 So hi everybody I'm redone Angelo We are from both are from Albania although I live for many years in Greece nothing There's in some conference I've talked There've been people that do not know where albenias and that's okay in Pakistan. There were people that didn't know where albenias so, but that's weird because In Greece there were at some point. There were many people come from Pakistan to Greece and they were like Some of the some people from Greece didn't know where Pakistan is which is weird because it's a very big country like and This is also weird because many Greek people. I know we're making fun of people from the US Because they didn't know where Iraq is and this is also in general is for me It's kind of crazy because there are a lot of people who don't know not cannot know everything and this goes around with many cultures and This slide would be more complete if we also had if you if I also knew about the previous slide that we saw in the intro with Libra office communities all around the world and I'm saying this because There are there is there are many countries as mentioned by Talio Italo this morning Where there is no active Libra office community at the moment and If you count these countries and the population of these countries these are like a lot of countries, right? I personally see there a lot of potential to get more people Joining and contributing many ways just as many of us do And are present here as well so What's can I if can I ask like do you know anything about Albania like any hands? There is a stereotype. We steal a lot. I cannot confirm or deny that so just So you you mentioned so it's only one thing what do you know but like first thing it comes in mind Okay, well that doesn't count because it's Perfect. Well, no it's Italo. It was has been there. So he knows a lot Yeah, no That's not a good thing So that's that's another negative thing about Albania anything positive I'm joking. No, he's a friend of ours so an interesting you mentioned before an interesting thing that we had our Supreme leader his name was and ver Hoja. He ruled the country from after the Second World War until 90 and until the Communist Party until rule the country until 1989 and Albania was pretty isolated in the beginning. We had a lot of Friendship with the Russians something. I don't know they were those sending bad quality of vodka. So we stopped any collaboration with them We started having collaboration with the Chinese as a Like ex-communist party. They didn't have vodka at all. We didn't know this information So we broke up with them as well. So after that we were totally isolated. You remember, it's like in order to understand it It's like Korea North Korea right now No information going on and off in and out. I remember I was I was nearly expelled from from school because I had some people from outside Giving me a gift as blue jeans, which was very very bad and This was like the only way of knowing what was happening was pirate Keeping up with the pirate antennas in order to keep track with TV channels from Italy or Serbia Hints if there are people from Serbia. Oh, sorry if there are few people from Serbia here Heavy metal back then was very very bad like horrible How do I do this? Okay Sorry, so I just so as I mentioned were totally isolated until 1981 or 1990 There are some if you go to Wikipedia Albania. There is a section about pop culture Men mentioned people mentioning Albania from that period back then If you have time check it out. It's pretty funny And one interesting fact is that we had seven seven hundred thousand bunkers all around the country now You will not found that many today's And this is weird for a country for me It's weird for a country that was very poor at at the moment and if you are in Tirana there is a Exhibition called bunk art and you can understand a lot of stuff about that period as well This is the Parliament in a bunker inside like if something bad happened Which I don't think nothing happened because nobody was interested in a country that small at the moment but if somebody if Foreign countries who invaded us our government will go in something like this. So I was born in 1983 dictator died in 1985 And all think collapsed when the scorpions released this their album with a weed of change Everybody was horrified and the regime changed and from and this this was a turning point for Albania because from a country that was Imposed to be a Collaborative in each and in every kind of activity of daily life. We went to exact opposite extreme Being totally individual like individualism was the thing and it still is right now So as I mentioned from extremely collective we went to the extreme individualism You're gonna see if you come you're gonna see a lot of these kind of buildings, which are like everywhere. They're very ugly And this is how the house is where? before Like there are more structure for me. There are more like interesting and more regulated So for because we are in a free software conference. Why are we going into this? If you think of a country like Albania would that has this kind of history, you would believe that Cooperative way of working and collaborate collaboration would be pretty easy Even if you are developing software or if you are like trying to create a community Like Linux right operating system many many people are all around all around the world collaborating with each other and This was not happening and it's the same with platforms like LibreOffice and many other free software communities and projects like until a certain point there were nothing going on in terms of Free software communities and I for the presentation. I was searching a bit and this is from a 2008 mailing list Where some people were trying to create a community That was let's say in general not about LibreOffice, but in general about free software and open source Software and platforms There were also as far as we know there were also other initiatives that didn't work that just they started and they stopped in 2012 we started community called open labs and The idea was that we there were many elements that didn't work back then and We thought that one of the elements that is very important and didn't let things moving Faster where the fact that there were no physical space at the moment for people to gather and If you see this like horrible pictures picture in terms of quality and one of the list One of the lessons we learned back then is the fact that You need if you are starting something like this in countries