The Art of Advocacy with Linux
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Skikuli, Redon
Through this Lighting Talk I'd like to share some thoughts on the importance of Advocacy for the use of Linux distributions by various actors, starting with students or home users, to continue with Universities, Public Institutions and Governments. Educating the new generation to use Linux is something that should be seen of high importance. As there is a lot of progress done today with different Linux distros being massively used, a lot of improvements made in terms of the interface, security etc more efforts can be put in Advocacy. If today, as experienced users of Free Software, we understand our potential in getting more people to use Linux and we invest a little bit of our time in advocating it, we will definitely bring new users, some of which will definitely become new contributors. Awareness of Linux, and FOSS is spread largely by word of mouth, using grass roots movements and social media. You can teach others how to use it, run a workshop in a school, teach a student how to install Linux, show different environments and tools. Another step, which requires more efforts and planning, can be to bring Linux in the Government as well. This is something we cannot do alone, but you can try to support organizations and communities who do a lot of work in this direction. We keep hearing on migrations to various FLOSS projects by different governments, yours can be the next one, and you can be part of that great change.
 Hello. Thanks for joining the presentation. I'm Redon. I come from Albania in a city called Elbasan, which is quite in the center of, like, close to Tirana. It's quite a simple city, very small and doesn't have much. And now I live in Tirana, which is the capital of Albania, although I travel a lot for different events, conferences, stuff like that. If you want to, one of the things that my birth city has is quite important, is that it has a lot of good food. And it's Mediterranean, but it's not very healthy, so you should not consume it for a big period of time. Okay, so I started with other folks, the Open Labs Hacker Space in Tirana in 2012. I'm one of the initial members, and I do a lot of contributions in Wikimedia, OpenStreetMap, LibreOffice, and of course OpenSusan, mainly in localizations, and also doing some events at the local hacker space. Two of the events that we organized there that I've been part of since day one is the crypto party, when people that do not know a lot of technical stuff about how to be safe online and how to communicate in a very encrypted way. It's been running for two years now. This is going to be the third year, and it's quite inspiring to see people that were technophobic first talk about encryption in the end of the event. The event started with Ariane Campuis, one of the people of the Dutch community, HAC42, and other initiatives. And also I'm part of the OSCAL conference, which was a week before, and it actually gathers all the initiatives in Albania that are related to open source, free software, privacy online, open data, and stuff like that. This is like I'm also mentioning my company because it's related heavily with the element of advocacy and why we do this. It's not the company itself, but it's the ecosystem behind it. It's called Collective 68, and we offer cloud services for people that do not know or do not want to manage open source instances, just like NextLoud, which is the talk next, Attendize, MatterMos, stuff like that. Okay, so I'm kind of sad because usually when I was going to this kind of events, a lot of people were talking about Linux, the importance of advocacy, and now it's a lot about the industry, which is nice, money is good, and we should pay the rent as well in the end of the month. But also advocacy in our industry or in our area is also related not only to doing good, but also to companies as well. So every company needs to have whatever it is, it's tech company, it's agriculture, whatever it is, it needs to talk about why it's good, what they're doing. So if you go to Merriam-Webster, it says that the definition of advocacy is the act of process of supporting a cause or proposal, the act or process of advocating, which is obvious, we know this. And in our communities and businesses and institutions, for people that are into institutions, our focus is free and open source technologies in general, all that privacy and open data, and public domain in a lot of cases. So advocacy in general, and we now know advocacy for our industry, and what does it matter? I mentioned before, it matters because in any environment, including the free and open source movement, there are many actors. There are enthusiasts or people that just like it because the thing is the right thing to do, there are people that have companies, there are public institutions that need to know, there are so many institutions that do not know the things that we are doing and the way we are doing it. And in the end of the day, we are part of the, in one way or the other, we get connected because we are part of the same bucket of stuff that happen inside it. Okay, so as I mentioned, we are all part of an ecosystem. It's, really it's in our best interest to have as many people that have this mentality as possible. And because the more people, the more easier our life would be, the more better it would be for communities and more open source and free software we are going to have. And whatever goals we have at an individual or collective or company level, more people that talk about what we do, it's better for everyone. Again, we tend to forget this because we are busy and because the industry has gone so far. Like we heard about Microsoft that bought GitHub for, I don't know, how many millions or trillions, I