foko

October 4th will be a great day for the ICT community in Madagascar. After 3 months of intense discussions and organizations, the first Barcamp ever planned in Madagascar will be held at Ivotel in Ambohidahy with more than 150 attendees.

Why is it this important to host a Barcamp in Madagascar? We asked Pr Marius Andriamparany from the AUF at Tsimbazaza who is involved with a very active community of Open Source developers in the vulgarization of Open Source Softwares all over the country. Along with the C3LF and AMUL, they organized the first Free Software Day and shared workshops on OpenOffice and many other softwares on September, 20th. Pierre Maury will participate  to share his own experience, his project of distributing for free documents about the history and the culture of Madagascar. The E-book, although still with flaws, is bound to occupy a more important place in the publishing business. It is a rapid and economical way to distribute works that do not have copyright restrictions. Beside enlarging its catalog, The Malagasy e-library projects to transfer the documents onto a platform other than the typical computer. Learning the habits and needs of the readers are therefore  critical to know what direction to choose. E-saina is a company specialized in  information technology. It manages software for data processing, allows the implementation of hardware for managing and evaluating your information system and transfer of knowledge. Barcamp will be an opportunity to present our work and enlarge our client network. With the intentions to get the support and recognition from the tech community, we went on asking Moov the first Malagasy internet service provider to help us connect this Barcamp to the world and to the other Malagasy regions (even if there are going to be strong associations from Majunga, Fianarantsoa and Tamatave coming).

pre-Barcamp reunion at Ivotel on September 26th

We told them about Foko, the bloggers and their wonderful achievments, they accepted right away! We were already lucky enough to get the Ivotel biggest room for 150 people for free or in exchange of designing their website) but we also got donations to get the FBC bloggers from the regions to Antananarivo. Thanks to private donators and the Rising Voices : Théophile and Patrick from Tamatave and Rondro and Zouboon (Antsa) from Majunga will be joining Diana, Lomelle, the CPO kids and the new ICE Group at Barcamp Madagascar.

Why is this important to FOKO Bloggers to be present at Barcamp? All of FBC members have a lot to teach to the community in the fields of social activism and citizen journalism. With all of the bloggers pubishing in 2 and most of the time 3 languages (Malagasy, French and English), we thought it could be a great opportunity for them to be at their ease with “geek” language and overcome their little difficulties with technology. How to load the pictures faster using Gimp to alterate images, How to use open source softwarers, etc. Of course we are also planning more partneships and plan future events with these communities so Citizen Media and Open Source activists can build together a better Madagascar.

M. Ndaohialy Manda-vy Ravonimanantsoa from C3FL

English, Malagasy, Podcasts, features, video