A workshop organized by Ethiopian Information Technology Professionals Association (EITPA) and EFOSSNet in collaboration with Ethiopian Information and Communication Development Agency (EICTDA) and ICT Assisted Development (ICTAD) is conducted on December 27, 2008. The workshop was attended by more than 300 people from the academia, public sector, government institutions and NGOs and it has played a significant role in introducing what FOSS is and also demonstrated the experience of other countries at policy level. Among the presentations, the practical FOSS implementations from Addis Ababa University, Department of Computer Science and one of the private institutions in Ethiopia who is engaged in FOSS solution development and consultancy called Apposit attracted a lot of attention and were very interesting. You can find the workshop presentations here and photos here.

Ethiopian Society of Mechanical Engineers (ESME) has prepared a hands-on workshop around Open Source Software, basic web page development and Joomla! in collaboration with EFOSSNet and Addis Ababa University, Department of Computer Science. The workshop is specially prepared for members of ESME and starts on August 11, 2008 and lasts for five days. Registration is over as of August 05, 2008. The program commencement will be announced soon.

Document Freedom Day

Document Freedom day is celebrated in more than 60 countries worldwide on 26, March 2008. It is an initiative to raise awareness for document freedom and open standards. EFOSSNet in collaboration with Addis Ababa University, Department of Computer Science has prepared a seminar on this issue and celebrated the occasion on April 4, 2008. For more information about what document freedom is all about, visit here >>.

What is the point of having different standards for doing the same thing? What is the problem with vendor specific standards? EFOSSNet has prepared a workshop on August 24,2007 which discussed about Microsoft's attempt to ISO-standardize its new product OOXML among EICTDA(Ethiopian Information and communication Technology Development Agency) and Influential Ethiopian IT professionals. There are a lot of technical shortcomings of the proposed standard as revealed by many countries. Specific problems for the Ethiopian case are outlined in this document. So far a lot of countries who have thoroughly reviewed the document voted against it. You can read more about it here >>.

Jon "Maddog" Hall

EFOSSNet in collaboration with Addis Ababa University, Department of Computer Science has undergone a seminar about Linux and Open Source Software on August 24, 2007 in Addis Ababa University by Jon "Maddog" Hall, who is a director of Linux International, USA. He had an interesting presentation about the details of Linux and other Open Source softwares for more than two hours and more than 40 people attended the seminar.

Developers Road Show

EFOSSNet prepared a 3 day developers road show program from August 19 to 21, 2007, in Addis Ababa University, Department of Computer Science. The program was aimed at introducing and selecting developers for further development of a system called "Debo" which will be used as an ART (Antiretroviral Treatment) for HIV/AIDS data management and reporting. The system was started as a masters project by Ethiopian students in university of Oslo, Norway. 20 people from South Africa, Rwanda, Norway, India and Ethiopia attended the program.You can find more about the project here >>.