Fedora 15 Release Party series in Vietnam - and the last, in HCMC

And the last, Ho Chi Minh city

And the last party was in Ho Chi Minh city. It was a really big one with over 150 participants (over 200 ones at the most crowded time). That was the second time Fedora release party held in Ho Chi Minh city at the same location, lecture room D of the HCMC University of Pedagogy (the first one had been held on November last year for Fedora 14 release) with the big support from some Fedora local community and SaigonLUG. Almost of participants were students at Mathematics and Informatics faculties of the HCMC University of Pedagogy but some of them are professors and instructors there and at nearby universities and colleges.

The party was started at 4:00 PM, on Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 (I flew to Ho Chi Minh city at about 11:30 AM, in the morning). As the same as the last year, at first, I made some questions to students about: what the FOSS exactly is, whether they had ever used FOSS, and things like that to clarify their understandings about FOSS before starting my presentation (some participants had been attended the last party but almost others had not). And as the previous times I had met students in Vietnam, they were excited to me by their interesting but not-able-to-be-more-funny answers. Most ones were cool and expressed the good knowledge of the owners but some of them were socked to me :). Some students told me they had never used FOSS before, but they answered “YES” when I asked whether they had ever used Firefox :D (at those students, FOSS is Linux, even it is just Ubuntu :).

Speaking in front of a crowd are always my favorite, it makes me so excited. I can talk with them hours with a lot of FOSS topics, from how to use FOSS, how to develop and contribute to FOSS to open licensing, etc.

I had the longest presentation about the same topic “Fedora Community world-wide and in Vietnam” with a lot of answers and discussions with participants. In my presentation, I pressed to FOSS cultures in Fedora community world-wide and in Vietnam. People sometimes interrupted me (as I encouraged them to do so) to ask something about Fedora and all other FOSS. I believe that my speech were convinced participants to understand how fantastic the Fedora project is and why they should join and contribute to Fedora project and other FOSS.

Together with me in the party is Mr. Le Trung Nghia, one of the most well-known FOSS activists in Vietnam, who have written over 3,300 blog posts (URL to blog) for almost four recent years, the man who has been called Richard Stallman of Vietnam by almost FOSS community members. He talked to the participants about the strength of open standards, open technologies, open interoperability, open formats and FOSS. His speech helped me a lot to take the participants to the magics of Fedora as well as FOSS community.

I also got some more appointments with some other universities and colleges in HCMC to present Fedora to their students and instructors. A manager of a book store in the city center even ordered me to put some Fedora LiveCDs into his book store in order for him to give his readers who are interested in FOSS. Of course, I totally agreed with him and put over 100 ones there (which left after release party).

The main party was ended at over 9:00 PM, after 5 hours. by a small beer party in shared-style, as usual :). After the party, I stayed in Ho Chi Minh city in a few days to have some additional meetings with Fedora users, SaigonLUG and FOSS community in HCMC.

Thanks to the HCMC University of Pedagogy and SaigonLUG. Thanks to my new friends in Fedora local community in Ho Chi Minh city. See you all next times.

See the photos set here.

Conclusion

Next times, beside Hanoi, Hue, HCMC, we would like to bring Fedora 16, 17 and so on to many other areas and provinces, including Thai Nguyen, Hai Phong, Da Nang, Khanh Hoa, Dong Nai, Can Tho, etc. wherever we see opportunities to motivate the community to join into Fedora Project and other FOSS movements.

See you!!

Truong Anh Tuan
Fedora Ambassador Vietnam