Looking Back on the Bicol Open Source Forum
Saturday, February 18th, 2006Whew! Wow! Yay! 
It’s been just a couple of days since the Bicol Open Source Forum was held at the Aquinas University, but I can’t just seem to forget it. It’s been a rocking experience, and I wished it were a bit longer:
- I met Irvin (at last) who also gave my a copy of Dapper Flight 3. \o/ Together with Rick, we gave away lots of Ubuntu CDs at the event (I practically went back home to Daet with an empty box
- I also got to chat with fellow speakers Rick Bahague Jr. of CP-Union who presented the state of FOSS and Rage Callao of ASTI-DOST who is working on the Philippines’ very own Bayanihan Linux. Both are really cool guys in their own right, and they also are Debian/Ubuntu users too! Rage was also kind enough to give me his own 16-CD Debian Sarge collection (plus Bayanihan 3.1 and Thin Client Manager); Thanks a lot!!!
- I was surprised at the number of people who attended the forum, as well as their attention to detail during the presentations, and most of all, in their line of questioning: these were mostly non-technical management people, and they all seem to use GNU/Linux in its various incarnations for quite some time now. I hope that these people would continue their adventure into FOSS; especially with (both) regional and local government support, I’m quite excited to see what holds for FOSS in Bicol in the future
- I got involved in the founding of the Bicol Open Source Society that would serve as the overseer and motivator for FOSS projects and events here in Bicol. Included in the org are folks from academe and local govenrment units, and we’re set to have an online meeting sometime next week. Of course, we’re composed of a small number of people for now, but I expect that with some additional visibility (starting with making a new mailing list) I think a lot of Bicolanos in the region and elsewhere will be very interested in joining. Hopefully there would be provincial LUGs soon, and I think this would be a very good prospect for a PLUG roadshow.
- I got to see Bulkang Mayon and the Cagsawa Ruins too with Rick and the DOST folks at the day after the event (too bad Rage had to go ahead.) A couple of van-rides later and I’m back home, trying out a Dapper upgrade, and quite tired but happy.
Thanks a lot to Joseph Cadag and Josephina Abilay of DOST/RITECC for organizing the event and bringing FOSS to the attention of many Bicolanos 
I look forward for another event like this soon: from what I hear there would be an even bigger one set for July. I guess I should be pinging Marilize of Ubuntu now to reserve some flyers and CDs…
…but right now, on the the Dapper upgrade! Break my Breezy and lemme have my jigsaw puzzle 
