FreesB 2010 Conference September 10, 2010

The Free Software in Balkans (FreeSBalkans) conference is an annual event, which will gather a regional audience once a year for lectures and presentations by a variety of international and national professionals who will present the latest developments in the global FOSS community. It will travel from country to country, year to year to different locations. The first conference of this kind is going to be hosted by the University of Vlora, in Albania. By starting in Albania, we hope to help create a community there that will continue next year to host it’s own conference.

Invited are be speakers from and speeches from the whole Balkan area. Special focus will be on FLOSS in public administration.

Software Hacking Rooms for different projects are planned. The SFK09 had speakers from 16 countries, mostly from the Balkans, we hope that they will come again and bring more people.

The conference Free Software in Balkans is aiming to be an annual meeting of the free software users, developers and supporters in the Balkan countries. It will travel from country to country, year to year to different locations. The Conference will gather professionals, academics and enthusiasts who share the vision that software should be free and open for the community to develop and customise to its needs, and that knowledge is a communal property and free and open to everyone.

The conference will be a traditional event, which will gather a regional audience once a year for lectures and presentations by a variety of international and national professionals who will present the latest developments in the global FOSS community. The conference should bring all the activists from the Balkans to one place for cooperation.

The conference will also be used as a meeting point for a network of individuals, associations and companies with the aim of sponsoring and initiating projects which benefit the people of Balkans, by establishing it as one of the European centers of FOSS, which should result in commercial benefits for the Region.

Other aims of the conference are to introduce Balkan businesses and public to low cost alternatives to expensive proprietary software, to train local people in the latest developments in software and social-collaboration tools, to promote respect for legal licenses, and introduce the public to the best methods for localization of software and knowledge. The first conference of this kind is going to be hosted by the University of Vlora, in Albania. The idea of the Balkan conference comes from Flavia Marzano and James Mike DuPont.

The organizers are the University of Vlora, the FLOSSK (Free/Libre Open Source Software Association of Kosova), FOSS-AL (Free and Open Source Software Association of Albania), and the Albanian Academy of Sciences.

Official Website: http://flossal.org/freesb-2010-conference/