Contents

1. Platform Pre-Launch in Bulgaria: Sofia July 21st, 2007
2. Platform Pre-Launch in Argentina: Buenos Aires July 31st 2007
3. 7as Jornadas declared of legislative interest
4. A tale of one standard: ODF vs OOXML
5. Agenda
6. About

1. Platform Pre-Launch in Bulgaria: Sofia July 21st, 2007

ISOC – Bulgaria will organise a half day pre-launch of the SELF Platform. Dessi Pefeva will talk about the main goals of the project and will present the progress and developments during the first year. There will be a short introduction of the aTutor tool and the principles of atomisation of the learning materials. One of the aims of the presentation will be to interest the community to contribute and support in testing the SELF Platform, specifically regarding the reusability of Learning Materials (LOs); organisation of LOs; editing of LOs, etc.

The pre-launch will be in the framework of the monthly “Linux for Bulgarians” workshops. The event will be held on July, 21st, at the Centre Francophone in the University of Sofia. The expected audience is the Free Software community, people from the localization community, education and NGOs.

Contribution by Dessi Pefeva, ISOC.bg

2. Platform Pre-Launch in Argentina: Buenos Aires July 31st 2007

On 31st of July, at Social Sciences Auditorium in the University of Buenos Aires, the SELF Project will have it's first workshop in Argentina. Organised by Fundación Vía Libre, the workshop will focus on promoting Free Software and Open Standards, promoting the SELF platform, and building a community of potential interested partners around this project.

Delegates from national and local governments and public administrations already confirmed their interest in attending the meeting, together with the private sector, the education and academic sector and free software communities.

The workshop will start with a presentation of SELF and its goals. During the morning tracks we will focus on concepts around SELF, specially on Free Software and Open Standards concepts and their strategic impact in education, business and public administration.

During the afternoon sessions, we will focus on an open dialogue between interested participants from the different target groups, policy makers, community, NGOs, businesses and the academic sector. The focus is on identifying the main problems around the adoption of Free Software and Open Standards while SELF is used to help these target communities to reach their goals. The workshop will be coordinated by Federico Heinz and Beatriz Busaniche from FVL.

More information (in Spanish)

Contribution by Beatriz Busaniche, FVL

3. 7as Jornadas declared of legislative interest

The 7th edition of the Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre (Free Software Regional Conference), that will take place in August 7-11 in Córdoba (Argentina), has been declared of "legislative interest" by the Low Chamber of the Congress. With this institutional declaration, the Argentinian Lower Chamber acknowledges the social relevance of the conference and the benefits of the dissemination of Free Software.

The declaration states that the Jornadas "propose a discussion environment disseminating Free Software; thus generating a space where the following sectors of the Free Software ecosystem can meet and interact: Community, State, Education, Companies, NGOs and the sectors of Art, communication and culture".

The Jornadas are organised by the Córdoba Free Software Users Group (GrULiC), the Vía Libre Foundation and the National University of Córdoba, and is supported by the SELF Project.

Declaration (in Spanish)

Contribution by Beatriz Busaniche, FVL, and David Jacovkis, UOC

4. A tale of one standard: ODF vs OOXML

Office Open XML (commonly abbreviated as OOXML) is an XML-based file format specification for electronic documents. The specification was originally developed by Microsoft for its Microsoft Office 2007 product suite and was published by Ecma International as the Ecma 376 standard in December 2006. Currently OOXML is the subject of a standardization attempt within the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

During the 7th Regional Free Software Conference in Cordoba, Argentina, a session will be held on this subject. Participants are Nagarjuna G (HBCSE), Georg Greve (FSFE), David Megías (UOC) and Gustavo Boksar (Uruguay).

A tale of one standard: ODF vs OOXML

In a society that is increasingly dependent on technology for information interchange and storage, interoperability and accessibility are paramount. Standards are essential to these goals, yet not all standards are created equal: a comparison between ODF and OOXML illustrates the difference between a standard that is designed to ease interoperability and accessibility, and one that is intended to prevent them.

ODF became an ISO standard in 2006, prompting many organizations and governments to look into it as an effective way to store and communicate information in a way that is interoperable, perennially and widely accessible, as well as vendor independent. This attention prompted Microsoft to submit its own competing format for office automation documents, OOXML, to ISO under a fast-track process which is slated to come to a vote at the end of august. Both specifications are very different in scope, and the details of how they are constructed is a very good illustration of the fact that a specification must comply with a large number of conditions if it wants to be called a "standard".

More information:

<NO>OOXML campaign

India: mirror of committee documents

NEN-normcommissie Netherlands

Free Software Foundation Europe BBC News Article

Free Software Foundation Europe OOXML Questions

Contribution by the SELF Consortium

5. Agenda

21 July 2007, Centre Francophone, University of Sofia, Bulgaria

31 July 31 2007, Social Sciences Auditorium, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Date to be announced, Homi Bhabha Institute for Science Education, Mumbai, India

9-11 August, 2007, Cordoba, Argentina

On Free Software in relation to Society, Education, Technology and Business

• Speakers include members of the SELF Consortium

• ISOC.nl: De Doelenzaal, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• FVL: Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, Tamaulipas, Mexico
• HBCSE: Homi Bhabha Institute for Science Education, Mumbai, India
• ISOC.bg: Francophone Center, Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria

Conference on Open Source in Education and Language Learning Online

28-29 September 2007, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

• 29 September 2007, 14:30 Jonas Öberg (UGOT, FSFE), “SELF: a platform for the collaborative development of learning materials on Free Software and Open Standards”

6. About