confirmed that he will travel to Cosenza. I can’t wait to talk to him too.  Assoli has been working very well in Italy and it has grabbed a huge success. I hope we’ll find projects we can do together.

PS a friend told me that these are my lucky numbers 🙂

09 F9 11 02
9D 74 E3 5B
D8 41 56 C5
63 56 88 C0

Silvano kysucix will show what you can do with Free Software and a creative mind.

The ball in the hole is easy and fun. Using a colorful ball you can delete your projected image to see what (or who) is in the hole.

 See the videos and pictures here.  The next exibition will be in Milan (ITA), March 21st @ La Cueva No-Art Gallery. We should keep it in mind for Advocacy events.

I have good news today: there are two Fellows that are activating Advocacy in Italy and Austria.  Madero has been working to adapt the Advocacy Project document in Italian and to the school he knows best.  Cristian is doing pretty much the same thing in Austria, although he didn’t use the name ‘advocacy’ (Disclaimer: I don’t read German very well).

I am going to help Madero setup the Italian advocacy group because he lives in the same city where I live. I would also like to help Cristian, but my German is not up to the task.  We can all discuss on the mailing list discussions at lists.fsfe.org or on the forum, whatever you prefer.

Some Fellows in Italy have been silently working to move the Advocacy project on next steps.  Madero, for example, has prepared and run a poll between his colleagues high-school students asking what kind of topics they would be interested in.

The results are not surprising me but they are worth spending some thoughts on (even without considering statistics, for a moment).  Students seem to be interested in peer-to-peer technology and ‘hacker’ stories, more than definitions of licenses or copyright.  It’s something all Free Software advocates should keep in mind: students go to school to learn, while extra-curricular activities should be classifiable as fun, not study.  Another important consideration: students want to know about practical things that affect their life, like p2p.  Only few are fascinated with programming or knowing computers. A good Free Sw advocate should be able to translate Free Sw concepts immediately into real life practical considerations, without using technical terms. 

Do you have a reference to a speech that can be taken as reference to talk to students?  An audio or video recording or a transcript would be very nice to start a debate.

The first draft of the Advocacy Project has been published . Comment the draft, shape the project as you wish. It will be further discussed at the upcoming First International Fellowship Meeting.

See you in Bolzano 🙂