Berlin Open and Linuxtag 2009
My comments after one week “openess” in Germany’s pulsating capital
First part of my programm was the new event “Berlin Open“, organised by a team of students lead by Prof. Lutterbeck of TU Berlin. Topic was “Open Innovation” and during the two conference days many talks by quite different people showed an impression of the very interesting aspects around “openess” – in mind, music, software, (geographical) data and research.
Germany’s secretary of state Schallbruch clearly commented that the Federal Government is not amused about what’s going on with document interoperability; a hint to Microsoft and their behaviour with OOXML in general (which was declined by his Ministry) and ODF interop as shown in Office 2007 SP2. And he announced that the user software for Germany’s new electronic ID (ePA) will be free software. Great, thank you fed gov!
Also a very interesting talk by Simon Hampton, Google’s lead of public policy in Brussels, about Google’s Openess with 4Cs. And many others… Just one more to mention. PhD Leonhard Dobusch talked about his studies of four different (non) migration projects in four Municipalities, Vienna, Frankfurt, Berlin and Munich. His conclusion: “Speaking as economist, I could tell you, what Munich is doing is real innovation”. Thank you, Leonhard!
To sum up this event: interesting speakers, quite good location, only few participants. Changes in concept neccessary, but only if repeated. Thanks to Prof Lutterbeck and his team. Good luck in retirement!
Let’s go on with the next event, Europe’s leading event on free software and business, the Linuxtag. From Wed to Sat our LiMux project was ready for sharing experiences in four different talks during the conference and at the booth together with our partners from Foreign Office, Federal Office for IT-Security and the Federal Open Source Competence Center, which also organised the booth; thanks for that. Besides general information about our project it was the WollMux people asked about, wanted to know more. Great. A clear todo for our office team to get some needed public improvements on presentation and documentation done, finally.
(This photo shows our booth staff on the left, Matthias, Michael and Jens, thank you! – and our LiMux project manager Peter Hofmann togehter with Munich’s CIO Karl-Heinz Schneider, both visiting Linuxtag on thursday for some meetings with the fed gov and others)
Linuxtag again was an opportunity for strenghtening the network of governments using free software and talking about future plans. Thinking strategic, I’m sure it is the time for a real change now for public administrations – if we have the courage to think about what we will need not only tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow. Let’s do it, now!
I attended Jan Wildeboer’s (RedHat Open Source Evangelist) keynote at FUDCon, which was held together with Linuxtag for the first time. He is responsible for the world wide conspiracy against Microsoft, as he was told by a MS lobbyist in Brussels. He talked about the important role of open standards and explained the idea of twitter/facebook/… folks beeing the next open source programmers; so we shouldn’t ignore them. You can find him at identi.ca, for sure.
The DebConf 2011 could be in Germany and at the moment three german regions think about a nomination, Berlin, Rhein/Rhur and… Munich. So I (as non Debian developer) attended the first common meeting as the onliest one speaking for Munich. Where were the many Debian people from Munich?
Today I shortly visited the last day of Linuxtag and was quite disappointed about some exhibitors have already gone. E.g. the french people left behind a nearly empty booth and also some other business booths were “open space for free people”. Hm, strange.
To sum up Linuxtag: a lot of conference talks, great opportunities for networking, imho fewer visitors than last year at our booth and the Berlin Fairground trying to get too much money for every step they moved. Changes for future urgently needed, maybe change the location?
My final statement: Dear Berlin Open organizers, you’re doing a great job, but it is an absolute “must” to join Linuxtag next year. Not two independent events, one in common. And Linuxtag, thank you for all, but please decide if Messe Berlin is really the right partner for you… and not only for you, but also for the free software and open standards movement. Berlin is such a great location, maybe there are other places?
Thanks 
Two events to be aware of:
28. Juni 2009 um 1:33
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