Open Source Conference 2013 Nagoya

Nagoya is very interesting city in Japan.  People in Nagoya has lots of special culture; great morning set in coffee shops (kissa-ten), yummy foods, and in computer world, they love functional programming and BSD ;)

Anyway, this post is short summarized translation of the Japanese report on TDF wiki.  I've not attend, but I hope you may know how active Japanese LibreOffice community is by my (not good) English translation.  Enjoy!

LibreOffice Conference 2012 Berlin videos online

http://hub.libreoffice.org/libocon2012

I only say I realized my English is tooooo bad....sigh.

Anyway, thanks for TDF conference team to spend lots of time to the videos :)

Ubuntu Magazine Japan 2013 Summer

This post is mainly for readers who can read Japanese, but it is an example how Japanese Ubuntu community is active :)

Some of you may know we Japanese has Ubuntu-specific magazine in Japanese language.  The magazine, "Ubuntu Magazine Japan" (in Japan, we called "うぶまが," pronounced "ubu-maga")'s new issue "2013 Summer" has just published today.


In this issue I've written only 2 pages (introduction of Kodak i2600 scanner), anyway its so nice as usual and I love it.  Must buy!

• Very cute labeled DVD-ROM (13.04 Japanese Remix bootable, and lots of stuffs)
• What's new of Raring Ringtail (13.04)
• LibreOffice 4.0 Perfect guide
• Gaming platform Steam on Ubuntu!
• Ubuntu Touch; how to use, and how to develop your software
• Go with Xubuntu!
• Good series: Re-introductive guide of command line
• And so nice two manga!

For LibreOffice people, the LibreOffice guide is really "perfect" guide of 4.0 so you must read (if you can read Japanese).

The publisher, ASCII Media Works (AMW) also provide Kindle version so it is good for people doesn't live in Japan:

In addition, Kindle version is cheaper than paper version (but I still love paper).

And AMW has their own e-book publisher BOOK☆WALKER so you can use.  Here is a Ubuntu Magazine Japan page.  Of course you can try it.

Please enjoy the nice magazine :)

LinuxCon Japan 2013

Annual event LinuxCon Japan 2013 by The Linux Foundation has been finished yesterday.  I have worked as a volunteer staff mainly reception, and last day I had opportunities to join some CloudOpen Japan track.  Basically these sessions are little bit hard for me (especially SDN like technology; I'm not a network guy), but really interesting.

The venue of this year was Chinzanso, Japanese very famous and historic hotel.   It's garden is so beautiful.

In the party yesterday night, I have talked some foreigner guest.  Everyone said "so nice event, really good venue!"  I believe everyone enjoyed the event, and it's also my pleasure as a staff.  I hope LinuxCon Japan; international Linux event in Japan, will keep growing.

But sadly to say we had less consumer-based computing tracks.  Basically LinuxCon is a series of events cover a kernel and server side technology (such as cloud), and this year we had Tizen track (because Tizen is Linux Foundation's project).  Nothing else we had.   I sent a CFP about discussing next consumer-based computing related Linux world but rejected.  Hmm...

Our world is rapidly changing, so we need disucussion the future of consumer-based computing with lots of devices, lots of cloud services, but which is a good event?

Anyway,  thanks for everyone I have met these nice days!  See you next year!

OpenPrinting Summit / PWG Face to Face meeting 2013

Disclaimer: it's not for printing guys; not described technical deep inside.  I would like let people of application (such as LibreOffice), mobile, independent software vendors, cloud service providers know what we are discussing about printing standardization, and some kind of "seeds" to consider printing related services.


The meeting is annual joint meeting of two standardized groups OpenPrinting and IEEE PWG started last year in Apple Office, Cupertino, California.  OpenPrinting is for client side group, and PWG is mostly for device side group... But our world is changing rapidly. These two groups now cover technical area; especially mobile and cloud.

Sometimes I say "I'm a printing guy," but it should be "I'm a desktop side printing solution guy." In other word, I mostly know OpenPrinting side; Linux-based desktop or sometimes mobile side printing solution but don't know PWG side; network protocol, schema modeling or anything else.

