Tag Archives: mantova

MemoByte 2009 – Mantova

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MemoByte 2009 is an event organized by ARCO no profit organization and is focuses on both Computer and Electronic technologies. Basically is divided into two areas: an area like a market of old and new electronic devices (Radio, old computers, transistors, and so on) and an area dedicated to Computer groups and organizations like LUGMan (Mantova’s LUG), Fedoraproject, LUG Parma, and so on.

I brought with me two good ambassadors: Gianluca Varisco and Alexjan Carraturo. Really good choice! We had to travel a lot of kilometres from Milan to Verona and then down to Mantova but thanks to them, the travel was funniest and interesting (particularly funny when Gianluca and Alex discussed about ADSL vs Optical fiber).

The worthy part was our ability and opportunity to plan a lot of things about Fedora-it and fedora ambassador groups.

We brought some Fedora 10 CDs, some Fedora FEL ISOs and a lot of stickers left from FOSDEM (Thanks to Gerold who gave me) and two OLPC (which is always a star).

We met a lot of people that needs information about Linux, Fedora and Opensource software. And we come back with the opportunity of organize a big and (maybe) international event in January 2010 (stay tuned).

Mantova is a good place for fedora to grown, organizators asked me about Linux Day (in october) and the possibility to have gadgets: they are fantastic supporters and we must to invest in that area as much as we can.

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Linux Day 2008 report

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wow, Linux day 2008 has finished and I’m still alive.

Linux day 2008, this is the first time Fedora is sponsorized as much as possible to all around Italy, and maybe we got a new ambassador.

This year I lived Linux Day in a different way, I was present (not at the same time) in two city: my day started in Lodi with LOLUG and terminated in Mantova (a not-so-near-Lodi city) with LUGman.

In Lodi I spent most of the morning to finish the opened tasks: made LTSP working, deployed Fedora USB station and prepared myself for wireless (in)security talk I did with Stefano (to be honest, he did the presentation and I only help him with demo).

The fedora KIT worked well and I finally saw it after planning, organizing for months. We can tune and improve it, but we started and now is more simple to manage. ;-)

After midday I went in Mantova, and I realized how bad connected to Lodi is. ~150 Km. No Highways. The fastest path found suggested by GPS navigator was this: Lodi -> Piacenza -> Brescia -> Verona -> Mantova, completely pointless.
I decided to travel with my own route and I take more than 1,5 hours to go and about 2 hours to return (No way to reduce the travel time), fortunately my car is gas methane powered.

After arrived in Mantova I knew Pietro Calzoni and Fausto Picchi who were my fedora contacts in LUGMan. LUGMan’s Linux Day was organized in a quite different way, there wasn’t speech but only workshops. I had a table with a computer and the possibility to mix practice and theory.

My initial plan was to use the kick-ass-wonderful Lorenzo Villani’s Fedora presentation (we will provide the english version soon), but I preferred to spoke directly with interested people (a lot of people, 20-25 more or less), helped and showed them whatever they wanted.

I’d got a lot of questions: “What is the difference from Fedora and Ubuntu?”, “How is the Fedora community?”, “How I can have a polo like you?”, and so on.

I made 7/8 USB keys, I gave away all CDs. I spoke about many arguments: revisor, yum, packagekit, bodhi and koji, about the community (and the possibility to contribute without be a computer skilled person), the importance of being upstream (this was and always is the main point to explain why Fedora is better than Ubuntu).

I think our message “There is an awesome alternative to Ubuntu” was taken. We (fedora Italian Ambassador) are growing and we can reply to “$$ spent to burn CDs” with a lot of alternatives: Fedora USB kit is one of them.