Each of us are dreaming to change our lives, to have more freedom, to travel, to learn new ways, meet new people, do  the work that we enjoy most, do something that adds value to our passing lives on this earth. Kids are probably the most important thing each of us achieve. Still, you wish more. Would be this the mid-life crisis..?

The fact is that when I was back, I decided is time to do a change and try something that would be more diverse, and ad more flexibility in my life.
This change would be first of all related to the job – the place where you spend at least 9 hours per day, not to count extra work and commuting (actually you spend at work more time than you spend with your family day by day).

And I decided is time to take my chance and try consultancy. Pick the projects I like and where I feel I can make a stand. Eventually work from distance and all those things you dream (pick a place where the water is warm and you don’t count the sunny days – and work from there for a few weeks/months ?).

To make the story short – here I am, since May, doing consultancy work for different organizations. Is different, I don’t know if is better or worse yet (there are pluses and minuses), but at least I’m trying.
Because I think each of us is having the duty to try and fulfill own dreams. Even if you passed 30s or 40s or 50s..

More learnings and findings about it will come in a longer article I hope.

Till then, I’ll post daily on twitter as usual (@LucianSavluc), put pictures on Flickr and keep my new presentation website – Centri.ca – updated.
I hope soon I’ll announce some good news about eLiberatica 2010 too.

Wish you a great summer!

PS – Some of you would still enjoy “Learning to Fly” …is never late.

Amazing country, full of contracts and color, warm and hard working people, excellent cuisine, and great music. I left to Mexico without expecting something that would impress me so much. It wasn’t the all-inclusive resort – quite similar with other places; but the land, the people and the culture. We just scratched Mexican spirit; for sure, we will turn back there.
I did many pictures, unfortunately, not all were good so I published only few. Still, I think is reflecting a little bit of what we found there.

Viva Mexico! Now I know why I was in love with its music before visiting it. And the movie, Apocalypto, incredible cruel, but what a movie. You should not miss it. See it together with the other masterpiece, 1492: Conquest of Paradise. And you will learn a little bit about what America means.

For the ones who don’t know what is FLOSS (I’ll continue to use this term instead of FOSS because is clearly defining what “free” means in this case- free = libre) Wikipedia is explaining it clear:

“Free and open source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS (free/libre/open source software) is software that is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code. This approach has gained both momentum and acceptance as the potential benefits have been increasingly recognized by both individuals and corporate players.” …read more on Wikipedia.

Dan, I appreciate your comments and your opinions, and you may be right from some angles. I’ll give you a single example I already gave it a few years ago, when we allowed Microsoft to sponsor the event first time: please take a look at the biggest Open Source conference in the world, OSCON http://www.oscon.com/oscon2009, and tell me what you see on top right? Did the fact they allowed Microsoft to sponsor diluted their message and involvement in promoting FLOSS? No. Is somebody criticizing Tim O’Reilly for it? I don’t think so.

We should understand that both FLOSS and closed source models are going to coexist for many-many years from now. I don’t want eLiberatica to be perceived like an extreme FLOSS event, where we invite only the “pure” FLOSS organizations. eLiberatica should be an event where bright IT professionals with different opinions will come and talk in a civilized mode, exchange ideas and gain value.

I’m not afraid at all that Microsoft speakers will influence FLOSS enthusiast and twist their minds, or they will confuse the neutrals or non-decided ones. Why? Because even if Microsoft is paying big bucks for smart and well-prepared professionals, first – they are not right, and last – these speakers will always lack passion. You cannot buy passion. Besides this, each time we were careful to invite at least a few very bright and exceptional FLOSS representatives that put light there, showing where Microsoft is wrong even if Microsoft speakers pretend they love FLOSS.

I totally agree with you that Microsoft will try hard to slow down FLOSS adoption. But making the rest of the people (I mean the non-FLOSS enthusiast, or the ones that are not aware) thinking that FLOSS is an IT extremist movement, is more dangerous that trying to talk and influence Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft will not change if we talk to them (they will change when their marked will shrink and they will fill the pain in the pockets).
But I know who will change – the undecided. The people who don’t know much about the issue. And even the ones who are Microsoft users. They will see that FLOSS people are open-minded, they are not fanatics, and they are in fact the ones that should be followed. That is my feeling.

Last but not least, please believe me that I would like to have no sponsors if it would be possible. I would like to be rich enough to organize this conference (which is a really expensive one) without the need of any financial support. That is in an ideal world.