So the joint event is good chance for me to know what kind of topics are hot right now in the whole printing world.

Starting Good California Days

I love California, because long time ago (over 10 years?) I've worked in San Jose almost one year.  Good weather, blue sky makes me happy (sometimes it feels boring for residents because they have 9 months of shinny days, but I'm a just tripper).

The meeting had been from 14th to 17th May, so I arrived 13th morning in SFO.  This day was off  so I went American very famous outdoor shop, REI San Francisco to check they sell some kayaking staff.

But I know Bay Area is not a good place for whitewater kayaking ;), so I don't feel so sad their huge store has no kayaking staff except some books.  Instead, I need to change my carry bag because old one's wheel had been just broken. I bought their private brand bag and "Canoe&Kayak magazine" as a souvenir for myself :)

Then I took a lunch in a small deli, walked around and took some photos,

Seems funny for Japanese :)

and took Bart, then Caltrain.

Trip by Caltrain was nice; really big train from Japanese eyes; even if I got off wrong station because of jet lag...  Hey Caltrain, please put your station name sign for poor foolish Japanese...

My good old friend picked me up and we enjoyed dinner in Smoke Eaters; very yummy but really hot chicken wings :)

OK, only one day I had a holiday. Let's go printing world :)

Very short summary

In my understanding:

• Anyone already knows, the amount of office desktop printing should be reduced (especially hi-developed countries).
• About mobile printing, we need more discussion about mobile printing not only technical perspective but also use-cases and scenarios.
• IPP is already not a protocol, but a platform of future printing world.  Two interesting extensions came up, and in near future, software developers might have to use IPP directly without any OS assistance.

No one need printing?

About the office printing, you might be right in the future. If everyone has their own tablet and every meeting rooms has a projector and good wi-fi infrastructures, no meeting handout is needed.

But I believe paper itself is still interesting and powerful. Thus, we will find another good usage of printing; they might come from not printer vendors or OS vendors but Web-based application vendors.

Because only they know how to optimize their contents to fit actual paper sizes; and which kind of printing scene (in users' homes, offices or public spaces by shared printers).

Printing people should let the ISV people know what kind of technologies we already have and we'll develop, and get feedback from ISV.

Mobile Printing

Yes, we already have mobile printing solution in our hands; Apple AirPrint is already in the market and every iOS devices have printing functionality.  We can find the printers near from us with some capabilities (Color or B/W, Duplexer, ...) by Bonjour, then select a suitable printer and press "print" button.  It's pretty nice.

And now we have new standard, IPP Everywhere.  It's very similar as AirPrint with lots of enhancements, enough strength to standard of mobile printing... if printer vendors support it.  It need new implementation of printers, that's why no IPP Everywhere printer is there in the market right now.

Because of the reason, Canonical, supporting company of Ubuntu, now developing their own printing stack instead using IPP Everywhere directly.  They now trying to slice CUPS printing stack and use part of these to add some functionality supporting non-IPP Everywhere printers in the market.  Of course they have a plan that their implementation will become open standard.

Anyway... do we need print from mobile actually?  For me, very few, limited situation.  For example:

• Take a picture, and print it.  ... replacement of PictBridge?
• Print a PDF file attached an e-mail.  ... but gmail support Google Cloud Print so we can send PDF to the GCP supported printer directly.  It's better scenario than using resources of mobile devices.

Alright, iOS has iPad, and iPad has iWork; especially really cool presentation software, KeyNote.  If our mobile system has such kind of good office software, sometimes we want to print it.  Tablet devices has enough resources running office software such as LibreOffice (in the future).  

... Wait, if so, why we have to generate new printing stack for tables?

In my personal feeling, "printing from mobile" needs a visionary architect.  Lots of use-cases and scenarios are needed from software developers of mobile devices, then we should discuss what kind of functionality we need.  If we don't have these. just follow AirPrint or IPP Everywhere, nothing additions to reduce development human resources.  Make sense?

