March 15th - 19th, 2004. Namibia.

Africa Source - the first pan-African meeting of Free and Open Source Software developers has just ended. See Notes from Africa Source to read some of the blogs and reports from participants

Background description of event:

Who will be there? Africa Source will draw together over 60 people from nearly 25 countries coming from the commercial, academic and non-profit sectors. Participants range from advanced programmers to those with basic skills in the four cornerstones of free and open source software, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). F/OSS developers from across Africa will be joined by a handful of select guests from other continents; Asia, Europe, North America and Latin America,enabling exchange with leading F/OSS developers and implementers working outside of Africa.

Among the participants are: Sunil Abraham, a Python/Zope expert from India Guido Sohne, a Python, Pearl and Java Hacker from Ghana Uwe Thiem, a major KDE developer from Germany working in Namibia Nicholas Kimolo from Ngoma linux distribution and FOSSFA Dwayne Bailey and Thobile Pamela Mhlo, working on the Zulu localisation of major open source software such as Mozilla Micah Anderson from Debian

The workshop will be composed of a mixture of structured discussions and hands-on work. Participants and facilitators will share knowledge and experiences, discuss techniques applicable in each phase of F/OSS project life cycles, and break down specific development challenges. Whether the issue at hand is collaboration models or documentation methods, localisation practices or project distribution, the emphasis will be on practical and intense knowledge exchange.

As Africa Source brings together a rich pool of African technical talent, each participant will teach as well as be taught. Skillshare sessions will provide a setting for participants to teach their peers, drawing from their areas of expertise and passion. Sessions will cover a range of topics including; DIY (do-it-yourself) wireless networking, customised Linux distributions, hardware assembly and repair, large-scale web development, and multi-media webcasting (see the draft agenda and 'context' for more details).

Context and background info

This five-day meeting for experienced Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) developers from across Africa, will be held March 15th - 19th in Namibia.

The meeting is organized by the Tactical Technology Collective, the AllAfrica Foundation, and SchoolNet Namibia, in cooperation with the Free and Open Source Software Foundation for Africa.

Aims

The Africa Source workshop will connect African software developers with the goal of building the F/OSS developer community in Africa. Important components of this include:

• Facilitating technology skill-sharing regarding F/OSS project realisation and sustainability • Facilitating cooperation between Africa's most active F/OSS-focused groups and projects • Enabling exchange with F/OSS developers from outside Africa • Promoting cooperation on and awareness of technology projects in Africa • Strengthening existing efforts to create permanent, on-line spaces for collaborating on F/OSS and African technology development issues.

The meeting plans on building a community of people who approach planning and strategy from the perspective of their technical proficiency. Our discussions emerge out of a strong technical agenda and sense of shared expertise.

Participants and facilitators will share technical skills and experiences, discuss key challenges in realising F/OSS projects, and develop concrete strategies for strengthening the nascent community of F/OSS technologists working in African contexts.