This is definitely the year when WiFi became “normal practice” for me – in the hotel, in the conference rooms and grounds of INSA… Having said that, I’m blogging this offline at a tram station for upload later – maybe next year the world will be WiFied?

For now, the second day’s activities at OOoCon are finished, ending OOoCon for another year. I just said goodbye to the local organisers, busy packing away the debris, counting the stocks of unsold drinks, and all the other activities behind the scenes that no-one sees but which are essential for a smooth running conference.

It’s been another busy day, once I finally made it to INSA Again, all the Day 2 presentations are available in the media centre, so there’s no point blogging them here. My personal highlights were again from the far corners of the globe. My morning’s personal timetable was scheduled to start with a presentation about the Indian Native Languages activity. Unfortunately the presenter couldn’t be here, but a number of colleagues stepped in and gave unrehearsed updates: from Karunakar from India, Jamil from Bangladesh, and Javier for other neighbouring countries. Many thanks guys – it was quite a brave thing to do, and delivered some good information.

This was followed by a fascinating presentation from Brazil, where an entirely volunteer community have achieved a market penetration of over 10% of the 32 million PCs for OpenOffice.org despite tremendous obstacles. For example: if you need to have two jobs to survive a downturn in the economy, it leaves little time for voluntary work; it can be terrifying to be hit with a major trademark issues and threat of legal action; and the sheer size of the country make co-ordination of volunteers a logistical nightmare. Their latest launch had a video link-up across the country plus a link to Canada to bring in Louis. Professional volunteers – an inspiration to the rest of us.

In one of the afternoon sessions Erwin presented some results from the user survey. Marketing has consistently stated that users are our best salesforce. This is confirmed by the survey, with over 40% of new users persuaded by personal recommendation. Periodically we hear a cry for OOo to be more visible at exhibitions – so far, the number of users brought in via this channel is negligible. This either means we aren’t doing enough of it, or (my preferred interpretation) it isn’t worth the money or the effort. You can, as they say, prove anything with statistics.

Then, the final speeches (mercifully short this year), with the naughty boys and girls of the Community Council having to stay behind after school to finish off the agenda we should have got through on Monday. Holding the meeting over beers in a restaurant made it a far more productive session than most. Maybe there’s a lesson here.

More considered thoughts later, but all credit to the French team for delivering the largest OOoCon ever. The civic reception must be a new landmark in OpenOffice.org going mainstream! I noticed a few little groups huddled in corners at the end of OOoCon, wondering how they can make a successful bid for next year’s event…

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