Software Freedom Day 2009

Software Freedom Day 2009

Software Freedom Day is a world wide celebration of Software Independence. Open Source community gathered together to celebrate the event. Here in the Philippines, one of the organizers is the Bluepoint Foundation, this was held last September 19, 2oo9 at the National Computer Center, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City. The event was attended by more than 500 delegates from different colleges and universities in the Philippines, there were many who would like to attend SFD 2009 but due to a limitted capacity of the NCC to accomodate such big crowd, late online registrants were not able to attend this big event.

The event was done simultaneously in three different locations at the NCC, one happened at the Audio Visual Room, the other one happened at the seminar room and another one at the overflow area which is located at the NCC lobby. At 8:30 in the morning guided by the programme timeframe, as one of the organizers team member, we started the registration, students from different schools started to form two lines, originally I was assigned to give stickers to students who were already registered, but during the actual scenario I was the one who checked students e-tickets and their IDs, it was enjoying and fun, checking their names and comparing pictures to their IDs, sometimes its really hard to recognize their faces and I end up asking "Is this really you?", haha funny. A minute before 9:00 in the morning, I was approached by Engels, by the way Engels is one of the Bluepoints pride because of his exemplary intelligence and advocacy on Open Source, hes teaching Total Linux and AJAX at the Bluepoint Foundation, his students were lucky to have him as their instructor. To continue, he gave me the presentations and explained to me the flow of the programme, he told me that he wont be able to accompany me on emceeing because he will be the emcee at the AV Room, and I am assigned at the seminar room. So the show must go on, right after I got the presentations and the flow of the programme, I hurried up to the seminar room to setup my laptop and thanks God Roy was there to help me on setting up the laptop which needs the resolution to be reconfigured. We started the programme by singing the Philippine National Anthem, followed by the Invocation led by Maggie, Maggie is also a Bluepointer, she is the wife of Engels and I believe shes also a trustee. After the invocation, everyone was seated. I introduced the keynote speaker, who is the wife of Dean Alfonso our Dean at Roosevelt College, he escorted his wife Dr. Grace Alfonso;

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Grace Alfonso

Dr. Grace Alfonso is the Chancellor of the UP Open University, she talked about software independence and give emphasis on Open Source Technology. She mentioned that Open Source Software is not only free but it can compete with the proprietary software being monopolized by Sofware companies. She said Open Source Software provides solution to organizations, she cited UPOU as an example were they used MOODLE (Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) for their distance learning.

Red Hat: Mr. Justine Rivera

Red Hat is the core of Fedora which is being supported by Bluepoint. Mr. Justine Rivera was such a good speaker, though young at age, he was able to simplify his explanations on the technical side of Red Hat Server Administration, the Virtual Machine, he talks on his experiences at work, how he learned system administration from his bosses, students were not bored the fact that his topic is so technical.

GCC: Mr. Michael Balcos

Another Bluepointer, Mr. Michael Balcos is a very very geek guy, his presentations are so informative especially to the students who are taking their thesis, he talks a lot on port communications, hardware communications using C Programming Language. Students were overwhelmed by his presentation last year when he presented a small vehicle controlled by a software he developed using C Programming, pardon me, I dont what the vehicle was called. This year, he presented a software call the "Vending Machine". He has shown a lot of C codes to students, giving them the tips on what and how tos.

Kannel: Open Source WAP and SMS Gateway Mr. Mike Cabalin


to be continued...

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