It was with great pride and enthusiasm that we celebrated the first ever Ubuntu Release Party in Zimbabwe, on 1st November 2008. To the best of our knowledge, aside from South Africa, Zimbabwe was the only other country in Africa to advertise a release party. The party was held in the capital, Harare, and kicked off at 2.00pm with lots of socialising, snacks and a few drinks. Attendance was not quite as high as we had hoped, but we still had a good turn-out for our first attempt. Among those who attended were representatives from the Computer Society of Zimbabwe and a couple of young ladies from Linux Chix, who travelled all the way from Mutare (on the Eastern border, over 300Km away) for the event. Also in attendance was the IT Manager for the Parliament of Zimbabwe, who is one of our team members. Since this was primarily a social event, there was no fixed agenda. Following the introductions and a bit of mingling, a short demonstration was given, providing an overview of Ubuntu and a bit of showing off with desktop effects and animations, which got a lot of “oohs” and “aahs” from those who had never seen it before. This was followed by a brief question and answer session and more general conversation about Ubuntu and open source software. The event was enjoyed by all present and a number of the attendees stayed on for a braai (known elsewhere as a barbecue) in the evening.
The party was held at the premises of WebDev, who are also the kind sponsors and host of our newly launched Web site (www.ubuntu.org.zw). They also allowed us the use of their projector for the demonstrations. Logical Solutions provided us with a number of demo laptops which were loaded with the new release before the event kicked off and Harvest International also kindly donated the snacks. The month of November left us with a great sense of achievement and satisfaction. In light of the political tension, violence and collapsed economy in our country, it was refreshing to see that Zimbabweans still have an active interest in Ubuntu and open source in general. In a country where daily survival can be daunting on its own, people still found the time to attend our release party. Our sincere thanks to WebDev, Logical Solutions and Harvest International for helping to make the event a success. Photographs of the release party can be found here: http://www.ubuntu.org.zw/node/11 Aside from the Release Party, November has also been a memorable month because we have finally been able to launch our local Web site, which will allow Zimbabwean users to download Ubuntu from local servers, without needing to utilize international bandwidth which is rather expensive here. The Web site also provides information on our local repository (launched in August 2008) as well as links to our forum, mailing list and team wiki site. It is our hope that not only will Ubuntu become wide-spread in our country, but also that Zimbabwe will help pave the way to an open source frame of mind throughout the African region.
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