don't know how much was it, billions of dollars. And it's going big, like the value of open source products now, it's quite big. And this is very nice, but we are, again, we need to talk about the basics once in a while. And talking about, you know, advocacy and ethics, in general, it's not very pleasant, especially in the morning or in a sunny day. But, you know, again, it's good for everyone's business. So there are some people that have done this before. I think in people that do full time advocacy usually are, some of them, you know, do get burned out because you need to sacrifice a lot of your personal time, a lot of your personal family time and stuff like that. So you need to be a very tough character to do it. But also they give an example to other people to do smaller things, maybe. But they also have an impact on what we all are doing. They are good, I think. We should also, some people think these examples are good, some people think they are bad. It depends on our point of view or how we see those. So Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikimedia Foundation, I think it's a good case of advocacy. In general, I don't know many people that, you know, say he's done some bad things. Although I think he's now not that much into the Wikimedia movement as he was before. Also a good example of probably he got burned out. I don't know. I don't know him much. But I think he's a good example in the end of the day of doing something with passion for a lot of time and having quite an impact. Richard Stallman. So very, very good advocacy guy. In my perception, somebody, my friend over there told me that he's going to be in an event. So I'm only imagining how handling him and going around with him, et cetera, et cetera. But a very good advocacy person. You know, it's very rare to see people that started doing this like 30 years ago and still doing it, which means commission. They are committed to their cause. But with talent, there is also some back package with it. Okay, Edward Snowdon. In general, we should, I think we should judge people after a while. But there is a general except if you are working in the US administration in some parts of it, you're probably going to think he's not a good advocacy guy in privacy. But I think the majority of people that are not only us, but other people think that it's a very good case of advocacy with a lot of personal cost. And also, it was, I think the impact that it had in a very short period of time, it was huge. You could have people that had no idea about privacy and talking about massive surveillance and stuff like that. You had many popular magazines talking about these things as well because of him. Linus Tervals, there is something going on with the Linux things. I think very good that advocacy guy. But again, it's one of these cases when you, it depends who you ask and if they are bothered from bad language and stuff like that or showing fingers in public. But again, I think he has quite a good impact on the Linux scene and free and open source movement as well. So where we can advocate, I think it's simple. There are students are the best in my perception from my experience in my city, the city where I'm based right now. Students are the best case scenario. Although in countries like Albania, a lot of, we have this brain drain, a lot of people leave the country. So they get exposed to the whole culture and they leave the country. Hopefully, they're going to come back. But in general, students are, because they have not been contaminated yet by this whole life achievement, midlife crisis, all the, having a mortgage and all the stuff that people have these days. Universities are a tough thing to advocate because are very, it depends also on each country. Again, I'm talking about my personal experience. Is this on the record? It is. We are recording this. Okay. I cannot talk more about the people on Albanian universities on the record. But in general, it's not easy to advocate there. It's very complicated, very bureaucratic. But we need to do it. Home users, again, it's very small scale. Usually, it's your aunt who's going to bother with all this stuff. And I don't know if it's a good case scenario. But there are also people that are into it. For example, I have my family members that now use Linux. And they're, not because of my advocacy, but because it's easier for them to use it. Another tough one, but again, it depends on the government or where you're talking. Are the public institutions and in Albania, we've done, we've managed to do through a lot of, you know, a lot of meetings and a lot of talks and also events where we invite a lot of letters sent to the public institutions. We've managed along with the respective organizations to switch, to convince the municipality of Tehran to switch from a proprietary software to NextCloud. They're also using in 85% of the computers there are LibreOffice right now. And also they have Moodle, which is something about an open source. I've never used it. It's open source software. About trainings. And there are talks for them to switch to Linux gradually at some point. But it's a very good case study. And if you want to do a advocacy there, again, in my experience, you just need to need to go institutionally first. Probably going to take a while. And after that, if it doesn't work, you need to talk to key people that are in this situation in order to convince them and explain them why they should switch from one system to the other. And of course, I'm more happy to talk over coffee after if there is any other place that I forgot where we can advocate. So where to do it? How much time do we have? Okay. Are you Germans? Can we take this longer? No. Okay. So where to do it? There are two levels, stereotypes. So there are two levels, macro and micro. Macro