On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 5:32 PM, Khan Md. Anwarus Salam <kman...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello Rob, > > Thanks a lot for your quick detailed directions. > > I totally agree with your opinion that International Mother Language Day, > is a very sympathetic idea and it share several goals with OpenOffice for > promoting mother languages. > > Thanks a lot for your suggestions. I would love to contribute to realize > all of these. Here I send my questions about your suggestions. > > 1) Banner Design: > For making IMLD banner for OpenOffice website is there any volunteer > interested to contribute? How the tasks normally get distributed in this > community? >
We certainly have some volunteers with skills in graphic design. Do you have a logo for IMLD already? Or some graphical concept that we could use? You say the theme this year is "the book". That could be another source of ideas. Tasks are claimed by volunteers who are interested in doing them. So once we have a list of proposed tasks we put them on a wiki and call for volunteers to sign up. > 2) Blog Post: > I can write the blog, but please let me know whether it is also possible to > write the blog in different languages. For example, we can prepare a draft > blog in English and other language bloggers can translate that into their > own language. That would be a very nice way to pass the message. > Yes, we can do this. We did something like this in our most recent blog post here: https://blogs.apache.org/OOo/entry/apache_openoffice_now_available_in I'd like to help with the blog post as well. > 3) Speakers in IMLD event: > That is a very good idea. In fact we are organizing a big IMLD event in > Tokyo: http://internationalmotherlanguageday.com/uec/ > > Can you please recommend any speaker in Tokyo? > We do have a volunteer, Hirano-san, in Japan, but he is in Iwate Prefecture, not Tokyo. > If anyone can > > 3/A.Press Release: I can prepare the message of press release. But I do not > know how to send it to every news media. Can you please suggest anyone who > have experience on this? > We can distribute broadly via our blog and website, and our large mailing list of users. Also, Facebook, Twitter and Google+. But we do not have a subscription to a new release service. However a more targeted approach might work well here, where we approach specific journalists directly, ones we know cover this area, > 4) Video Message: > > I am now interviewing many international students and teachers in Tokyo for > our IMLD event. > We will also release that in our website: > www.internationalmotherlanguageday.com > > In the video we will explain about the importance of IMLD and history etc. > I think this video project can be a joint effort with OpenOffice and we can > request the community to send us their video with self interview. > Here I send our current IMLD Video Interview questions. > > 1. Please introduce yourself > 2. Tell me something interesting in your language. > Funny phrase, sayings? > 3.Many Japanese hate English what about you? > 4. What is your story with English? eg. History of the learning. (hated at > the beginning? Started liking it?) > > 5.What other languages you can speak? > And why you learned those languages? > 6. How can you preserve your language? > 7. What is your dream? > 8. What do you think about IMLD? > 9. Happy IMLD in your language > 10. What is your mother language and why you love it? > > 11. Can you tell us the history behind IMLD in your language?Please let me > know if you have any suggestions to add any more questions to make it more > relevant with OpenOffice. IMLD is only 3 weeks away. Ideally we would have the blog post and materials on the website 3 or 4 days before February 21st, to give time for journalists to pickup the story. No one wants to write a story about "Two days ago was International Mother Language Day". They want to write "Today is..." or "Tomorrow is...". So there is not a lot of time remaining. > 5) IMLD theme: > The theme for International Mother Language Day 2013, promoted by UNESCO, > is *"The Book"*. > > We can make some good OpenOffice slogan for using in the banner. For > example: > a. Love your language and use OpenOffice in your mother language. > b. Any other ideas to adapt our message to that theme? > "The Book" certainly can give direction to a logo design. I'd like to hear if anyone else on the mailing list has other suggestions for a slogan. I can't think of a good one right now. But I think the general story could be this: A language can exist purely as a spoken language. This has occurred since the earliest times. But a literate language, once that can be recorded and distributed and past on through time, is critical part of a culture, and in the form of books and documents, allow individuals and communities to project their smaller voices to a broader audience. Today, in the 21st century, the computer has taken over for the pen in many cases. But where any pen can be used to write any language, not every computer can write every language. Unless a computer is taught to support a language, with fonts, with software, with spell checkers, etc., then people are locked out of the means to express themselves digitally in their mother tongue. Commercial software, focused on the highest returns on investment, often targets the officially-sanctioned languages in industrialized nations, and neglects minority, regional and endangered languages, as not commercially relevant. This is where open source software, and projects like Apache OpenOffice, can help. Since we are a volunteer-led non-profit charity, we are not concerned merely with profit. We're concerned with doing good, the social return on our labors. Regards, -Rob > Thanks a lot and I am looking forward for your directions. > > > With Best Regards, > Khan Md. Anwarus Salam > > > On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 11:29 PM, Rob Weir <robw...@apache.org> wrote: > >> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 2:42 AM, Khan Md. Anwarus Salam >> <kman...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > Hello, >> > >> > This is Khan, Convener of International Mother Language Day >> > Celebration. I am new in OpenOffice Community but I would like to take >> the >> > leadership for celebrating IMLD together with OpenOffice. Please let me >> > know who can help me and how for this purpose. >> > >> >> Hello Khan, >> >> Thank you for writing to us. We are the Apache OpenOffice project. >> We are a volunteer-led open source project and we maintain and publish >> free office suite software called Apache OpenOffice. We are part of >> the Apache Software Foundation, a public charity with the mission to >> publish free software for anyone to use. >> >> OpenOffice has existed since 2000 and over 100 million users have >> installed our software. We are one of the most popular and familiar >> open source products. >> >> We describe the "Public Service Mission" of OpenOffice on our website >> here: http://openoffice.apache.org/mission.html >> >> As you can see, we aim for cultural and linguistic diversity. This >> includes the support of regional and minority languages that >> commercial software vendors often neglect. As an all-volunteer >> project we are not constrained by what is "profitable" in a commercial >> sense. Our only limit is the enthusiasm of our volunteers. >> >> When I heard about International Mother Language Day, I thought that >> this was a very sympathetic idea and that we shared several goals and >> a similar outlook on the importance of promoting mother languages. >> >> So what could we do in OpenOffice to support IMLD? Some things that >> we can do include: >> >> 1) Use our project's outreach via our website and social media, to >> promote IMLD. Our website receives millions of visits each week. We >> could, for example, put an IMLD banner on our website during the week >> of IMLD. >> >> 2) We could do a blog post on our blog to talk about IMLD 2013, and >> the importance for open source software to offer wide support for >> regional and minority languages. >> >> 3) Depending on location, we might be able to provide a speaker at an >> IMLD event. Or we could provide quote for a press release. >> >> 4) We could interview an expert involved in IMLD about the event and >> the intersection of these concerns and software. >> >> These are just some ideas, brainstorming. Perhaps you have some other >> thoughts. >> >> Finally, one thing I noticed is that past IMLD's had a theme. It >> would be good to know what the theme will be in 2013, so we can adapt >> our message to that theme. >> >> I am looking forward to your reply. >> >> Regards, >> >> -Rob Weir, Apache OpenOffice Project Management Committee >> >> >> > With Best Regards, >> > Khan Md. Anwarus Salam >> > Convener >> > International Mother Language Day Celebration in Japan >> > http://www.internationalmotherlanguageday.com/ >> > Phone: +81-8041803667 >> > Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/motherlanguageday >>
