Yesterday, March 31st 2010, we organized a public booth, from 9:30 am til 5:00 pm, at the entrance of the IFI (Institut de la Francophonie  pour l’informatique) which is in the middle of the Polytechnic Institute of Hanoi’s campus.

Pictures from the event are available here. Great work!

Dradio at DFD: “Feel more honoured than for the Grimme Prize”

[Originally posted by FSFE's Germany Coordinator Matthias Kirschner here]

Today was a really good day. I am reading all the reports from Document Freedom Day. About the DFD cake in South Africa, the activity from in Slovenia with the Supreme court, and the cool “I can’t read your Documents” pictures from Romania. This is really amazing. While I am waiting for updates from the planned activities from the Rheinland and Offenburg in Germany, and the prize for Radio Orange in Vienna Austria here an quick update from Berlin:

First thing in the morning was to get rid of my e-mails and of course dress up with me “rOgg on” t-shirt. Than I was prepared for the day. At 11:00 Alex Kahl joined Hugo and me in the office. He was responsible for the t-shirts. After lunch we brought all the t-shirts and flags to Deutschlandradio Kultur. Stephan Uhlmann from FFII brought the DFD tart. I have to say it was tempting to eat the tart before going in Good luck for Deutschlandradio that Alex Finkenberger brought the DFD certificate he disigned, so Stephan and I had to sign it and where not able to eat the tart. Than more and more Fellows joined us: Christan, Dirk, Grischa, Jürgen, Lena, Olaf, and Torsten.

Than Stephan and I explained why we honour Deutschlandradio for their Ogg-Vorbis use, and why this is important to Free Software. Since 2006 they are providing their Live streams in Ogg vorbis. At the moment it is the only public radio station I know that provided Ogg vorbis streams. Here a picture after we gave the certificate to Dr. Günter Müchler, program director of Dradio.

DFD group picture by Bettina Straub

While Dietmar Timm, head of Dradio Wissen made sure, everybody got something from the tart Egbert Meyer, managing director for the online services of Deutschlandradio, said “We feel us more honoured through that prize than for a Grimme Prize. That was quite a statement

DFD tart by Bettina Straub

Torsten set up website with all the picture from himself and from Bettina Straub from Deutschlandradio in good quality.

DFD group picture with flags by Torsten Grote

My thanks go to all the people from Deutschlandradio for providing the Ogg-Vorbis streams! Especially Mr Timm and Mr Meyer for the organisation before the event. And you might already have noticed it, this activity for Open Standards would not have been able without all of our motivated Fellows who participated in the event. You all rOGGed!!!.

–
Matthias Kirschner
Join FSFE’s Fellowship and protect your freedom!

DFD is simply everwhere. From beautiful Offenburg in Germany, Fast Edi writes:

I hope you all had (or perhaps still have) a wonderful DFD today.

In Offenburg the Community “FreieSoftwareOG” informed customers and
interested people in front of a computer store we cooperate with.

We had some give-aways (Flyers, Ubuntu and openSuse CDs, Leaflets, …)
and talked to people, telling them how important it is to have free and
open formats for our electronic data.

For a picture visit http://blogs.fsfe.org/fast_edi
(notice that they are a certified Apple-Store… )

To save you the extra click, here’s the picture:

DFD in Offenburg, Germany

The Dept of Arts and Culture in the unit called National Language
Services, uses the Deja vu Font so that they can translate into all South
African languages. Some SA languages require diacritics. We celebrated DFD
at the Department who are keen to take this further and would like to host
a large event next year. We also had members from the State Information
Technology Agency. The CIO said a few words about the importance of
preserving our heritage and how technology should assist this and not
hinder it.

Along with the cake we had given everyone the recipe for the cake and had a
short discussion on what would be needed for us to preserve the know how
and the recipe document itself so that we could enjoy it for the next 20
years on Document freedom day.

The vision of the Department of Arts and Culture is to develop and
preserve South African culture to ensure social cohesion and
nation-building.

Seaparo Phala, the Department's CIO, cutting the DFD cake

The rationale for the Department to use ODF is South Africa’s constitution, no less. Sez Aslam:

Another reason why the Dept of Arts and Culture are key in leading DFD
celebrations. See (b) but think that c and d are just as important

The primary legislative mandate of the Department (of Arts and Culture)
comes from the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, which states
that:

Section 16 (1) “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which
includes-

a) freedom of press and other media;
b) freedom to receive or impart information or ideas;
c) freedom of artistic creativity ;and
d) academic freedom and freedom of scientific research

Color me impressed.

Department staff seconds ahead of enjoying the DFD cake