End of Idlelo
16 Jan 2004
Yesterday Idlelo came to a close, everyone hopefully off to either continue what they're doing, or to start doing what they talked about. FOSSFA's closing statement describes what Idlelo means for Open Source in Africa: the first coherent Open Source activity in Africa. The good news: Idlelo 2 is already planned, and is scheduled to be held in February 2006 in Addis Ababa. Attached is a report-back I sent to the local Linux Users' Groups.
From: Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> Subject: Idlelo reportback Hi all, (In case you didn't know, the Idlelo conference was held in Cape Town from Sunday 11th January until Thursday. The primary topics were Open Source and Open Content, focusing on the effects in Africa.) In one sentence, Idlelo really exceeded any expectations I had with regard to quality of presentations, lack of hand-waving, pragmatism, activism, lack of flame wars, and quality of delegates. I really can't imagine what could have been done better from an organisational and presentational perspective. I fear my presentations were probably the worst I experienced at the conference. Richard Stallman, obviously, is very practised at this, and gave an excellent talk on software patents. We had people from WIPO, various departments of the UN, various international civil liberties organisations (including Wendy Seltzer from the EFF), academics, teachers, librarians, activists, and hackers, mostly from Africa. There was very little hand-waving - most presentations were on things that have already been done or initiated in Africa in the Open Source or Open Content world. People were pragmatic, even if they disagreed, and avoided getting aggressive (mostly). I must've met about half of the delegates directly, and listened in on or anonymously talked with the other half. Only thing that could've been better would've been more people from the various LUGs in South Africa attending. The next Idlelo is planned for the February of 2006 in Addis Ababa. Neil -- Neil Blakey-Milner nbm@mithrandr.moria.org http://mithrandr.moria.org/