Ariel’s Playground & Toy Factory

It was a busy (last) week with several ICT events.

At the National College of Business Administration’s (NCBA) IT Week, I had the opportunity to give a talk last Friday, Sept 14 promoting FOSS by showing several cases and statistics why public and private organizations are using FOSS.

At the 5th Philippine Youth Congress in Information Technology (Y4IT), I also gave an “opening remarks,” a talk on the growing demand for ICT Human Resource and also had a chance to promote FOSS.

In both events (NCBA and Y4IT) we also played the “Codebreakers: What is the potential of free/open source software to bridge the digital divide?” and introduced the International Open Source Network (IOSN). At the Y4IT we showed in several cinemas both the “Codebreakers” and Free Geek” repeatedly.

Organized by the UP ITTC and the UP System IT Foundation, the Y4IT was held last Sept 12, 13 & 14 in four SM North Cinemas. Y4IT is in its 5th year and for this year, we targetted a total of 15,000 but 17,000 showed up, including 4,000 walk-in participants. According to Dr. Jaime Caro, UP IT Training Center (ITTC) Director, the participants came from all over the Philippines with almost all provinces represented. They are mostly students of IT and IT-related courses, accompanied by their faculty advisers and school administrators. This is the first time Y4IT was held in a mall. In the past years, this event was held in the UP Theatre and last year, also in the UP Film Institute and the UP Bahay ng Alumni. The Congress attracted crowds of 5,000 in 2003, 5,500 in 2004 7,500 in 2005 12,700 in 2006 and this year 17,000.

In both events I attended last week, I noticed that a lot of students doesn’t know Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and there is a need to continue promoting FOSS not only during Software Freedom Day (SFD). Of course SFD is just one annual event.

We can do some kind of a FOSS Campus Tour all year round with talks on FOSS together with Demos, Install and Burn Fest. This can be done by utilizing the network among students and faculty in a lot of Colleges and Universities that has been built by the Y4IT. The Y4IT has large cooperating organizations like the Philippine Society of IT Educators (PSITE), the Computing Society of the Philippines (CSP) and volunteer groups with memberships coming from almost all schools, colleges and universities in the Philippines.

Individual institutions can organize the event in their respective campuses, reserve venues, provide the needed equipment and facilties and invite attendees while IOSN ASEAN+3 and other FOSS advocate organizations can provide the resource persons, information materials, FOSS/Linux CDs and volunteers to assist in both install and burn fest.