See you again in 2010 in Kosovo, land of crows and of free software!

[Flavia Marzano]

The University of Pristina and the Association FLOSSK (Free Libre Open Source Software Kosovo) organized the first Kosovo conference on Free Software, held on August 29 and 30 at the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Pristina.

The conference was opened by the University Dean, Prof. Limani, It went on with the speech of Prof. Blerim Rexha,

Deputy Minister and Professor of Data and Security Network at the Faculty of Electricity and Computer Engineering, a politician speaking the “language” of free software; he believed in the conference from the very beginning, when format and contents had not yet been defined, he contributed to financing it, and his intervention was both technical and political, which is quite unusual.

The program was dense and included speakers from all over the world (most of them from the Balkans, but also from MIT and from more than ten other European countries); it covered the full range of issues concerning free software.
Among the most relevant issues were: gift economy; the most advanced applications for security and VoIP; licences, including EUPL (described from the legal point of view by the lawyer Giovanni Battista Gallus, PhD); the famous program One Laptop per Child; Natural Language Processing; the role of free software in Public Administrations, especially in a “new” country like Kosovo, and so on.

Mike Dupont was the man who coinceived and organized the conference. He had the patience, the constancy end the energy needed in order to search, among all his contacts and with the now widespread technique of viral marketing, keynote speakers, donors and sponsors, and especially a wonderful team of volunteers, aged from 14 to 25, collaborating to absolutely all aspects of the conference organization with a really remarkable seriousness, and managing to have everything working everywhere. These youngsters acted as real professionals and appeared as true protagonists of the event. They did really everything, they collected guests at the airport, they organized the coffee breaks, the use of conference rooms and the accessibility to wifi to everybody, they defined the program and the logo: not a penguin but a crow, since in Kosovo crows are everywhere and they stroll among people. In Serbian Kosovo Polje literally means “Crow Field” (or “Crow Plains”) since kosovo is the possessive form of the Slavic word Kos (“crow”) (Source: Wikipedia).

One of the most successful speech was “Freedom, beyod free of Charge” by Giuseppe Maxia, who declared: “The currency of open sourge is time, if you don’t want to spend money tou must make a time investment. You can use free software freely because all needed information and documentation are freely available, but this requires time, to be transformed into money and solutions.”

Alessio Pennasilico of Alba S.T. said: “While being the first edition, organized by volunteers and probably based on a small budget, this event has been a great success, with a large participation and very relevant interventions”.

Prof. Blerim Rexha answered three relevant questions. Here are the questions and his answers.
Q. What do you think on the First Free Software Conference in Kosovo?
A. Free Software Conference held in 29 and 30 August in Prishtina showed to
many people, especially to political representatives (local and central
authorities), that exist an alternative way (approach) of spending tax
payers money for offering electronic services in public administration. The
conference shows that Kosova has also the human capacity for such modern and actual approach. We are doing the first steps toward a long journey.
Q. What is the Kosovo Government strategy for innovation and expecially in Open Source Sofware filed?
A. The Kosovo Government has adopted this year its e-Government Strategy
2009-2015. This strategy foresees implementing all services of public
administration in electronic form, being this e-Services or m-Services. Most
of our e-Services are based in proprietary software, but the Ministry of
Public Administration is the owner of those source codes, which we consider
a progress toward to open source.
Q. Do you think it can be an opportunity for developing your country?
A. Kosovo as new born country, faces with many challenges and thus it has
many developing possibilities. It is our responsibility to create the best
environment (legal and infrastructure) for economic development.

The conference was closed stating everybody’s will to meet again next year and the hope that the conference may become a meeting occasion not only for Kosovo but also for all Balkans.

See you again in 2010 in Kosovo, land of crows and of free software!