Photos from the GNUeva Vizcayano SFD Event, 2009

Despite the small number of attendees, the first ever Software Freedom Day in Nueva Vizcaya was successfully held at Cordillera Resort and Complex Inn Function Hall, National Highway, Bayombong Nueva Vizcaya. It was a success as all personally invited individuals came tagging along some of their friends, gaining participants representing Bayombong, Solano, and Bambang.

Some junior and senior college students from Nueva Vizcaya State University (link seemed down) and Saint Mary's University came over.

The co-organizer, Ethnotec Management Research and Development Services Organization, Inc. (EMRDSOI) had been very instrumental in the success of the event. The event officially started at around 2PM with very casual opening talk from Mj Mendoza IV (of GNUeva Vizcayano) stating the reason of the celebration and introducing the speakers.

Most of the "How To Do It With FOSS Tools" activity pushed through except for Web-Programming with PHP of Mr. Joel P. Bahni, a GNUeva Vizcayano who was on another event, organized by the region's Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), training teachers from far flung areas of Nueva Vizcaya to use OpenOffice.

The first presentation was Photo-editing with GIMP by Mr. Jan Patrick S. Andres of AndresByDesign. Everybody was amazed at how photo-restoration was done. He also demonstrated how to remove scars, smoothing a skin, and removing unwanted fatty area of the face/body.

Mr. Jesthony G. Maquiling later presented Basics of Game Programming with KonsolScript, which intrigued one of the participants knowing that it's being primarily developed by one of the GNUeva Vizcayano member. This lead to a brief question-and-answer about the project's current state.

The next presenter was Mr. Renz Delster A. Galiguis, who presented Low-poly Modeling with Blender. The participants was awed at how Mr. Galiguis gracefully used Blender-interface and shortcut-keys while modeling a low-poly Wolverine. It simply proved that Blender is not as complicated 3D tool as everyone thought it was.

Mj Mendoza IV then presented Augmented Reality using FLAR Toolkit which is based on Dr. Hirukazu Kato's ARToolkit. The Open Source edition of Flex SDK was used to compile the code with the help of FlashDevelop. Everybody was astonished by how a simple cardboard could rotate a 3D object in the computer using just a webcam attached to the same computer.

With not enough funding, all the participants contributed an equal share to buy event snack. What else could be better than an old-time coder-favorite pizza?

During the event, Ubuntu and OpenEducation discs were distributed. At the end of the event, everyone was given their certificate of participation right after taking a group picture.