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This is a blogpost by Elio Qoshi, Rep and Mozilla Albania’s very own community builder. The blog post is in English.
As with so many open source conferences, Software Freedom Kosova, Kosovo’s biggest FLOSS conference, has turned into tradition after the 2nd edition in 2010. Once something so solid is established it’s hard to abandon it at a certain point. It becomes a common habit of the community.
However, things were a bit different this year, with more and more plans in the agenda of FLOSSK, Kosova’s very own FLOSS community: a super awesome new hackerspace, exciting new times are ahead for the open source movement in Kosovo. Yet, the future of SFK remained unclear, as so many new things kept appearing on the community’s plates.
Luckily, SFK14 was soon after announced, being the 6th edition of the well known FLOSS tradition in Kosovo. Although it was delayed over a month (SFK is usually held in the beginning of September) we from Open Labs Albania, were highly looking forward to it. So we did our preparations accordingly.
On a side note, I would not be able to attend SFK14, due to my invitation at Mozilla Festival London 2014, a major annual event I was invited to by ReMo as a Mozilla Representative. Unfortunately though, my UK visa was refused in the last days so I was unable to attend. Fair enough, I decided to attend SFK14 instead.
I was lucky to get sponsored by Mozilla in such a quick turnaround as I was not expecting to be unable to attend MozFest (thanks to Brian King for the help).
We were happy to await Giannis Konstantinidis in Tirana, as a confirmed Mozilla speaker for SFK. I met Giannis the first time at FOSDEM 2014 in Brussels, where we were sponsored Reps helping out at the booth and DevRoom. It seems some things never change so it was good to see that our stupid jokes and “classy” Albanian humour were as awesome as always.
As part of the Mozilla team, Kristi Progri and Aleksander Koko were chosen to be facilitators together with Giannis and me at SFK14. Together with Redon, also Mozilla Rep from Albania, we had a very solid team from Albania, strengthening the Mozilla presence in Prishtina immensely.
After a 5h long bus trip, we arrived at Han Hostel in Prishtina (which I highly recommend, super cool staff, great accomodation and very cheap).My mom told me to stay warm, which I remembered of course.
We were prepared with jackets, scarfs and hoodies, however we did not expect Prishtina to be THAT cold. It snowed at certain times and the wind was unbearable with bare skin revealed. However Mozillians stay strong, so we endured at the end (after having several teas and hot chocolates, obviously). Several selfies kept our moral high in the cold also.
The first day was filled with workshops and hands-on sessions.
As a non-coder and designer, I had a little bit of a hard time following, however there were some great sessions which I enjoyed checking out. The fact most speakers were albanian, was also very encouraging for communities like us. For the rest of the day, we decided to relax a bit. It’s worth to say that we also did not eat a single proper healthy meal. Are we supposed to eat healthy at FLOSS conferences anyway?
After having a good sleep, we became ready for the second day. The main conference was taking place at that day, with well known speakers among the mindlike communities and booths impatiently awaiting the attendants between the sessions.
I’m proud to say that Mozilla had the biggest booth with plenty of swag and Firefox OS phones. The Firefox OS Flames were the rockstars, showing off the true potential of Firefox OS.
We socialized a lot and spread Mozilla love since the start. It was exciting and tiresome at some times, especially when crowds would gather around the booth, but with such amazing Mozillians, this was unable to fail.
Later on, Giannis’ would talk about Firefox OS and how it works and what it offers. The talk was solid and an interactive Q&A session followed.
From time to time, we went to check out some talks once we had the chance, however it was a bit disappointing to see much fewer people attending the conference than in the last years ( I attended SFK13 also). With such a quick turnaround and such a cold weather, I could guess why though.
The third and last day was workshop day again and Giannis would hold the Firefox OS workshop right in the start. As being infamously no early birds, we arrived 20 minutes late, however the situation was under control (how couldn’t it?). The workshop was filled with 90 minutes full of fun and coding. Apart the one guy who was trying to install the Firefox OS Simulator on Google Chrome, everything went smooth (hellooo this is a Mozilla workshop!). Also, at the end of the workshop we gave out some limited edition Firefox OS rolling ball pens, and an exclusive Firefox OS Launch T-Shirt. Of course a group photo shouldn’t miss:
A 5h long trip back to Tirana and several hot teas awaited us afterwards.
It was good to be back in Prishtina for SFK14 and the experience was immensely rewarding.
Although the weather was not in our favour (did I mention it was cold?) we came back with lots of stories to tell.
My expectations are however much higher for SFK15, let’s hope the guys can deliver again such a hugely succesful conference. We will be definitely there.
