Sep 3
2010

So the day started a bit shaky, I thought I missed my talk because the sun was shining pretty bright. I find out I was fine, so I took it easy and had enough time to start working on my talk which was the first one of the day. I had some breakfast and then took off to downtown Budapest. However, I forgot which station I need to get off and I find out that I left too early, I was worried that I was late for my talk because I heard that today we will start at 8am. I got off the sub around 7.56 and walked in circles since I couldn’t find my way to the University. I was relief when I find out that the day actually started at 9am. Since I arrived at 8.16 I had enough time to sit and prepare my slides for the talk.

Since it was early in the morning and other interesting talks were going on I had a relative few people, just 4 people came to the talk. However thanks to the Bulgarian recording every talk, this one will be available for others to see on the stream and later on. The talk went quite well, I caught myself babbling a bit but pulled myself together.

Future plans for the drupal sites in OOo are unify the user accounts to OOo. So maybe OAuth could be implemented although he didn’t mentioned about it.

Italo the master of PR talked about the OOo Today is growing but still not enough since the buzz is not being pushed in the US. He mentioned about the story of Microsoft and how they screw up when they wanted to push it’s use of a 100% out of a 95% provoking a customer focus. We have to add the advantages besides than saying that is a good product in the market. He presented a chart that show the lifecycle and how they cross the chasm and major adoption happens. Then is the pragmatism is when the userbase matures. Italo mentioned the Google channels and how OOo could basically adopt that same or similar relations with resellers. The conversation connected with the Certification project as well as the BizDev project. This however will permeate to the domestic market.

The next session was the Strategic marketing plan session, an intensive 3 hour session that talked about the future of the marketing teams, it’s goals and the message for the new landscape. We now have Google Docs and other new parallels of collaboration and productivity like the failed attempt of Google Wave. A web 2.0 era, where we have a more detailed project on handling the message and reach out to the users. Other options like OOo as a well recognized brand but the community doesn’t bring themselves up-par with the rest of the context of OOo.

The SMP session really took a lot of my energy from the day so I had to skip the next session and enjoyed a nice nap at the lounge area of the university. Although a more private space could be down at the basement. I’ll see if I can do that tomorrow. So the event went quite well in general and after the talks we went to the boat ride, which I didn’t register but was able to pay at the entrance. I had the unfortunate luck of having a Microsoft Rep next to me during the ride so I wasn’t able to speak freely about OOo. However this allow us to talk about different nationalistic difference within the US and other talks about the impact of technology and information overflow. The chatting was quite good and easy going and the food was really good, nothing spectacular like Orvieto last year but it was really nice to have that while watching the scenery of Budapest at night along the river.

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Sep 2
2010

Interesting first day of the OOoCon, I arrived at Budapest quite late to do much that day. However the day was quite productive at the final hour after having met up with my friends from the Koffice who went to the hotel pub for a great talk about my projects and the future models for my O4Biz project and the viability of implementing some concepts on the BizDev project.

The night went into quite good questioning by my friends but maybe some tiresome from the day forced up to call it a night. The next day started very early and a good bath prepared me for the day, breakfast went quite good with Emacs jokes and sharing thoughts about OOo scripting, specifically python development.

After breakfast we had a nice run at the parliament which could have been morel complicated if I have done it by myself. Arriving to the parliament I discover that my name was not on the list even when as a speaker I should be there by default. In the end I manage to attend the talks on the parliament which had a magestic look.

The conferences itself were a bid boring except to the last speaker who talked about proprietary companies practices and impact on society including MICROSOFT and ORACLE. He also contradict some FLOSS believes however it was a big too long for my preference then again it always is. Michael Bremer talked about his relationship to Budapest. He told a story about his motorbike, and how he drove to Budapest from Germany and talked about how OOo fits in the Oracle stack of other products then he just started sounding like a salesguy about the support. OpenOffice.org project evolution from its inception in 2000 up to now 2010.

We had a nice coffee break where I talked to famous OOo author and macro developer Dimitri aka Crazylegs and talked to him about our ideas for python development and other things.

The next talk was about the migration of the Munich government. He talk about challenges and setbacks they experiences as well as some of the reasoning to push organizations to use ODF. So even if they use MS Office they should operate with ODF because otherwise you force them to become costumers of a company. This propell the mandate which now makes OOo more feasable to implement.

The next talk was more focused on ODF and standards. About how they went on comparing microsoft products and questioning the convenience to use OOo. We finally left to the CEU center to the more technical conference. The first one was about the future of OOo by Charles Schultz where we got to question the OOo project as we advance in the use of technology. I got to suggest think about completely modify the OpenOffice.org web into a data authoring tool.

We went to lunch followed by a talk by Rosana about OOo branding and guidelines and trademark currently addressed for the project. Then it was Rafaella Braconi on the future of l10n and how we will get faster and quicker translation during the development cycle and a new server for pootle and new testing platform.

