Special thanks to Cristina Guerrero, Nervo Verdezoto, Marisol Villacrés, and from Jarflex, Adonis Figueroa and Jessica Zuñiga the speakers of this meeting and specially to Arturo Tumbaco, who helped me with the logistics to make this event possible.

Here some pictures about the meeting.

Compared to previous years, the event of this year was relatively smaller. An approximate of 200 people assisted, from which for the ~80% it was their first time that assisted to FLISOL, 50% of visitors had not used or heard about FLOSS before, ~13% were below 18 years old and ~75% were between 18-35 years old.

There are 3 things that I would like to point from this year’s event:

1. Most of the event was organized by the new members from Kokoa ( ESPOL’s Free Software Community ), who I send my congratulations since it was a very good start. They were just newbies and took the challenge of organizing the biggest FLOSS event in town. As an old Kokoa kore member I know how difficult can be to organize FLISOL, and I can say those guys did a good job.
2. One of the rooms that caught most of the attention of the visitors was the gaming room. It mostly attracted the young visitors from different genres. I think that gnu/linux is a niche that has started to be exploited in the gaming area. Personally I have tried some games since the very first time I had openSUSE (SuSE Linux back then) installed and I have seen how good known titles and good quality indie games are coming to gnu/linux. I think that with openSUSE GameStore , some gamers and developers from the openSUSE community we can try to promote our lovely green as a good platform for gaming.
3. Last but not least, I would like to say thanks to Jarflex, ESPOL’s Digital Culture Club, Ecuagamers and all the people who contributed to make this event possible.

Summarizing, this year it was seen a collaboration between different groups and enterprises somehow related to FLOSS that , locally, was not seen before. This might be a further step of what was started in 2007 when we tried to take FLISOL from a FLOSS installation festival for FLOSS enthusiast to a FLOSS event that will catch the attention of people of different ages with different interests.

Until the next post people of the openSUSEsphere…

jaom7

PS.1: Some pictures by: @sarahjessi, Kmeng, @_abejamaya , Jarflex and Ecuagamers
PS.2: If you are interested or have some ideas related to openSUSE gaming [site] please write a comment or contact me.

In addition to this, it was officially announced that Steam will be available for Linux at the end of this summer, which means lots of games and lots of fun is coming to gnu/linux and the breach in gaming between gnu/linux and other OSs is getting smaller.

Here some trailers of the games that will be released as FLOSS  from the Humble Indie Bundle

Aquaria |  Gish |  Lugaru HD |   Penumbra Overture

Linux gamers it is time to have even more fun

jaom7

Similar to more than 20 cities in Ecuador and 17 countries in Latin America, Guayaquil is preparing to join the celebration of FLISOL 2010. This year, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of ESPOL will be the home of  the event in Guayaquil. The event is coordinated in Guayaquil by Prof. Dr. Daniel Ochoa, current leader of KOKOA (ESPOL’s Free Software Community). For this edition, there will be divided in four areas targeting different user interests.

Area 1: Talks

For this year we have on schedule around 22 talks (splited in 3 tracks) covering different topics of FLOSS. This year, the talks track will be featuring Jossie, a FLOSS CMS to develop accessible websites that developed in Ecuador. Another main talk is given by  Luis Galarraga explaining his experiences while leading the J!Research project, which is a Joomla extension that is being used by an increasing number of research-related institutions. Following by the presentation of the findings on using FLOSS on education. Something that I am happy to say is that the number of talks is increasing every year, so hopefully in 5 years the FLISOL event of Guayaquil might scale to a higher level.

Area 2: Workshops

This area  is aimed for different users, but most of them are oriented to experienced users. This year we have on schedule 6 workshops.

Area 3: Demo/Gaming room

This is a must-visit place for the young ones and a proof that “Hey!!! it is possible to play video games on GNU/Linux”.  This area will be the home of small tournaments in the games Frets on Fire, OpenArena and Super Tuxkart, where participants will be able to earn small FLOSS related prizes. In addition to this, visitors will be able to test some desktop environments and cool apps.

Area 4: Installation Party

Last but not the least, and the reason that drove FLISOL on first place, the installation Party. The  installation party is complemented by a cross-distro stand were users are explained the main features of each distro in  order to ease their decision in the moment of the installation party. During the installation, the users receive a brief introduction to GNU/Linux and are assisted on its installation. This year, the available distros are: openSUSE, Fedora, (k)ubuntu, CentOS and Debian.

In addition to this, for those who are not so sure if it’s their time to move to FLOSS, KOKOA prepare the KOKOA Toolkit, which is a CD with Free Software and tutorials that can be installed on windows. This gives the users the chance to taste the power of FLOSS and help in their transition decision :D.

The time keeps going and that moment in the year when all Latin America joins to celebrate a FLOSS party has arrived.

More info at:

http://flisolgye.espol.edu.ec/

http://flisol.net/FLISOL2010/Ecuador/Guayaquil

For those of you who couldn’t attend to FOSDEM or for those who attended and want to see it again, here some of the videos of the talks are available for download. Additionally, you can visit the official FOSDEM youtube channel, enjoy… and don’t forget: Have a lot of fun