Salam all, Most of you know this, and some of you don't, but between the 17th and 21st of December, I was in Casablanca, Morocco, representing Arabeyes in the third edition of the annual Casablanca GNU/Linux Days event, the most important FOSS event in all of Morocco and one of the most important in all of North Africa, and here is my report:
The two-day event is meant to establish a foothold for free software in Morocco and the area and to expand its deployment by inviting noted personalities and organizations to come and give presentations to the masses on their visions, principles, methods and goals, all in an educational and informative setting (and all expenses to the participants fully paid). This year, Arabeyes was one of the organizations invited to attend and present, alongside attendees from several other entities such as Mandrakesoft, Fedora, and quite a few others, not to mention Richard M. Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation. Upon recieving the invitation naturally we did not hesitate to seize this oppertunity. For a few small reasons, I was the one who was to go and represent our fine organization. The event was all organized very professionally. The monumental auditorium at Technopark could house a good-sized crowd, and equipment-wise everything was made available to us. Lecturer after lecturer would go up on stage, give his presentation to the crowd, followed by a short Q&A session. This being Morocco, all presentations were given in French, except for mine, which was in Arabic. Here is the event's programme: http://linux-maroc.org/cld2004/article.php3?id_article=3 As luck would have it, I was presenting on the first day of the event (Friday). My presentation outlined (or tried to outline), sometimes briefly and sometimes in depth, the whole idea of Arabeyes. Who are we? What are our goals and visions? What have we achieved so far? What are we working on at present? What kind of talents are we seeking? etc... While the presentation may not have had all thunder and eloquence of the Gettysburg Address, it did deliver the message pretty well, and was met with a good reaction from the crowd (the very fact that it was in Arabic sent a very nice message) followed by several quite interested questions. Following my own presentation was one by Mr. Mohammed Kebdani, a long-time member of Arabeyes, native to Morocco. His presentation was entitled 'Arabisation', and was also recieved well by the crowd. I wish I could tell you more about it, but it was in French. Mr. Kebdani's presentation was followed by that of Richard Stallman (who turned out to be fluent in French to my surprise :-), which ended day 1 of the Casablanca GNU/Linux Days 2004. I was quite pleased with the enthusiasm I saw from the crowd regarding our project. After day 1 of the event was over outside the auditorium I was accosted by many who wanted to know more about our projects and achievements, as well as a few names who were genuinely interested in taking part and helping out themselves. It was a good end to a good day. On day 2, there was nothing for me to do. I had requested a copy of Arabbix 0.8 from the organizers which they happily and promptly supplied. As presentations were being given in the auditorium, I sat in the cafetria directly outside, with my laptop, running Arabbix with as many Arabeyes applications I could run simultanously, sipping coffee and taking every chance to invite people over, talk to them, answer their questions, and show them our distro, the container for all our work. To be honest I did not have to invite that many people over. Mostly they were curious enough already. I got a much more positive reaction than I had anticipated, with Arabic-interface OOo and the Arabic fonts scoring HUGE points. At the end of the day I was kindly invited to come sit in the auditorium for the awards ceremony, and the unexpected. As I was sitting in the last row, listening to French, as the fourth and last award was being announced, I just read the words: "Millieur Projet Libre: Arabeyes" on the screen. I got up and bowed for the applauding crowd. I was pushed on to the stage, where I recieved the trophy presented to me by RMS himself. I thanked the organizers and the crowd in the name of Arabeyes and smiled for the cameras. After the ceremony and after having my picture taken many many times, I went back to the hotel, put the trophy in a very safe place, and that was the end of my trip to Morocco, as far as Arabeyes is concerned :-) All in all I would say Arabeyes' participation in this event was a success, and the thanks goes not to me but to those who worked overtime to put together our presentation and to give me last minute tips and advice, and of course I cannot forget to mention the overwhelming cooperation and hospitality of the Moroccan organizers of this event, without whose efforts we could not have done this on such short notice. We could have had much more impact had we been given more time to prepare for this event (we were only informed of this event on Tuesday the 14th, three days before the event took place), however, we still managed to make our mark in spite of this. Hopefully next year if we participate we will have a more lasting effect. On a final note, I should mention that we REALLY ought to concentrate as much as we can on further developping Arabbix, our veteran of a distro, as it turned out to be the real crowd-puller (which is not something we had anticipated at all. In fact I myself thought it was the least dependable weapon in our arsenal!). I hope that in 2005 no effort will be spared in making this distro as mature and as robust as possible. I call on all those not directly involved in its development to see in what ways they can give support to Mr. Sameer and his team, and to act on that. Questions/Comments? You can all find various pictures from the event in the usual place: http://art.arabeyes.org/casablanca2004 Until next time, Abdulaziz, _______________________________________________ General mailing list [email protected] http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/general