usually means internationally, but not always. And micro is the local level, which I personally like more and a lot. So let's go first. Macro. Usually all the Linux or free software advocacy groups, usually they go to one place, which is the European Parliament. They have a lot of meetings. It costs a lot. And usually it's you are against people that have a lot of budgets to lobby. But there are some organizations for the foundation in one of them, and I'm pretty sure EDRI, E-D-R-E, is another one, which are focused in changing policies at the European Union level. In Albania and in Tirana, we also run this campaign, public money, public code, where we try to contact public officials to explain to them officially why this is important for public institutions to have infrastructure, open source infrastructure, because it should be and it's the right way to do it. Controversal, the Linux Foundation also is a group that aims to do advocacy at a macro level, so industry-wide. And again, there are people I know that they are quite positive about it, other people are not. But in general, the general idea is that they want to have an impact and have advocacy at a macro level. And of course, it's very important to have our own media. For example, I read this blog. It's called It's False. It has news and updates about free and open source software in general, but there are also other blogs and news in technology that are quite representing and doing a lot of good advocacy in an international level as well. Of course, at conferences, like in companies, are a good way to go and talk. And we also need to do a lot of, you know, in order to support local events, or local events like this, we also need to do advocacy to big companies that have an interest in supporting conferences, open source and free software companies like this one. Again, there are also some great initiatives that help young people or people that have just started in this industry understand why it's quite important. We just launched a microsite called What Can I Do for Liberal Office, which is a fork of What Can I Do for Mozilla, which is a fork of What Can I Do for Fedora. And this is another one. It's a nice case study, I think, of, you know, people sharing code and also helping other people, you know, get into our movement. This helps people with some simple questions understand how they can get involved in Liberal Office, for example, or in other initiatives as well. This is the Italian version. There is also, it's also in English and other languages. Okay, so micro level, because we have only a few minutes left. Okay, so I mentioned before Open Labs Hacker Space. It's the local initiatives. Hacker Space is there are some good ones. I think I would totally hang out and see. These are very good hubs of people meeting each other and talking about this kind of stuff. In Tirana, it has helped a lot. Local conferences have also this kind of spirit of, you know, having a community and people care for each other a lot. Usually there are no, a few companies that are sponsoring them. So I think if you want them to keep on, we need to support this kind of initiatives, either without, you know, if we are into a company and sponsoring them, but also if we talk to these events, you have no idea how much inspiration youngsters in these local events get out of these conferences. So as I mentioned, organize events in conference at a local level, smaller events, hackathons or meetups, even for three or four people are quite nice. And very important if you invite influential people that might need to be advocated in what we are doing. Every year in our conference, we send a lot of letters to any kind of public institution. Sometimes they come, sometimes they don't, but they are a reminder that we are out there and what we are doing doesn't cost anything to send letters to these people. It just changes the name, you know, and the name of the institution and just post them. Well, if it's Albanian post, it's usually goes, it's not very good, so some letters might get lost, which was our experience, but that's another talk we can have over beer or coffee. Okay, and this is an outcome we had. I mentioned that we had an agreement with the municipality to do a lot of open-source stuff. And these are five very confused people that haven't done this before, as you can see, do not know how to dress officially. And this is the mayor of Tirana signing the agreement, which is a very good outcome of inviting these people to our events, letting them know what we are doing. A lot of meetings, we are a Mediterranean country, which means that you have to do stuff in the coffee shop, otherwise nothing gets done, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know if you have seen the Shoshank Redemption when the guy wanted to have a library in the prison. This is not a spoiler alert for people that haven't seen it, but in general, people in public institutions are very, they have their own agenda, so if they don't answer, we just brought them again and again and again until they got bored and say, who are these guys? Let's have a meeting over coffee. Okay? And it's really important to understand what's their incentive and what they want and what they're... Usually these people need something. In this case, it's very good publicity for the municipality of Tirana, so we go to every conference and we like we mentioned them. So also they go to different events and say, hey, we did this, this and that, so it's a win-win situation for all the involved parties. So some last thoughts. There is last slide, there is the premise. There is the last... If you do a little research about whatever each of you are up to, you're going to see that there are going to be a lot of active communities in some countries and none in other countries. And