The world software freedom day was held on the 16th of September this year. Our Sri Lankan advocates of software freedom came out in numbers to celebrate this event. Three simultaneous events were planed for the day in Colombo. At the Majestic city with epsi computers, at the Crescat with Fenton computers and at the Excel world food court. The events went from about 9 in the morning till about 10 in the night. With the exception of the Majestic city event where the management did not understand the fact that we were doing the promotion with EPSI computers and the organizers had to abandon the MC event after a lot of talk. The management refused to allow to keep the event even after the organizers were willing to pay some more money since there seemed to be some misunderstanding in booking the place. However even after EPSI computers talked to them and even after the organizers expressed their willingness to pay more money one is left to wonder about the motives behind not allowing the MC based event.

The event at the crosscut was held on the lobby area where the organizers spoke to a lot of shoppers about what Software freedom day was about and how they can make use of the freely available software. Those who were interested got the chance to check out some free software at the machines that were there and got free CDs with various flavors of Ubuntu.

At the event at Excel world some games that run on Linux were on display for every one to try out and see. The free software advocates did a lot of mingling with the people at the Excel world spreading the word of freedom to all they bump into.

You can get more info and references about the Sri Lankan effort at the Sri Lanka team page.

The 2006 edition of Microsoft Tech-Ed for Sri Lanka will be held in Colombo, from the 25th to the 27th of October 2006. The event is targeted towards IT policy makers and developers alike. A host of international speakers as well as international experts will deliver more than 40 sessions across 4 tracks. Which also includes hands on and instructor led labs sessions where you will learn how you can use Microsoft Technologies. The conference will also have an Industry Showcase where you can experience the cutting edge technologies from Microsoft such as Office 2007, Windows Vista, Visual Studio and Microsoft Server System.

You can get more information at www.teched.lk.

GeekOut was an interesting closing chapter for the hugely successful FOSSSL conference this year. It was a gathering of geeks who set aside their gadgets for 2 days and were ready to have fun. And fun they had ... starting with rafting: every one who was brave enough to get into the raft had loads of fun riding the rapids, and those who did not were given the chance to photograph the magnificent view and the rafting itself ;-). Then it was a game of ware-wolf that was moderated by Denise Cooper. The participants got to know how well the other participants can lie, which was a very enlightening experience to say the least. Then it was a nice barbecue dinner [Well even though this was not on the agenda one is allowed to talk about the food a little :-)].

Sunday morning was a hike to the Kithulgala beli lena, which is a set of caves believed to be the home of the oldest primates in Sri Lanka. Were the hikers spotted 2 primates in jeans taking a shower in the waterfall which was right next to the caves. The beautiful surroundings gave all the trying to be pro photographers plenty of opportunity to practice. Some were even spotted roaming around the grounds looking for interesting insects and what not to photograph. After the two days of fun among a set of geeks it was back to Colombo to get out of the fun mood from the previous week and get ready to go back to work on Monday.

FOSSEnterprise which was a Free and Open-Sourse Software awarness program which was targeted towards the CIO community was held on the 18th of August 2006 at the Waters edge. The sessions were focused on usage of FOSS in business environments to gain a competetive advantage in the business. There was a keynote address by Denease Cooper on the topic Opening the Door to Free and Open Source Software followed by 15min case studies by several companies about their sucess stories with FOSS usage. Afterwards there was a panel discussion on the same subject.

After lunch the discussion was about legal aspects of using free and opensource software inside a business and about usage of FOSS in developing systems for commercial use. This session kicked of with a talk by Russ Nelson on "Understanding Software Licensing" followed by a talk about "Sri Lankan IP Law and Software Piracy" and a panel discussion.

Having had a good cup of tea the theme changed to "How do you Implement and Support FOSS". Which started of with a talk by James Clark titled "Lessons from Thailand". Then it was about Evaluating a FOSS Product by Anuradha Ratnaweera and another about Securing Your IT Infrastructure with FOSS by Buddhika Siddhisena followed by a panel discussion.

You can have a look at some photos from the event in the following links.

• ApacheCon Asia Lightning lottery talks
• ApacheCon Asia talks
• ApacheCon Asia opening

FOSSSL kicked off yesterday [Monday] with FOSSSchool at the University of Moratuwa and ApacheCon Asia Hackathon at the TransAsia hotel, Colombo. FOSSSchool an event targeted towards the school children. The aim of the event was to educate the school children about the benefits FOSS can bring and to give them a kick start on using free and opensource software. The event had an attendance of more than 300 school kids and about 50 school teachers from all over Sri Lanka. FOSSSchool was a great hit with a lot of enthusiastic children and teachers who knew a lot about FOSS and was eager to learn more about the FOSS movement. The organizing committee was ably helped by the children from the Grukula School LUG. Which was the first ever school LUG in Sri Lanka.

FOSSSchool venue was then transformed into a place of sducation for the nuiversity students when FOSSUni started after lunch. at the University of Moratuwa. FOSSUni was aimed at providing the attendees with an introduction to FOSS in addition to giving them enough information about how FOSS will help their academic life as well as their carrier when they have finished their degree.

Hackathon which is a marathon of intense coding got underway in the morning at the Queens court of the TransAsia hotel in colombo. In attendance were local hackers along with some of the foreign delegates who were coming for the ApacheCon. Hackathon continued till late evening with a gradual build up of numbers. It will continue for another two days on the background of the ApacheCon that is going to start on Tuesday. It was an encouraging start for the week of event planed ahead for FOSSSL this year.

You can have a look at some photos from the events on this blogger post.