Yes, I know, I should discuss in the summit, but "mobile printing" track was too short and every people was talking very fast, it was little hard to jump in the discussion in my poor English...  And unfortunately, Till Kampetter, OpenPrinting Manager and Canonical Printing Team (of course Ubuntu Touch printing stack is his work) wasn't there (I heard because of immigration problem but I'm not sure).  Sorry.

Next stage of Internet Printing Protocol

IPP is a protocol to connect to a printer via HTTP/HTTPS.  It can use to get a printer status or capabilities, or send print job with "job ticket," what kind of output is needed.

... I should say "IPP has been?"  The fact that IPP is a protocol is still correct, but it also a HTTP-based API anyone can use.  Not only for printer vendors and OS vendors. You can control most of everything about a printer via HTTP if your software can connect to the printer directly.

I want to introduce two nice documents; one is a new specification and the other is a technical document.

First one IPPSIX (PDF) is an extension of IPP to connect with a software running on the public network to printer(s) on the private network.  It's for good solution for ISV to migrate software on-premise using printers to cloud.  Or it's possible to offer Web-based application service to provide printing functions for enterprise users.

We already have a Google Cloud Print (GCP) mentioned above, but IPPSIX is another open standard solution.  Competition will growth both services so I feel happy to PWG provides their new standard.

It's very new (last April PWG shipped first draft), so any kind of comments are welcome I believe.  Please check if you have interest your service will have printing features.

Second one "IPP Client Best Practices (PDF)" is a nice document to IPP client developer.  In good old days, application developers don't need about printing; just use operating system services.

Right now, using IPP inside an application brings new user experience in the cloud world.  but most of application developers don't know about detail of printing; printer capabilities, statuses, controlling print jobs, schema of job ticket... What should you do with IPP?

The document is an answer.  PWG people want to put basic knowledge to use IPP service and to control a printer.  The document is just stared and currently under active discussions in the IPP ML or conference calls. Please check it out!

Conclusion

Lots of standardization is in there, but right now I only want to say is "keep attention to IPP and related works!"  And if you have some comments from IPP users side, please join their discussion.

In addition, if you have interest in mobile printing, please consider about use-cases and scenarios and let them (currently, for Ubuntu Touch team) know.

Sorry I know we need such kind of things but personally I don't have good idea.  If you have help us it's really happy for me.  Please check Ubuntu's blueprint also:

• Printing Stack with Mobile in Mind
• Print Dialog Design for Ubuntu Touch

Sorry for little long and poor English entry :)
And thanks for Apple hosting the meeting with free coffee and meal.

Bye!

"LibreOffice mini Conference 2013 Tokyo/Spring" report from a staff's perspective

We, Japanese LibreOffice community, are happy to done first (and not last, maybe) whole day LibreOffice event in Japan; the name is "LibreOffice mini Conference 2013 Tokyo/Spring"; here is a short report and our special guest, the calc hacker Kohei-san also wrote very nice report in his blog.

So I don't need to write a report one of attendee, but I'm a staff of the event.  And our community has less experience to have a big event yet, so I, as a member of LibreOffice Japanese team, have to record what we thought, what we decided and what we done; and share our (still small) knowledge with any other local communities.

The trigger of this event

I'm not sure but the seeds are put our mind in Open Source Conference (in short, OSC; Japanese most famous FLOSS event series) Aizu-Wakamatsu in last fall.  Aizu-wakamatsu is a symbolic local government for us because they had migrated MS Office to OOo, and now they use LibreOffice whole of their work, and they provide lots of administrative forms in ODF format.

Three people (Takizawa-san, Enoki-san and I) had been back from Berlin, so we had been little excited; we told.

"How about hosting LibreOffice Conference in Japan in the future?"

"Yeah, but we have less experience, so we should start from smaller events."

"Debian-JP people now start to grow their experience with annual whole-day event to have a miniconf in the future, and to host a DebConf.  We should follow their way."

"I hope we'll have Japanese ODF plugfest in here, Aizu-wakamatsu. Because here is a special place.'

Or something something... We had been dreaming.