the potential there is quite big. For example, I don't know, Africa, probably for logistical issues because it's very hard to go there, doesn't have a lot of free and open source enthusiasts right now, but the potential there is huge. Some Asian countries, there are countries where if you go and visit them, they're going to have so many, you're going to see so much potential and even if you... We start talking like online, it's going to be also very good. It's very important to think long-term. I know it's tough. I mentioned mortgage, we are busy, we have families, but if we don't think long-term, nothing is going to work in my perception. Start a community in a coffee shop in a hacker space in cities that do not have anything. Even if there are five people, I think the potential there is huge. I've seen this happen six years ago and I think it's quite important to talk to local small communities, small cities about this. And some airport books, read some airport books like the Tower of Coaching, which is about business, but in general also applies to communities as well. And last but not least, agree on some main values of the community you are starting from day one. Values I think are more important than having budgets or having sponsors for a conference or event or anything else like that because it's going to spare you a lot of time fighting. If you have one pillar and say, hey, we agree to do only this and we will not diversify, I think it makes the life easier for everyone that is involved in this kind of communities. And yeah, that's it. It's a tough process. At Vocasit, you need to do it on your spare time. That's why there's a lot of money in lobbying in the US. Google spends a lot of money. Google started three years ago, I think, one division in-home, like not outsourcing it only for lobbying in the EU, which means that it's very, very important. And we just need to do the same with zero budget or less budget at different levels because again, it's very good for each one of us, for our companies, for our institutions, and for our communities. So thanks a lot. If you have any questions or if we have time for questions. Okay. I'm going to be around so if you have any.
 Hello. Thanks for joining the presentation. I'm Redon. I come from Albania in a city  called Elbasan, which is quite in the center of, like, close to Tirana. It's quite a simple  city, very small and doesn't have much. And now I live in Tirana, which is the capital  of Albania, although I travel a lot for different events, conferences, stuff like that. If you  want to, one of the things that my birth city has is quite important, is that it has a lot  of good food. And it's Mediterranean, but it's not very healthy, so you should not consume  it for a big period of time. Okay, so I started with other folks, the Open Labs Hacker Space  in Tirana in 2012. I'm one of the initial members, and I do a lot of contributions in  Wikimedia, OpenStreetMap, LibreOffice, and of course OpenSusan, mainly in localizations,  and also doing some events at the local hacker space. Two of the events that we organized  there that I've been part of since day one is the crypto party, when people that do not  know a lot of technical stuff about how to be safe online and how to communicate in a  very encrypted way. It's been running for two years now. This is going to be the third  year, and it's quite inspiring to see people that were technophobic first talk about encryption  in the end of the event. The event started with Ariane Campuis, one of the people of  the Dutch community, HAC42, and other initiatives. And also I'm part of the OSCAL conference,  which was a week before, and it actually gathers all the initiatives in Albania that are related  to open source, free software, privacy online, open data, and stuff like that. This is like  I'm also mentioning my company because it's related heavily with the element of advocacy  and why we do this. It's not the company itself, but it's the ecosystem behind it. It's called  Collective 68, and we offer cloud services for people that do not know or do not want  to manage open source instances, just like NextLoud, which is the talk next, Attendize,  MatterMos, stuff like that. Okay, so I'm kind of sad because usually when I was going to  this kind of events, a lot of people were talking about Linux, the importance of advocacy,  and now it's a lot about the industry, which is nice, money is good, and we should pay  the rent as well in the end of the month. But also advocacy in our industry or in our  area is also related not only to doing good, but also to companies as well. So every company  needs to have whatever it is, it's tech company, it's agriculture, whatever it is, it needs  to talk about why it's good, what they're doing.  So if you go to Merriam-Webster, it says that the definition of advocacy is the act of process  of supporting a cause or proposal, the act or process of advocating, which is obvious,  we know this. And in our communities and businesses and institutions, for people that are into  institutions, our focus is free and open source technologies in general, all that privacy  and open data, and public domain in a lot of cases. So advocacy in general, and we now  know advocacy for our industry, and what does it matter? I mentioned before, it matters  because in any environment, including the free and open source movement, there are many  actors. There are enthusiasts or people that just like it because the thing is the right  thing to do, there are people that have companies, there are public institutions that need to  know, there are so many institutions that do not know the things that we are doing and  the way we are doing it. And in the end of the day, we are part of the, in one way or  the other, we get connected because we are part