“State of the Word” is a big thing for anyone who is involved with WordPress. This year’s “State of the Word” is even more important, following the release of WordPress 5.0 and the switch over to Gutenberg editor.
If an almost one hour talk is too much for you, then read through the Post Status summary of the talk with all the highlights and useful links.
Last week I’ve attended the first ever hack {cyprus } summit. hack {cyprus} is well known among techies in Cyprus for organizing other events, mostly hackatons. They are good at that. And this time it was something new.
The event itself was excellent! It had all the usual things you’d expect from such a gathering – a bunch of bearded guys in dark t-shirts and jeans (each one secretly wishing that there were more women in tech), gadgets, coffee, snacks, and so on and so on. And there were talks and workshops with lots of chatter in between.
Being a big fan and a frequent attendee of technical conferences all over Europe, I knew there was no chance I’d miss this one in Cyprus. Even if I have to drive from Limassol to Nicosia. In fact, I decided I’ll get even more value of it – practice my public speaking and presentation skills at the expense of the crowd. So when the call for talks was announced, I submitted a couple of talks and one was picked.
There was a little hickup where I didn’t know the time slot of the talk (how long it would be), so I submitted two talks – one for 30 minutes or so, and one for 60 minutes. The 60 minute one got chosen, and then I learned that the time I have is 20 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for the Q&A. Oopsy. But, never the less, challenge accepted. It took a lot of cutting and trimming but I think I sort of managed to get the essence of it into about 20 slides. My talk wasn’t the first one of the day, so I observed other speakers. I think most of them went slightly over 20 minutes and cut into the Q&A time, but on the other hand, there weren’t enough questions for most of the talks to fill all that time. So in the end, it all worked out pretty well. If I remember correctly, I managed to squeeze my talk into about 25 minutes altogether. I’d love to see the video of that – there’s plenty of mistakes to learn from there, but for now, there are only the slides.
I would like to say huge thank you to everybody involved – organizers, sponsors, speakers, and attendees. It was a blast and I hope to attend many more.
Here is an announcement from my friends at UbuntuCy.org forum, who are organizing yet another event to promote Free and Open Source Software.
The Ubuntu Linux Cyprus Local Community in cooperation with the Information Systems and Technology Service of Cyprus University of Technology and the New Technologies Club of CUT, invite you to the Free Software Conference which will be held at the Andreas Themistokleous Building (Old Cadastre) of CUT on the 6th of October. The agenda follows:
Presentations (Pefkios Georgiades Amphitheater) :
6:00 – 6:30 pm: Introduction to Free Software (in Greek)
6:30 – 7:00 pm: Linux Clusters (in Greek)
7:00 – 7:30 pm: Free software: past, present, and the future (in English)
7:30 – 7:45 pm: Projection of the Creative Commons epic short film “Sintel”Workshops (KXE1 Computer Lab):
8:00 – 8:30 pm: Presentation of the Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop
8:30 – 9:00 pm: Academic Applications for Math, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering.An installation workshop will be running in parallel with the above, where can practice on how to install Ubuntu and its applications.
There will be free Ubuntu CDs with Free Software for everyone! You can also bring you laptop to test them.
Just so that you don’t get confused – this is tomorrow, October 6th, 2010. It’s going to be in Limassol, on campus of Cyprus University of Technology. And in case you’ll be running late, make sure you get there before 7 o’clock. Yes, I’m going to deliver a speech in English on the subject of past, present, and future of the Free and Open Source Software. Maybe we can talk more and catch a beer afterwards. Don’t miss it! Here is a leaflet for you if you need something printed.
As you might have heard, there was yet another Cyprus Linux User Group meeting yesterday. It was, as usual, aligned to the recent Ubuntu and upcoming Fedora releases. This time the even took place in the new University of Cyprus campus, in Nicosia. There were slightly more people than the last time, but I was hoping for even more.
There were three presentations and one workshop. Theo did a traditional Ubuntu Linux presentation in Greek. Alexandros presented, also in Greek, about Linux in Cyprus education – a very interesting one, too bad my Greek is so poor. And then I did a presentation in English about what Linux has to offer to students and why they should get involved. Here are the slides from my talk (Linux for Students and Linux for Students). After the presentations, Constantinos did a workshop about Compiz and Elisa media library. Both looked quite impressive.
After the event a few of us went to the tavern for some really awesome meze and beer. Altogether – good fun.
P.S.: If you missed the event, keep an eye on Ubuntu Cyprus web site and forums for announcements of the next one. Hope to see you there.