Fabian Rodriguez

Following a long tradition, an Ubucon will be rocking Bogotá, Colombia no less! The date is this coming Saturday Nov. 29th. Save the date!

The Colombian LoCo Team has been very actively preparing for this event, they even lined up some sponsors. There will be 2 separate conference tracks and one workshop track, and the event will be streamed live. This looks to be a lot more than an informal gathering! All details are available on the website.

It’s exciting to see local business and enthusiasts getting together around Ubuntu. Make sure you file the registration form if you’re attending.

That’s what the sign says in this picture:

Apparently Ubuntu-co rocked at Campus Party Colombia. If that picture is any indication, I think there’s more to come
Well done to all that were there!

It’s as if these news were specially written for me. I am originally from Colombia and have been living in Montreal, Canada for the past ~20 years.

Dell announced on their blog that their systems will now be available in Canada and Latin America (including Colombia initially!).

Check the original announcement on their english blog, as well as the spanish annoucement for Latin America. It’s nice to see they have a blog for hispanic customers.

In Canada, visit http://dell.ca/open . Phone orders only in Latin America for now.

What a week!!!

This weekend the Colombian LoCo Team had a meeting to get things organized for the FLISOL 2008 in Bogotá, Colombia. The FLISOL is a huge InstallFest across LatinAmerica, this year it will be on April 26th.

The minutes of the meeting are now online, thanks to Hollman Enciso and Julián Alarcón for getting this going!

Yesterday the “Proyecto de Ley del Software Libre” was presented at the Colombian House of Representatives for a first public hearing with great success, according to this news article on their site.

This is one of many steps to get any legislation in place, so it’s an important day in Free Software history for Colombia ! This is the second time after 1992 that such legislation is attempted, and I consider this to be great news, although the general intent of this legislation is presented as letting free software co-exist with proprietary software.

I wish I could have been there, this is truly a time for changes and progress in Colombia and I am excited about all the opportunities opening there. Apparently the session was recorded and is available on video, it will be interesting to watch it and see how this project was presented.

• Project dicussion and comments organized by Colibri, a Colombian free software advocacy and users group.

Si alguien le pregunta qué hora es en Colombia, asegúrese de que sea la hora legal!

Ayer pude ayudar a mi hermano en Cali a publicar un corto-metraje que recién me había mostrado la semana pasada. Asimismo lo pudimos enviar a unas 900 personas. Me gustó mucho que antes de enviarlo únicamente en YouTube me consultara sobre los formatos de archivos de video y las licencias libres - hacía tiempo me venía pidiendo información pero ayer tuvimos que hacer un “crash course” intensivo y este es el resultado.

En este momento hay muchos sentimientos de frustración, impotencia, incluso culpabilidad, pero al mismo tiempo satisfacción, al menos ínfima, de poder ser solidario de alguna manera en esta tragedia. Es como un puño en el estómago. En fin… decidan.

Amigos y amigas,

Este video, realizado hace algunas semanas, adquiere una triste vigencia hoy, en vista de la noticia de la muerte de 11 de los ex-diputados del Valle secuestrados desde abril de 2002.

El corto fue realizado con familiares de Juan Carloz Arbeláez, uno de los líderes asesinados y Sigifredo López, el que señalan como sobreviviente.

Espero de corazón que estas familias puedan descansar y que cese la manipulación del dolor para la guerra.

El video en formato Ogg Theora y el link a su página en YouTube se encuentran disponibles en
http://danielrodriguez.com/video/

El formato libre Ogg Theora permite verlo en Linux y muchas más plataformas fuera de Windows y Mac OSX, aunque tambien lo he subido a YouTube.

Se permite el uso y distribución bajo licencia Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 - Colombia :
http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/co/

Gracias

Daniel Rodríguez
Productor Audiovisual
Cali, Colombia

If you are in Bogota, Colombia or know anyone interested in free culture and content production living there, this may be of interest There will be a screening TONIGHT at 6:30PM of the BBC’s Codebreakers documentary at the Mediatorta, a public cultural space provided by the city
I am really excited that the spanish subtitling was possible after I managed to obtain a release of the original english transcript under a Creative Commons BY licence. Getting the transcript was the easy part but translating it to spanish was a huge effort by a few dedicated individuals - credit goes to Gustavo Gonzalez at Kazak for his dedication to have this completed!

See: Bogota esta empapelada and this announcement for more information.

La Colombie, on le sait, est un pays aux prises avec un conflit armé important, malgré que notre président ne soit pas tout à fait d’accord avec ce choix de mots. J’étais donc très content de voir cette nouvelle envoyée par un collègue de l’APCQ. (more…)

It’s now official, I’ve just become a SIPphone reseller for Colombia. It’s been several years I’ve been using various VoIP technologies (including but not limited to SIP) and after several months of field testing, it’s done! (more…)