of the same bucket of stuff that happen  inside it. Okay, so as I mentioned, we are all part of an ecosystem. It's, really it's  in our best interest to have as many people that have this mentality as possible. And  because the more people, the more easier our life would be, the more better it would be  for communities and more open source and free software we are going to have. And whatever  goals we have at an individual or collective or company level, more people that talk about  what we do, it's better for everyone. Again, we tend to forget this because we are busy  and because the industry has gone so far. Like we heard about Microsoft that bought  GitHub for, I don't know, how many millions or trillions, I don't know how much was it,  billions of dollars. And it's going big, like the value of open source products now, it's  quite big. And this is very nice, but we are, again, we need to talk about the basics once  in a while. And talking about, you know, advocacy and ethics, in general, it's not very pleasant,  especially in the morning or in a sunny day. But, you know, again, it's good for everyone's  business. So there are some people that have done this before. I think in people that do  full time advocacy usually are, some of them, you know, do get burned out because you need  to sacrifice a lot of your personal time, a lot of your personal family time and stuff  like that. So you need to be a very tough character to do it. But also they give an example  to other people to do smaller things, maybe. But they also have an impact on what we all  are doing. They are good, I think. We should also, some people think these examples are  good, some people think they are bad. It depends on our point of view or how we see those.  So Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikimedia Foundation, I think it's a good case of advocacy. In  general, I don't know many people that, you know, say he's done some bad things. Although  I think he's now not that much into the Wikimedia movement as he was before. Also a good example  of probably he got burned out. I don't know. I don't know him much. But I think he's a  good example in the end of the day of doing something with passion for a lot of time and  having quite an impact. Richard Stallman. So very, very good advocacy guy. In my perception,  somebody, my friend over there told me that he's going to be in an event. So I'm only  imagining how handling him and going around with him, et cetera, et cetera. But a very  good advocacy person. You know, it's very rare to see people that started doing this  like 30 years ago and still doing it, which means commission. They are committed to their  cause. But with talent, there is also some back package with it. Okay, Edward Snowdon.  In general, we should, I think we should judge people after a while. But there is a general  except if you are working in the US administration in some parts of it, you're probably going  to think he's not a good advocacy guy in privacy. But I think the majority of people that are  not only us, but other people think that it's a very good case of advocacy with a lot of  personal cost. And also, it was, I think the impact that it had in a very short period  of time, it was huge. You could have people that had no idea about privacy and talking  about massive surveillance and stuff like that. You had many popular magazines talking  about these things as well because of him. Linus Tervals, there is something going on  with the Linux things. I think very good that advocacy guy. But again, it's one of these  cases when you, it depends who you ask and if they are bothered from bad language and  stuff like that or showing fingers in public. But again, I think he has quite a good impact  on the Linux scene and free and open source movement as well. So where we can advocate,  I think it's simple. There are students are the best in my perception from my experience  in my city, the city where I'm based right now. Students are the best case scenario.  Although in countries like Albania, a lot of, we have this brain drain, a lot of people  leave the country. So they get exposed to the whole culture and they leave the country.  Hopefully, they're going to come back. But in general, students are, because they have  not been contaminated yet by this whole life achievement, midlife crisis, all the, having  a mortgage and all the stuff that people have these days. Universities are a tough thing  to advocate because are very, it depends also on each country. Again, I'm talking about  my personal experience. Is this on the record? It is. We are recording this. Okay. I cannot  talk more about the people on Albanian universities on the record. But in general, it's not easy  to advocate there. It's very complicated, very bureaucratic. But we need to do it. Home  users, again, it's very small scale. Usually, it's your aunt who's going to bother with  all this stuff. And I don't know if it's a good case scenario. But there are also people  that are into it. For example, I have my family members that now use Linux. And they're, not  because of my advocacy, but because it's easier for them to use it. Another tough one, but  again, it depends on the government or where you're talking. Are the public institutions  and in Albania, we've done, we've managed to do through a lot of, you know, a lot of  meetings and a lot of talks and also events where we invite a lot of letters sent to the  public institutions. We've managed along with the respective organizations to switch, to  convince the municipality of Tehran to switch from a proprietary software to NextCloud. They're  also using in 85% of the computers there are LibreOffice right now. And also they have Moodle,  which is something about an open source. I've never used it. It's open source software.  