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Aug 30
2010

Many companies has struggle to build business models around open source, specially one of the promises and challenges is empowering and activate the economy by creating local businesses grow through open source. Support and professional services has been what many companies aim to, however companies still want and need help from a parent organization. Even in commercial world you see this “business partners” who take on the business locally that relates to the parent product. In return the parent gives companies marketing material, seminars on how to sell, and newsletters on how to make sales and money from their products.

OpenOffice.org ES started a program where business could associate to a network to provide services similar to the ones you find on the proprietary world. The business pay a much smaller fee and these membership allows them to have a priority to the top level of the projects as well as start to engineer a true network and flow of talent and services. OOo will function as a hub to collect information and  expertise and exchange through the network as needed.

There is a valued added benefit which is that talent can work on solving more complex issues, and generate a knowledge base that could benefit the network but also generate a list of needs that the network could afford to tackle and improved thanks to the FLOSS nature of the software. This will make business needs get solved quicker and critical patches get implemented and prioritize.

For OpenOffice.org project there is a strong benefit to improve the application, satisfy the demands and also improve the overall service level. Is also a great way for companies to contribute back to the project where as before only individuals or small business where flexible enough to contribute without disrupting business processes. Now give back becomes doing business on a similar fashion that Google justify when giving back to FLOSS.

Make sure to check the professional services (in Spanish)section of OpenOffice.org ES and join the partner network network.

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Aug 15
2010

On the last edition of Campus party I spend the weekend there doing friends and giving talks and geeking out downloading stuff. However I also had lots of cold, didn’t sleep well and had to take cabs every other morning to eat normal food. It was shitty. I then realize that maybe I don’t need to do all that and that home is not such a bad idea to be at. So I set that this time I will spend my time home and watch the party from home. Since most things were going on on twitter anyway I could have a virtual presence of the show. So when I start watching the talks from home and participating on the different live streams, I did felt in the event without the freeze from last time. Instead I was in my maybe too hot room sweating but being comfortable at least in a hamac or a nice chair.

Some of the videos were not really broadcasted but the blogs that have come from the conference did really went into covering the different aspects of each talk. I think that in the end the participation was worth it and even if I would have expected more Campus party news on the blogsphere, the twitter did added a lot of commenting to it.

So about the show, it was pretty good and the quality has gone up since the last time. This is the second edition and it seems that got more people than before, around 6300 people. The quality of the presenters seems to also have gone up by a great deal since this time it was much more diverse. People from Japan, Sweden and the whole continent. The best talks probably where by the guests like Wozniak, Mitnik, and Peter from Pirate bay. There were other interesting talks like the issue with ACTA, Free software in the government, future trends for developers, social development, and other things that went around.

The birth of HTML5 got more critical acclaim from at least a couple of talks that digg around this. There were also home automation projects through twitter as well as other projects regarding smart development.

On the social media space like popular shows like Domo, Nerdcore, Bytepodcast and new shows like Winadas and sociedad libre did their thing on the event and hope that more shows like this come up in the future.

I hope that there was more talks on the free culture aspects such as Lawrence Lessig or Cory Doctorow digital rights for this country. There needs to be more awareness about this things. Things like software for the benefit of humanity is also important to think about and even new business models that can be sustainable.

Speaking about business, I saw some of the elevator pitch for new companies and getting funding for them. The issue became that some of these projects were really not solid enough, most of the time you want to have something working already to see that they are serious about doing it and help out move it to the next level. The people that did the talk, also seemed too nervous and intimidated which I think is something that people should work on. Try to be more techie and try to have more attitude, also don’t interrupt.  Some questions are not meant to be answered. I would like to review the talks and maybe study them for the future reference to work about.

On the design section and on the gaming section I didn’t see much, neither heard many people talking about. I guess it was more to relax but I would have love to see the kinetic or the other platforms being showcased. Also heard that the boot babes weren’t hot enough. Last year they were pretty good, specially on their silver tight pants that make their ass made of liquid metal.

Besides this, I don’t have much more insight on the event yet, still I hope we can get together next week with the people that did went to the event so we can know more about what happened.



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Aug 5
2010

So Campus party is about to launch, the new edition of what is arguably the best event of technology in Mexico will be ran next week. The angle? Huge bandwidth to download whatever you want, from porn to porn to movies and games. However beside the tons of traders of illegal content that will come to share illegal content, there is also an appeal to podcasters, bloggers, hackers, crackers and gamers.

I think this event will be good but not as good as many expect to be. Not because this will have less quality but maybe because the expectations will be higher and the ‘surprise’ factor  is a bit washed away for some.

However, personally I decided to skip it because I think that the event will have a toll on me having to be on a week long intensive days of poor sleeping and to be honest, dont really have much to download. The type of audience is really not very enterprise and I am afraid that most of the time people will just be poorly interested in what I want to achieve.