Come at eLiberatica; if you will see any favored sponsor or the fact we allow them to manipulate the listeners in any wrong way, then you should let me know and I’ll put ashes in my head.

(PS – I apologies, but I’ll be with limited internet access until first of March, so I might not respond until then to any other comments.)

I hated the streets closures, crazy security and overpriced stuff, not to mention the guys who “demonstrated” smashing windows (I still didn’t get what was their call).

But I loved the cosmopolite atmosphere, the joy and celebration in the air, the tourists from the entire world, the Canadians being proud and sustaining their team, and the great weather (not so good for snow sports actually). Is sunny, the spring is in the air, the summer is coming and we have all they eyes on our town.
I read some articles in the world media, criticizing the organizers and insinuating these Olympics are the worst. Well, I don’t feel the same. I think they should look in their garden first. I was here from the beginning and I can tell you how much all these people worked to do something good. And when I mean people, I mean all of them. Did you see in the pictures or on TV those wearing light blue outfits? They are volunteers, and they are thousands. This tells a lot about Vancouverites.

Below are the pictures I took walking the streets of Vancouver all these days. I’m afraid this is all from my side. In a few days we are leaving for a vacation so you should soon expect some images from Mexico ;)

Ah, and here is a story: an US comedian named Stephen Colbert said that Canadian are “iceholes” and “syrup suckers”. So they came to cheer him ;) I mean really cheer him. And a beer brand was born. Here ist the story and here about the beer… I don’t want to hear anybody saying that Canadians don’t know how to take a joke.

I’m proudly I’m belonging to this city. Good job people of Vancouver!

Olympic Torch Relay – Best vantage point in Vancouver – Harbor Centre, our office building.

A place to check where to go if you are in Vancouver, is this website
http://www.citycaucus.com/2010free

In front of our building is the German Hospitality House. I’ll put some picture on flickr soon.
Just looking forward for the beer and schnitzel ;)

Check here a blog post with more details about Olympics guesthouses:
Vancouver 2010 Pavilions & Hospitality Houses

Bellow: German Fan Fest Hall – Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

See you there! If you are vising from Romania, give me a sign, I’ll be glad to get together for a beer ;)

I wasn’t too excited until now, all this spending of money, commercialism and those things. Now I start to feel different because the city itself started to feel different. Is like for a few weeks Vancouver become the capital of the world. Even the people seem to be different.
I’m passing each day in front of Quatchi mascot (a pity they put there some huge cell phones advertisements) wishing the city will stay the same for the future – cosmopolitan, friendly and fun.

I have to teams I follow now: of course, Canada; and of course, Romania. No doubt, Canadians will win medals; they have all it takes, starting with well-prepared athletes and finishing with excellent training conditions.
Not the same with Romanians, which are having poor training conditions especially for the winters sports.

Anyway, I put a bet on:
Paul Constantin Pepene – Winner of U23 World Championships in Hinterzarten (Germany) – 15 km + 15km
Eva Tofalvi – the best Romanian on biathlon – 2nd place in the Individual event at the end of the 2008-09 Biathlon World Cup

One way or another, it feels good to be here!

A few days ago, I met Zak for a beer, as we do usually to catch up with each other. Coincidentally, we realized that 4 years ago, almost the same day – in a night of December 2005, the idea of organizing a FLOSS event in Romania was born. How the time fly!

Many things happened in the meantime. The good – eLiberatica run three editions and reached 400 participants this year. High profile Open Source and Free Software activists, developers and enthusiasts came to Romania and presented their ideas, shared stories and expertise, made new friends, learned about our culture. The Romanian FLOSS community members gain something; they met each other in person, they shared ideas, they learned new things; new events and communities were developed. Although the Romanian FLOSS community is not united as I dreamt when I started, still, eLiberatica did something: it made it clear that Romanians are having a FLOSS community. It put it on the FLOSS World Map. It also attracted the government and media attention and most of all, the Romanian public attention; and the FLOSS international community attention to Romania. Many Romanians who had no idea about what Open Source and Free Software means, now learned.

Is this something? I don’t know, you judge, and the time will tell. There is still a lot to do, but it is a start.

eLiberatica 4^th edition

Back these days: people are asking me what’s next, and especially about eLiberatica 4^th edition. I can come now with a clear answer:

eLiberatica 2010 – unfortunately no…
eLiberatica 2011 – YES!