Artikulli i plote...
As with so many open source conferences, Software Freedom Kosova, Kosovo’s biggest FLOSS conference, has turned into tradition after the 2nd edition in 2010. Once something so solid is established it’s hard to abandon it at a certain point. It becomes a common habit of the community.
However, things were a bit different this year, with more and more plans in the agenda of FLOSSK, Kosova’s very own FLOSS community: a super awesome new hackerspace, exciting new times are ahead for the open source movement in Kosovo. Yet, the future of SFK remained unclear, as so many new things kept appearing on the community’s plates.
Luckily, SFK14 was soon after announced, being the 6th edition of the well known FLOSS tradition in Kosovo. Although it was delayed over a month (SFK is usually held in the beginning of September) we from Open Labs Albania, were highly looking forward to it. So we did our preparations accordingly.
On a side note, I would not be able to attend SFK14, due to my invitation at Mozilla Festival London 2014, a major annual event I was invited to by ReMo as a Mozilla Representative. Unfortunately though, my UK visa was refused in the last days so I was unable to attend. Fair enough, I decided to attend SFK14 instead.
I was lucky to get sponsored by Mozilla in such a quick turnaround as I was not expecting to be unable to attend MozFest (thanks to Brian King for the help).
We were happy to await Giannis Konstantinidis in Tirana, as a confirmed Mozilla speaker for SFK. I met Giannis the first time at FOSDEM 2014 in Brussels, where we were sponsored Reps helping out at the booth and DevRoom. It seems some things never change so it was good to see that our stupid jokes and “classy” Albanian humour were as awesome as always.
As part of the Mozilla team, Kristi Progri and Aleksander Koko were chosen to be facilitators together with Giannis and me at SFK14. Together with Redon, also Mozilla Rep from Albania, we had a very solid team from Albania, strengthening the Mozilla presence in Prishtina immensely.
After a 5h long bus trip, we arrived at Han Hostel in Prishtina (which I highly recommend, super cool staff, great accomodation and very cheap).My mom told me to stay warm, which I remembered of course.
We were prepared with jackets, scarfs and hoodies, however we did not expect Prishtina to be THAT cold. It snowed at certain times and the wind was unbearable with bare skin revealed. However Mozillians stay strong, so we endured at the end (after having several teas and hot chocolates, obviously). Several selfies kept our moral high in the cold also.
The first day was filled with workshops and hands-on sessions.
As a non-coder and designer, I had a little bit of a hard time following, however there were some great sessions which I enjoyed checking out. The fact most speakers were albanian, was also very encouraging for communities like us. For the rest of the day, we decided to relax a bit. It’s worth to say that we also did not eat a single proper healthy meal. Are we supposed to eat healthy at FLOSS conferences anyway?
After having a good sleep, we became ready for the second day. The main conference was taking place at that day, with well known speakers among the mindlike communities and booths impatiently awaiting the attendants between the sessions.
I’m proud to say that Mozilla had the biggest booth with plenty of swag and Firefox OS phones. The Firefox OS Flames were the rockstars, showing off the true potential of Firefox OS.
We socialized a lot and spread Mozilla love since the start. It was exciting and tiresome at some times, especially when crowds would gather around the booth, but with such amazing Mozillians, this was unable to fail.
Later on, Giannis’ would talk about Firefox OS and how it works and what it offers. The talk was solid and an interactive Q&A session followed.
From time to time, we went to check out some talks once we had the chance, however it was a bit disappointing to see much fewer people attending the conference than in the last years ( I attended SFK13 also). With such a quick turnaround and such a cold weather, I could guess why though.
The third and last day was workshop day again and Giannis would hold the Firefox OS workshop right in the start. As being infamously no early birds, we arrived 20 minutes late, however the situation was under control (how couldn’t it?). The workshop was filled with 90 minutes full of fun and coding. Apart the one guy who was trying to install the Firefox OS Simulator on Google Chrome, everything went smooth (hellooo this is a Mozilla workshop!). Also, at the end of the workshop we gave out some limited edition Firefox OS rolling ball pens, and an exclusive Firefox OS Launch T-Shirt. Of course a group photo shouldn’t miss:
A 5h long trip back to Tirana and several hot teas awaited us afterwards.
It was good to be back in Prishtina for SFK14 and the experience was immensely rewarding.
Although the weather was not in our favour (did I mention it was cold?) we came back with lots of stories to tell.
My expectations are however much higher for SFK15, let’s hope the guys can deliver again such a hugely succesful conference. We will be definitely there.
Artikulli i plote...