The world’s first Document Freedom Day on March 26th 2008 was a great success. Thanks to a vibrant community, DFD flags were hoisted for the first time around the world in Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe, North and South America.

There were 205 registered DFD Teams that organised multiple events and activities. These ranged from taking Document Freedom to the streets in Switzerland [1] over mini-conferences in Brazil [2] or Nepal [3], a prize for the German Federal Foreign Ministry [4] to participation of Senator Kate Lundy in Australia [5]. On the DFD front page [6] we keep adding flags for all the countries with links to the many activities as the reports keep coming in. [7]

“We are very happy about the success of this first Document Freedom Day,” says Ivan Jelic, DFD Coordinator. “This has been a collaborative effort by many people around the world and I would like to thank everyone who has contributed. Working with all of you has been a true pleasure!”

Graham Taylor Director of OpenForum Europe: “The support for DFD was quite remarkable and emphasises yet again just how important the topic is to governments, business and the citizen. OpenForum Europe welcomes the announcement of DFD’09. One thing we can be sure is the interest won’t die down.”

After the DFD is before the DFD. Preparations for DFD ‘09 are going to begin very soon. Mark your calendars: March 25th 2009 is going to be yet another great day for Document Freedom!

[1] http://download.fsfeurope.org/pictures/DFD08-ZRH
[2] http://dfd.espiritolivre.org
[3] http://documentfreedom.org/FOSS_Nepal_Community
[4] http://documentfreedom.org/2008/Germany/Berlin
[5] http://documentfreedomdaysydney.googlepages.com/
[6] http://documentfreedom.org
[7] http://documentfreedom.org/2008

How you can get active

The Document Freedom Day is a collaborative effort.

You can make a difference by linking to http://documentfreedom.org, generate your own artworks or use the ones available at http://documentfreedom.org/Artwork.

You could also print out some of the DFD leaflets at http://www.documentfreedom.org/2008/DFD_Starter_Pack#Leaflet and give them to your co-workers, family or friends. And if you feel creative, consider taking pictures or small video testimonials that show the world what Document Freedom means to you!

Join us by registering a DFD team and inform us about our activities, or let us know if your organisation or company want to support us.

About Document Freedom Day

The Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for Document Liberation. It is a day of grassroots effort around the world to promote and build awareness for the relevance of Free Document Formats in particular and Open Standards in general.

Document Freedom Day is supported by a large group of organisations and individuals, including, but not limited to Ars Aperta, COSS, Esoma, Free Software Foundations Europe and Latin America, IBM, Google, NLnet, ODF Alliance, OpenForum Europe, OSL, iMatix, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Inc., The Open Learning Centre, Opentia, Estandares Abiertos.

The list of DFD supporting groups can be found

http://documentfreedom.org/Who

The list of DFD Teams is available at

http://documentfreedom.org/Category:Teams

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 9:22 pm and is filed under DFD08, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.