I forgot detail, but at the end of last year one of our member wrote an event plan of LibreOffice: it describes how we'll get sponsers how we promote to media, etc. At first it might be a "small start" event but the dream had been grown, it's too big for us.  So we decided the plan should be postponed when we have enough experience.

The e-mail had come

 Some winter day, we got an e-mail from OSC organizer; they said:

"Meisai Univ., the place next OSC Tokyo will have, have enough space to do something each communities separated by OSC.

No rent fee is needed.  You need nothing about venue because everything about venue is by OSC organizer.  But you have to gather attendee by yourself and OSC organizer have no responsibility to advertise your event, because your communities events are totally different event with OSC itself."

This proposal seems have pros and cons both.

Pros.

• OSC is most famous event series in Japanese FLOSS world, so lots of people come here.
• We had attended OSC Tokyo at Meisei Univ., so we already know how about projection system, power sources, and so on.
• Nothing contract, nothing fee we need.  It makes entry level low.

Cons.

• OSC always have lots of very nice tracks.  OSC itself is our event's really strong competitor.
• Meisei-Univ. is little bit far from center of Tokyo.  It's very hard to come from outside of suburb of Tokyo, e.g. Kansai-area, Tohoku-area.

But we decided we accepted their proposal.  Because it seemed a good "small start" event for us.  Some problem might be cause, but they might change our experience.

My work ... publication

I wasn't a leader of the event. So I can't tell everything of the event.  However I can tell what I did ... publication.

Frankly to say, my work was not good.  We can't beat our competitor; OSC.

Someone said; "I want to join LibreOffice track, but I can't find in the OSC's program,"

or "Finally I found LibreOffice name! I wondered why this year LibreOffice has no booth in OSC?"...

They don't thought we have our own event, not OSC itself but same place.  It's my fault.

Yes, right now I know my mistake.  My main field is:

• Document Foundation Wiki
• LibreOffice ML
• Twitter / Facebook (via Event-support web service)

You already understand... All of above are for people already know LibreOffice and Document Foundation (About a Twitter and Facebook, most of posts are on my timeline, not a worldwide...).

I tried to use payed advertise service of Facebook; but it was not so effective to reach new of LibreOffice people.  But I'm not familiar of Facebook so I might made something wrong.  I need to investigate Facebook (or anything else SNS) feature.

We succeeded or ...?

However, every tracks were really interesting (especially special guest Calc Hacker Kohei-san's "LibreOffice Development FAQ" (in Japanese, sorry!)), and about 20 people were there in each track.

Some small mistakes we had, but totally it was a nice event I believe.

And the mistakes let grow our community.  If we'll have next opportunity, we will do better.

It's a small step, but great start for us.

At last, thanks for global community people, especially in marketing-ML.
Italo, your video is very good gift for Japanese community!

Sorry to long time nothing... Just say hello

I have very short time to write this post; so it is just "coming soon (I hope)" programs.

First, as you know, I'm a LibreOffice guy, not a developer but a translator or something outreaching by hosting meetups or something.
I believe everyone already read Kohei-san's great blog article "Open Source Conference 2013 in Tokyo," it is good report of our memorable one step; first whole-day event about LibreOffice in Japan.  His article is perfect, nothing to add from me as an attendees, but I was one of the staff of the event, so I want to tell something from backyard of the event.

Then, another side of my face is "printing guy," I always think about future of printing how end users (especially from desktop and from mobile) do that, and what kind of changes will be coming.  We have annual event about such kind of theme, "Printing Summit," sorry I have no time so please see their official sites:

• Open Printing's site
• PWG's site

But in short, some printing guys will gather and discuss now and future of printing from Linux, Mobile, Cloud, so what kind of middleware, cloud services we need, and what kind of standard schemas, protocols should be implemented inside each printers.  This event will have in Apple office Cupertino, CA, opposite side of their current HQ.

Happy to say I decided I'll attend the meeting (as a private; it's my hobby, not work :). So I will write short report of this, if I will be able to catch entire discussions with my (not good English) ears.

Sorry for trivial post.  I hope see you soon!