OOoCon 2007 news in other languages

This is the official OOoCon 2007 Conference blog, but you can also follow the OOoCon 2007 news in Spanish in this blog set up by members of the Spainsh NLC Project. It is possible to get some news in Catalan too, reading Planeta Softcatalà.

OOoCon in the news

DesktopLinux has published an article about the OpenOffice.org Conference in Barcelona:

"Organizers of OpenOffice.org's annual conference, "OOoCon," have voted to stage this year's event in Barcelona, Spain, in September. Exact dates are expected to be announced soon. Barcelona won out with 297 votes over Dehradun, India (224), and Beijing, China (82)."

Read the article

Do you want to help us?

Barcelona, Gran Via Street at night. Near the University of Barcelona.

The organization of such a big event as an OpenOffice.org Conference isn't an easy task. We need as many hands as possible, but keep in mind that all these hands need to be coordinated too so they work in the same direction. Please try to avoid to contact the organizers directly and use the OOoCon2007 mailing list to share your projects and ideas with everyone involved in the organization.

If you want to help us, you can do it in many different ways:

• People in the area of Barcelona can help as voluntaries in the proposed dates. Please, write your name in the Team Members section in the wiki page with your e-mail address. You can also a short description of your skills and the kind of help that you could provide.


• Large local OpenOffice.org deployments are very important for user keynotes and success stories. Please, add your name to Proposals for talks or keynotes section in the wiki page and wait for the Call For Papers announcement.


• Local OpenOffice.org developers. If you are an individual, organization or company doing a development based on Openoffice.org add yourself to the Names of local OpenOffice.org developers section in the wiki page. We are very interested in hearing from you! (Note: If you are a student consider also the Summer of Code)


• Local OpenOffice.org companies or institutions can help OpenOffice.org becoming potential sponsors. Are you a company or institution and you want to help sponsoring the conference, please, subscribe to the ooocon2007_discuss list (see the contact section for details) and explain what your company or institution does and how it can contribute to the conference.

Barcelona will hold the Openoffice.org Conference 2007

Barcelona has been selected by the Openoffice.org community as host city for the Openoffice.org Conference 2007. The results of the voting have been:

• Barcelona, Spain - 297 votes
• Dehradun, India - 224 votes
• Beijing, China - 82 votes

Just a few weeks back some people from the voluntary driven Catalan Native Language Project and Softcatalà put together the Barcelona candidacy to host the OpenOffice.org Conference 2007. We are very thankful to everyone that has helped to make it possible.

Why did the OpenOffice.org community select Barcelona? (from the original proposal)

• Airports (Barcelona, Reus, Girona) with easy access to international flights and with regular low cost flights.
• Nice Mediterranean weather and excellent food
• Strong localization community (based fully on voluntary work)
• Interest from the local government in free software
• More than 100 local companies working on free software services and products
• Lots of cultural activities: museums, modernist buildings
• Terrific night life

Altogether, the Catalan, Spanish, Basque and Galician communities will work hard to make Barcelona the best place to hold an OpenOffice.org Conference. We hope to hear as many languages as possible here, especially the voices of all those small teams of translators that are the true treasure of the OpenOffice.org Community.

We already opened this blog for the event where we expect to keep people update about the progress of the event. We'll talk about the conference, the city and any other topic of interest for the OpenOffice.org Community. Many thanks to Michael Meeks for adding us to Planet OpenOffice.org.

NOTE: This weekend I'll be attending the FOSDEM in Brussels. If you are attending too and want to meet me, just send me a message.