Starting 2006 with an inspired bang!
Kalangala, Island, Victoria Lake, Uganda, 6 January
Over an 8-day period, 140 people from around Africa and beyond, came together to live, learn and be inspired at the Africa Source II FOSS technology workshop, organised by the Tactical Tech team.
Presented in 3 main tracks, participants were invited to share their stories and learn from experts in the fields of ‘Information handling and citizen’s media’, ‘Migration for education and resource centres’ and ‘Migration for NGOs’. Afternoon sessions covered items such as Alternative Access and Localisation.
Heather Ford, project lead for Creative Commons SA, was the lead facilitator for the Info Handling track and assisted participants with outlining campaign and organisational communication strategies, whilst highlighting the importance for the NGO and educational sectors of formalising their open content policies with the use of open content licences. Valuable skills-share sessions were also included where participants and facilitators alike were shown hands-on skills with FOSS technology tools to streamline their campaigns. Amongst the tools demonstrated were content management systems such as Drupal, Audacity, an open-source audio editing and mixing software, sms and wikis.
Undoubtedly, the non-profit and non-governmental sectors in Africa are turning to FOSS to solve their technology problems. It was heartening to see that they are as committed to providing open content as they are to using open source software. Participants from Kenya and Uganda have been inspired to port Creative Commons licences to their national jurisdictions, and almost all of the 37 participants in the Info track announced that they would use cc licences to licence their networks’ information.
The spirit, courage and dedication of Africans working on various social, health and economic projects in Africa was inspiring, and this, coupled with the facilitators’ sense of humour, patience and passion made for an event that heralds 2006 as the year for FOSS and open content in Africa.