There are important factors making a 2010 edition hard to develop: on my side – I have to spend more time with my family, and to focus on my actual job. Zak is in a similar situation. Both of us spent many-many days and nights preparing and managing the previous three editions and volunteering for the community; now we should turn back to our families, they need us. The times are harsh too; there is a lot of political uncertainty and economical turmoil in Romania these days. We hope this will change in good in the next year…

Therefore, although Romi (Agora CEO – our partners we had in the first 3 editions) made me the offer to collaborate again in organizing eLiberatica, I had to say no this time.
Both Zak and I decided to go again together and prepare a big one – but only in 2011.

On the other hand, Romi mentioned to me that Agora would like to organize a local Open Source event in the spring of 2010, which I think is fain. Anyway, please note, this event is not going to be supported by Zak, and me, nor will be eLiberatica. On the other hand, I’m glad to see eLiberatica is not the single FLOSS event taking place in Romania now. A few are on the track and I hope we share our part in generating it.

I will be always supporting the FLOSS movement in Romania and, generally speaking – ROMANIA. Although Canada is now my country, and I love it and respect it, I’ll never forget where I came from. So if is anything I can help there, and is in my power, you let me know.

Related to eLiberatica 4^th edition – I’ll continue to keep communication up; I’m open to any suggestions, so please stay in touch with me. I updated my blog, I’ll tune it up even more, and I’ll start to rearrange the eLiberatica websites, unifying it in a single one and preparing it for 2011. I estimate we will start to work for organizing the next edition probably the summer of 2010. In 2011, we wish to have the best FLOSS event ever in Romania.

A New Year

These being said, I wish all of you Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!
It was an honor and a pleasure to be with you in all these 4 years, and I hope to be again together soon.

There were some comments, especially one about BLUG*OS*CON – announcing that the organizers changed the copy of the event website – which now looks professionally. Thank you.

Back to technical side, I would like to share some findings; perhaps some of you would need in the future if you use WordPress. The older WP version used latin1 encoding. The new version (after 2.2) is using utf-8. This is why when I restored the db, somehow the encoding matched wrong and I had many weird characters in the copy. I tried first this plug-in – “UTF-8 Database Converter” but didn’t work well. Finally, this one did the work well: UTF-8 DB Converter.

I started this blog almost 4 years ago (I cannot believe it how time passed…) when I started eLiberatica and ROSI. After that, I didn’t touch it much, just publishing time to time. I think is time for an improvement, so in the next period I plan to do an update, a modern looking one, like the one I developed for my actual company. More announcements about eLiberatica will come in December or January.

Din pacate organizatorilor le-a scapat un lucru: ca toti suntem de aceeasi parte a baricadei.

Citez de pe situl de prezentare al evenimentului: “De ce inca o conferinţa pe teme open-source? eLiberatica nu indeplineşte deja rolul asta? BLUG*OS*CON isi propune sa fie o conferinţa cu adevarat a Linuxistilor, o conferinţa “just for fun”, eliberata de orice influenta din industria IT, fara sigle zgârietoare pe retina, si cu intrare libera, un fel de Do-It-Yourself open source conference in stilul FOSDEM. “

Ma vad nevoit sa dau un raspuns: marea calitate a eLiberaticii (printre altele cateva ;) a fost ca a reusit sa aduca personalitati din lumea FLOSS pe care nimeni nu a visat sa le intalneasca in Romania. Evident ca nu a fost destinata “cu adevarat” Linuxistilor.
A fost destinata tuturor, si in special non-Linuxistilor – pentru ca acestia din urma trebuiau cumva facuti sa afle si despre Linux, FLOSS, si asa mai departe.

Inteleg ca eLiberatica nu a putut si nici nu poate satisface pe toata lumea; ma dezamageste oarecum insa modul (mai degraba ieftin) de promovare a unui eveniment ca BLUG*OS*CON (ce se presupune a veni din partea “pura” a miscarii FLOSS din Ro).

Va sustin din inima si sunt alaturi de voi, dar, va trebui sa va schimbati un pic atitudinea daca doriti sa construiti cu adevarat o miscare unitara FLOSS in tara.

Parerea mea :) .

PS1 – Dati o bere pentru reclama facuta ;)
PS2 – Siti voi cine se bucura cel mai tare cand noi ne luam la hartza? Aia cu “sigle zgarietoare“.

Winner Best short film at Belgrade Film Festival 2009.
2nd Audience Award at Trieste Film Festival 2009.
Recipient of the best short film script at the HBO TIFF script contest 2007.