Fwd: [Balkans] What does the Mozilla Balkan community mean to you?

[Mike Dupont]

FYI, I think that we should engage all groups in bosnia and the balkans to organize some form of regular free software conferences that are not focused on a specific subgroup but open for all groups and the masses.

mike

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mike Dupont <jamesmi...@googlemail.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 1:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Balkans] What does the Mozilla Balkan community mean to you?
To: Brian King <brik...@gmail.com>
Cc: Balkans List <communit...@lists.mozilla.org>

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 11:09 PM, Brian King <brik...@gmail.com> wrote:

1. What does the Mozilla Balkan community mean to you and your community?
2. Why is Mozilla Balkans still relevant?
3. What can we realistically achieve in Zagreb that will give us a springboard to further collaboration in the future.

I would like to say how I see this,

I have started working on promoting FLOSS in kosovo because of my wife and family there, I saw that there was nothing happening and that

there is a need for it. after that I was asked to help organize something in albania, and we did do a small conference there which was very difficult.

Recently I was asked to help to organize something for bosnia, and it is also very very difficult to get started.

One problem that I see is that there is too much focus on just mozilla, and there are groups just focused on linux, some on debian, libreoffice, gnome, some on civil society, osm, wikipedia, creative commons, some on fedora, hackerlabs etc. The balkans is just too small and fragmented to focus on just one topic, the vast majority of the people are not aware of FLOSS at all and we have a huge educational issue to tackle. Only focusing on mozilla is excluding the other groups when we should be working on integrating them.

These groups are tool small to organize conferences like the sfk on thier own, We have had a good experience with a large conference that is bringing everyone together,

I think that we need to work on creating some events that bring all the people together and shed off the pure mozilla focus for the balkans. 

I would like to engage the mozilla team in organizing these events and to make them part of the bigger picture, to also create teams of people that represent all different groups and also importantly to bring new members in .

One thing we learned about flossk is that it is not exclusively focused on mozilla, but mozilla is an important project. When we have new people come we can direct them to mozilla , or to osm or to some of the project, but event organizing and marketing is also an important part and can be done with no technical knowledge.

I think that we need to work on creating balkan wide conference, and open to all FLOSS topics, i think that would be successful . I beg you all for your support in this effort.

the FREESB conference in vlore was the attempt at that, in 2010, free software in the balkans. We should continue with that on a rotating basis, one event in each country or multiple events in a row, a tour. We can cover all major cities in 1-2 weeks, and that would be able to split the costs of travel for international speakers. 

Not all people can travel easily, and these events can be for the general public.

If we organizing a rotating or serial conference tour then we can find sponsors in each city, we can share costs and reach our objectives of promoting mozilla,

I think mozilla could take the lead as the prime sponsor and co-organzier along with all the other groups in each particular area.

lets work together and end the fragmentation of the balkans. Lets look at the big picture of working with other groups to reach our goals.

thanks,

mike

--
James Michael DuPont
Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova http://flossk.org

--
James Michael DuPont
Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova http://flossk.org