However the biggest reason is because things are picking up about the OOoCon event in Budapest and a european trip might be also intensive for me to not just not relax but also have a plan to deal with some of the issues that we saw in the past year. From the OOo4Kids, Certification, and Valencian issues there are some things that needs to be solved or at least repositioned.

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Jul 27
2010

A few days ago the new 3.3 localization cycle started and this time I wasn’t the lead of the project. Instead I had Santiago Bosio in charge of the localization for the Spanish project. This made the localization work more efficient since Santiago is already immerse in the project for testing and extra localization processes. The community had a great reaction for the call for action and the latest report came through with a great speed and quality cycle. It seems we will have a 100% string localization soon.

The twist is that this cycle will be delegated to traditional po editing tools as opposed to our own pootle system due to outages that have proven the strings to not always be reliable.

On other OpenOffice.org news I have update my talk on BizDev and exposing the BoF on how to make this project become more efficient. The whole brief will be posted soon on the OpenOffice.org Conference (www.ooocon.org).

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Jul 25
2010

Seem the party posts are becoming common here, however I most say that yesterday was a great twitterfest, that is Twittab, the twitter group here in my homestate. We gather a good crowd and got to chat with many people including a series of places which went from horrible to great. We first start the night at First cup a Starbuck offshoot to get the people to talk between each other and just chill. I actually got there late, and didn’t stay fully there, since once I got there, they were talking about leaving.

The crowd was so large that people couldn’t even find a sit. I shoot some nice pictures for the meeting:

After that the drama started, we went to a place that seemed like taken out of a movie where people go to die. The sound was so loud that we couldn’t hear between each other, the music was to die right there, and people sang horribly. In the end, I was this close to call it quits with the rest of the group. Since I couldn’t get a ride back home, I remain but after some more painful minutes we eventually call it quits and left.

Next stop was Fun city which is really, well fun. We hang out at the 2nd floor and chat around some of the things that happens in the state, and our academic background. Some are young so they talk about their internships and others about their job. We started getting into more interesting topics about the diversity of believes in this state. Finally we went to get dinner to a taco place and had a good baked potato with cheese. It was pretty good and we continue the conversations about politics and development.

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Jul 25
2010

Last time I blog I mentioned my high school reunion. This time I had a new high school party. Only this time it was organized by ourselves and went pretty good. Really enjoyed the time I spent with them. The conversations weren’t dull nor reminiscing, well it was a bit but it didn’t went on and on forever. Some interesting talk was about their current professions and their immediate plans which sounded great.

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Jul 15
2010

So these couple of years have been not so good for my fitness. Long hours at the computer and intense sedentarism has caused to get huge. Lately I have decided to take matters into my hands and get my ass up and go to the gym. Since I have been going for two months now, there has been days where I wish I wouldn’t have gone. On the other side, I have been amazed how unfit I am and even yesterday some exercises I remember doing pretty well were nearly impossible.

After a month going to the gym there is little progress to be honest, I haven’t experience any weight loss, however usually things work like this. I think that my burning of fat has not started yet, and maybe I will see results by the end of the second month. In average I am burning somewhere around 2000 – 3500 calories per session. Last time I was attending a gym I was burning somewhere around 3000 but sweating A LOT thanks to my sweating gear. In this city is impossible to wear the sweat gear because is simply too hot and suffocating. However I think that with persistence I will be able to at least disappear this belly.

So far I haven’t weight myself so I also haven’t been able to measure if any kg have been dropped from the scale, however I can start feeling some tensification of muscle under the fat layer on my belly, maybe once the burning of the fat starts I will be able to get a better body shape.

And so the fighting continues…

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Jul 13
2010

I know I didnt do any blogging during the summer so I am putting a brief of what happened in the past weeks.

OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 was launched…yaaaay with that the the ES version and went out to all plataforms

We had a good cycle with many people participating with the QA and other aspects of the builds like testing it for different platforms. I think we did a good job overall. This launch feature OOo new image and logo.

OOo new logo

Went to NY for my OOo Meetup
Finally after 10 years I got to go back to New York city and be able to hang out for a whole week doing shopping and relaxing. The hot NYC was pretty new to me who experience mostly winter NYC. I like it how it all played out and even thought I went a b it over budget I think I needed that trip.

NYC from Queensborough station
At the park ready for the meetup
NYC Skyline

High School reunion
Had my high school reunion with some of my friends, which I went on to have a great time and eventually went to a club for the first time since Romania. At the end it was all good and came back home pretty late

High school reunion
More people from the generation

Twittab meetups
The meetings have been pretty good lately specially last week where many people came to watch the boxing match in Chillis and had a great time all night long.

Fun times
Meetup at Chilli's

LeBron James signed to the Heat
Wow big 3 in the making, with Dwayne Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh in Miami it seems this will be some great trio coming together for the Championship.

LeBron, Dwayne and Chris on a same team

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