[OpenDoc Announce] Update 7th ODF plugfest - Nov 17 + 18th 2011

[Mailing list for announcements for all OpenDoc Society members]

Dear members,


this week ODF-experts from around the world with gather once again to
work together on ODF interoperability. The 7th ODF plugfest is taking
place on November 17th and 18th 2011 in the city hall of Gouda, the
Netherlands.

               Markt 1
               2801 HX Gouda
               The Netherlands
               +31 182 588211

The event is hosted by the Netherlands in Open Connection government
programme, OpenDoc Society and the Dutch ODF government usergroup.
Delegations from commercial and open source products, members of the
OASIS ODF TC's and technical experts from national and regional
governments will be present. Previous plugfests were held at The Hague
(Netherlands), Orvieto (Italy), Granada (Spain), Brussels (Belgium),
Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead (UK) and Berlin (Germany).

Once more we have an awesome program, which will be chaired by Steven
Pemberton (CWI) and Bart Hanssens (FEDICT). Speakers include:

- Hans van den Akker (alderman of Gouda)
- Miklós Banai (Multiracio)
- Fabiano Fidencio
- Joris Gresnigt (bureau Forum Standaardisatie)
- Michiel Leenaars
- Bjorn Lundell (HIS)
- Marc Maurer (Abisource)
- Cor Nouws (The Document Foundation)
- Jos van den Oever (KO Gmbh)
- Paul Rekveld (Gouda)
- Boudewijn Rempt (KO Gmbh)
- Ineke Schop (NOiV)
- Hiroyuki Shimizu (Mitsubishi Research Institute)
- Fridrich Strba
- Bart Wessels (Microsoft)
- Oliver-Rainer Wittmann (IBM)
- Thorsten Zachman (Nokia)

Thanks to the programme committee (Basil Cousins, Joris Dirks, Roberto
Gallopini, Sophie Gautier, Bart Hanssens, John Haug, Michiel Leenaars
and Louis Suarez-Potts) and to our wonderful hosts. There are actually
three separate events you can choose from, depending on your interests.

Read on to read more about:

  - remote participation
  - the programme
  - Frequently Asked Questions

Or visit: http://odfplugfest.org/2011-gouda

Kind regards,
OpenDoc Society

---------------

### Remote participation

While the physical 7th ODF plugfest takes place in Gouda, you might not
be able to attend in person. This is why we invite you to participate
remotely as well.

Most of the actual testing work happens on the ODF plugfest wiki
(http://plugfest.opendocsociety.org/doku.php). If you do not have an
account, please register and send us a mail to activate your account.

Other means of remote participation

- Joining in on IRC: #odfplugfest on irc.freenode.net will
   give you a more interactive way of participating.

   Use a web browser or your client of choice:

   http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#odfplugfest

- For those interested in microblogging: the suggested
   semantic marker is #odfplugfest

   > http://identi.ca/tag/odfplugfest
   > http://twitter.com/search?q=%23odfplugfest

- Get on the participant mailing list:

   https://lists.opendocsociety.org/mailman/listinfo/plugtest

   If you are registered you should be on it already, if not
   contact one of the organisers.

- But please observe the house rules:

   http://odfplugfest.org/houserules/

---------------------------

### Programme

  * General audience

    Are you an end user interested in the current state of the art in
    office applications? Visit the public facing part of the event with
    interesting talks on ODF and its applications. This part is intended
    for a wider, non-technical audience (Friday afternoon).

    http://odfplugfest.org/2011-gouda/programme/public.html

  * Interested in deep technical understanding of ODF?

    If you are interested in the technical work that powers the
    portability of your future content, visit the more interactive
    technical sessions (Thursday + Friday morning)

    http://odfplugfest.org/2011-gouda/programme/technical.html

  * Work with automatically generated documents?

    If you work professionally with a lot of automatically generated
    documents, this separate session for vendors and users of document
    generation and processing tools is for you. The session is held at
    the initiative of the Netherlands government NoiV programme
    (Thursday).

    http://odfplugfest.org/2011-gouda/programme/documentprocessing.html

---------------------------


### FAQ

   # What are the plugfests about?

     The ODF Plugfest are a mostly technical event with focus on
     further improving the interoperability of the Open Document
     Format. They are also a neutral forum where people from different
     communities discuss real world interoperability issues.

   # What is going to happen?

     We work together to achieve maximum interoperability by running
     scenario-based tests in a hands-on lab and discuss new and proposed
     features of the ODF specification.

   # Who is responsible for this event

     The ODF Government User group, the City of Gouda and the goverment
     program Netherlands in Open Connection are working together to
     organise the 7th plugfest together with OpenDoc Society.

   # Why is it important

     The Open Document Format (ODF) standard is widely implemented and
     available on all major platforms, including traditional desktop
     editors, as well as web and mobile applications. As the application
     space expands towards a mature, multi-vendor, multi-stakeholder
     ecosystem, we have to stay on top of challenges in the area of
     real-world interoperability. Advancing interoperability is
     facilitated by a variety of cooperative, multi-stakeholder
     activities, including standardization, test case creation,
     implementation testing, online validators, plugfests, defect
     collection and reporting.