Mi blog at Igalia

As most of you now, Igalia is a highly-specialized European company providing consultancy services and developing innovative open source solutions for a large set of software and hardware platforms. At Igalia we work in the most exciting areas in open source software, including Browsers, Graphics and Multimedia. We apply our knowledge to a wide variety of platforms and technologies in the Consumer Electronics market and provide companies with innovative solutions for a wide variety of devices, including smart tv, set-top boxes, tablets, mobile phones, in-vehicle infotainment and home automation systems.

We are currently looking to expand our team and are seeking to hire a Sales Engineer in USA, ideally in the San Francisco Bay Area. This profile will play a critical role developing and implementing strategies to increase sales revenue.

It might be that the heading is a bit pretentious, but I am quite sure that this year 2012 will be known in Galicia as The Free Software Year, when we have held Guadec and Libre Software World Conference 2012. And I am really happy that we have been able to achieve such an important milestone.

For people that do not know a lot about our small region, I would like to say that Galicia has ~2.79M inhabitants (and more than other 300k more spread around the globe), 29594 km2 of land, 1500 km of coast, warm weather (less sunny than the South of Spain but with beaches that could be part of the Caribbean Sea), good wines and varied diet with seafood, fish and meat, as part of our specialties and three smalls airports (we could talk about this for hours ). Being a quiet region where to live in a safe place, we are not so known but I am sure that almost everybody has been warm welcomed.

Both conferences have been a success in terms of attendance, organization and contents, bringing to Galicia some of the most important people around Free Software and GNOME communities, with very special keynotes and interesting debates about the future of GNOME.

Suppose you will realize reading my previous paragraphs that I am very proud of Galicia holding GUADEC and LSWC 2012 and that Igalia have participated organizing, sponsoring and supporting both conferences. Not to forget that we are also preparing the next Webkit hackfest in December at Igalia’s premises in A Coruña, which will round off 2012.

Some years will pass before having all them again in Galicia together. However, everybody is welcome to pay us a visit , give us a call and enjoy with us our amazing landscape, having dinner in a relaxed environment.

For the record some photos about Galicia and the conferences:

Libre Software World Conference 2012. Coffee break.

Aguieira beach in Galicia

One week to Libre Software World Conference 2012 or LSWC’12 and there are almost 400 people enrolled to the event. Next Friday, the 12th the enrollment period will close and there will be no more time to sign up for the conference. Hence, hurry up if you don’t want to want to be left out of the enrollment. 

Agenda is almost closed and it is publicly available in our website.

I would also like to say that Master On Free Software organized by Igalia and URJC in Galicia is sponsoring this event and it will keep the enrollment period until the conference is over. If you would like to listen about it we will be talking on Friday, the 19th at 10:30 as part of LSWC’12. Do no hesitate to get in touch with us to learn what this master can do for you. High percentage of ex-students are very happy with having studied our master thanks to our practical approach to all the subjects.

More information about the master in the website:

Agasol and Igalia as part of Agasol manager boards are organizing Libre Software World Conference 2012 to be held in Santiago de Compostela in October, 18th and 19th.

LSWC’12 aims to be the main event on Free Software in South Europe and will count with important speakers:

• Bruce Perens: Created the Open Source Definition and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI) with Eric S. Reymond.
• Chris DiBona: Chris DiBona is the Director of Open Source for Mountain View, Ca. based Google. His teams oversees license compliance and support the open source developer community through programs such as the Google Summer of Code and through the release of open source software projects and patches.
• Christian Felber: Specialist in sustainable economy and alternatives to financial markets. He has developed a new international model: “Common Goods Economy”. He is founder member of global justice movement called “Attac” in Austria.
• Corinto Meffe: Systems integration director in Ministério do Planejamento, Orçamento e Gestão.
• Fernando Botelho: Founder of F123, a group that designs projects in order to reduce poverty and improving their access to technology.
• John Sullivan: is a software freedom activist, hacker, and writer. John is currently executive director of the Free Software Foundation, where he has worked since early 2003. He is also a speaker and webmaster for the GNU Project. He also maintains of the Plannermode and delicious-el packages for the GNU Emacs text editor.

There are still some other lecturers pending to confirm but we are sure that this conference will be very interesting. If you would like to help us, please, spread the word .
If you are interested in attending the conference, there is a registration form in the following link. This form is also valid for registering talks (RFP will remain open until September, the 18th).

See you there!

Once again, Master on Free Software organizes three open sessions in September. Different people from Galician Free Software sector will talk about

• Business models and job opportunities in Free Software.
• Technical sessions about technilogies like Big Data, Interactivity, Augmented Reality and Human-computer interaction.
• GNU/Linux distros “Made in Galicia”. Different approaches to different needs.

The event is free and open but registration is necessary in order to control capacity. More info at master webpage

Since 2007, Igalia has been organizing a Master on Free Software. As part of this master, and in order to help students without the possibility of enrolling the whole master, Igalia offers the possibility of studying specific modules.

Specifically, Web development module has been open for enrollment until May, the 31th. If you are interested in it, more information can be found in Master on Free Software website.

As a summary, the web development module will deal with several technologies like PHP, Java, Ruby on Rails, PhoneGap, HTML,  Javascript, JQuery, etc. Hence, we recommend you to have a look to the program and join us for this course .

Last week I attended Open Source World Conference 2012 in Granada. I participated in a presentation about products and solutions from several companies. In my case, I was there to talk about LibrePlan and to moderate another round table of presentations.

I met some old friends there and new other ones and I hope this kind of events are kept in order to share our experiences around Free Software.

Here you can see some photos of my round table that was held on Friday:

Tonigh, I am going to talk about Igalia at Pecha Kucha Night as part of the fifht edition. Today, it is going to be held in Playa Club, A Coruña.

More info: http://oi41.tinypic.com/2h2kqjm.jpg

The event is free but capacity is limited, so if you want to be there, go there early to get tickets .

See you there!

Last weekend, Master on Free Software organization (Igalia and URJC) arranged an open session in Vigo.

First of all, thanks to NovaCaixaGalicia because they offered us a meeting room to hold this session.

More than 20 people attended the session and 5 people from “Master network” put forward their experiences around free software. Some interesting topics:

• Jesús M. González Barahona talked about FLOSSMetrics
• Roberto Vieito explained a translation methodology and gave us a gift result of applying the methodology .
• Pablo Sanxiao talked about Icarto and gvSIG.
• Andrés explained how to manage R&D with free software tools.
• And, Xulio told us his experience with big companies and free software.

Thanks to lecturers and attendants. This open session wouldn’t happen without your help .

I would like to remind that you can already enroll yourself in any of the modules (desktop/mobile and web development). We have just updated the program for the module.

See full summary at Master website.

A photo of the first lecture:

Master on Free Software organizes an open session in March, the 18th. People from the master network will talk about their experiences around free software explaining different projects and activities they are taking part.

Jesús María Barahona, teacher and researcher at Systems and Communications group (LibreSoft) and contributor to different books and articles about Free Software, is going to participate in this session. Moreover, some ex-students will talk about their experiences and activities. More information about this event in this page.

The event is free and open but registration is necessary in order to control capacity.