where LibreOffice is not active at the moment And you want to jump start a community an investment in a good camera in order to document your activities would be Something very a smart thing to do and We should have known this because if you again if you search Albania in the 70s or 60s or 50s There are no documentation available. People were not documenting stuff We didn't like a few people had cameras But also we didn't find very interesting what was happening back then and it's the same with a if your job starting community Like we did at open labs in Albania. So this was one of the first things in general not about in LibreOffice. This was a meetup about Mozilla Firefox back then and More people started Coming in and Angelo was one of them and he participated He's one of the youngest Members at open labs actually And he started collaborating in and being part of the community early on and you can continue So yeah, these are some pictures from various events we have decided to Get together with the Kosovo teams. This is a picture taken in 2012 if I'm correct. Those are the members from the Free Libre open source Kosovo Here we are discussing about events. We are going to organize and stuff like that So this brings us into 2013 our first Oscar is the open source conference Albania our first annual conference Many people were there as you can see if there's a bigger number of females than males. That's something that's only seen in Albania and Some pictures from first events like in Linux cafe in 2015 Later on in 2015 we decided to embrace LibreOffice and its community ideology. So we thought the seeing as We first had to Take points on what was the positive aspects of LibreOffice. So seeing as it's an open source project it's a really good alternative to a Microsoft office comparing to the performance bug fixing code Contribution and the ease of use so we thought why not use this to Create a best base community and make LibreOffice better as it's now so we first had to find ways to Make people join us. So at first LibreOffice was not that used so we decided to use one of our simplest Things for everyone and that was accessible from a novice or even an expert Computer user. So we thought why not about localizations. So we started to Organize events at first not many people are present since LibreOffice was not that Known later on it things Got even better as you can see pictures from our localization sprints the The UI in Albanian language is almost over. So after that we are thinking to To push forward the use of LibreOffice in Government in institutions and even businesses even small ones. There'd be a great advantage so There are like until now we had eight localization sprints, yes, which are done like approximately one per month and Around 10 to 15 people are present each time progress is getting better as we can see an obstacle 2016 If I look couldn't miss there. This is part of his presentation for the paradigm So, yeah, we use the social media to share our events to make things Little easier to access from everyone So what did did we learn from the these are some proposals for benefiting new communities of LibreOffice We have to use physical space through hacker spaces meetups events like this one the conference and This could create a positive vibe of productivity we were regional cross-border collaborations work we knew we need to collaborate with other Communities yes things like that We have to avoid at any cost the expression of lead attitude we need to make a difference between the Page staff and volunteers There if there is no gender balance, there is no community as you may have seen from the pictures There are more females than males in our events this Says something that it's not seen in the other parts of the world So we can use the resources that are like there like your office wiki use to maintain and Get them further. So starting with localization or just TRP It's sometimes a good idea and the further a good first step. So we as Radon said we should use Make sure that we have get excellent photos and documentation for all events and Great design is also a must. So if I if I may These are learnings that we had In Albania with that cultural background and that did kind of hard like it was very hard as I mentioned beginning doing collaborative work in the first place so This doesn't mean that this All this can all these learnings are this work in any country What's the point here is that? Different countries or different cities different communities Have different character characteristics and if you if we don't understand what might be the The main problem or the main issue to jumpstart this community We're probably gonna work a lot and will not be very productive in terms of jump-starting this community, right? in central Europe These communities are very have many participants in any kind of area localization development But if we if we focus in in countries, there is where is no present presence We should keep in mind that this takes time Years as it was it was in our case And it also has a lot of cultural elements that we need to keep in keep in mind one of the one of the areas one of the points that is the keeping Avoiding the the elite culture that is in some of the communities it has been very hard for us to Have sometimes and this is not about the LibreOffice community, but it's sometimes in some free Software communities once you are a newbie and you Tend to do stupid questions There are there are no stupid questions, but people will gonna jump in USA what you said It's like Google it or do something else this turns people off and this is something that All Collaboration all all contributors Might not want to do this, but I don't know some it's a human thing and it comes out after a while, right? so we should avoid this at as at any cost and the other thing I want to pay to point out is that One of the golden rule is be nice to other people if you want to build a community if you Like lack of empathy They're probably gonna be a hard you're probably gonna be a hard time of being effective on Having many many people joining you as well. These are things that might sound like common a common thing But it might in practice these mar might be also very Complicated or hard to get implemented the human factor is the most let's say important around here Okay, so The idea is to initiate a debate. So if there are no questions there we didn't probably didn't do well Especially Angelo who is done. He's doing this presentation for the first time so