About trainings. And there are talks for them to switch to Linux gradually at some point.  But it's a very good case study. And if you want to do a advocacy there, again, in my experience,  you just need to need to go institutionally first. Probably going to take a while. And  after that, if it doesn't work, you need to talk to key people that are in this situation  in order to convince them and explain them why they should switch from one system to  the other. And of course, I'm more happy to talk over coffee after if there is any other  place that I forgot where we can advocate. So where to do it? How much time do we have?  Okay. Are you Germans? Can we take this longer? No. Okay. So where to do it? There are two levels,  stereotypes. So there are two levels, macro and micro. Macro usually means internationally,  but not always. And micro is the local level, which I personally like more and a lot. So  let's go first. Macro. Usually all the Linux or free software advocacy groups, usually  they go to one place, which is the European Parliament. They have a lot of meetings. It  costs a lot. And usually it's you are against people that have a lot of budgets to lobby.  But there are some organizations for the foundation in one of them, and I'm pretty sure EDRI,  E-D-R-E, is another one, which are focused in changing policies at the European Union  level. In Albania and in Tirana, we also run this campaign, public money, public code,  where we try to contact public officials to explain to them officially why this is important  for public institutions to have infrastructure, open source infrastructure, because it should  be and it's the right way to do it. Controversal, the Linux Foundation also is a group that  aims to do advocacy at a macro level, so industry-wide. And again, there are people I know that they  are quite positive about it, other people are not. But in general, the general idea  is that they want to have an impact and have advocacy at a macro level. And of course,  it's very important to have our own media. For example, I read this blog. It's called  It's False. It has news and updates about free and open source software in general,  but there are also other blogs and news in technology that are quite representing and  doing a lot of good advocacy in an international level as well. Of course, at conferences,  like in companies, are a good way to go and talk. And we also need to do a lot of, you  know, in order to support local events, or local events like this, we also need to do  advocacy to big companies that have an interest in supporting conferences, open source and  free software companies like this one. Again, there are also some great initiatives that  help young people or people that have just started in this industry understand why it's  quite important. We just launched a microsite called What Can I Do for Liberal Office, which  is a fork of What Can I Do for Mozilla, which is a fork of What Can I Do for Fedora. And  this is another one. It's a nice case study, I think, of, you know, people sharing code  and also helping other people, you know, get into our movement. This helps people with  some simple questions understand how they can get involved in Liberal Office, for example,  or in other initiatives as well. This is the Italian version. There is also, it's also  in English and other languages. Okay, so micro level, because we have only a few minutes  left. Okay, so I mentioned before Open Labs Hacker Space. It's the local initiatives.  Hacker Space is there are some good ones. I think I would totally hang out and see. These  are very good hubs of people meeting each other and talking about this kind of stuff.  In Tirana, it has helped a lot. Local conferences have also this kind of spirit of, you know,  having a community and people care for each other a lot. Usually there are no, a few companies  that are sponsoring them. So I think if you want them to keep on, we need to support this  kind of initiatives, either without, you know, if we are into a company and sponsoring them,  but also if we talk to these events, you have no idea how much inspiration youngsters in  these local events get out of these conferences. So as I mentioned, organize events in conference  at a local level, smaller events, hackathons or meetups, even for three or four people  are quite nice. And very important if you invite influential people that might need  to be advocated in what we are doing. Every year in our conference, we send a lot of letters  to any kind of public institution. Sometimes they come, sometimes they don't, but they  are a reminder that we are out there and what we are doing doesn't cost anything to send  letters to these people. It just changes the name, you know, and the name of the institution  and just post them. Well, if it's Albanian post, it's usually goes, it's not very good,  so some letters might get lost, which was our experience, but that's another talk we  can have over beer or coffee. Okay, and this is an outcome we had. I mentioned that we  had an agreement with the municipality to do a lot of open-source stuff. And these are  five very confused people that haven't done this before, as you can see, do not know how  to dress officially. And this is the mayor of Tirana signing the agreement, which is  a very good outcome of inviting these people to our events, letting them know what we are  doing. A lot of meetings, we are a Mediterranean country, which means that you have to do stuff  in the coffee shop, otherwise nothing gets done, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know  if you have seen the Shoshank Redemption when the guy wanted to have a library in the prison.  This is not a spoiler alert for people that haven't seen it, but in general, people in  public institutions are very, they have their own agenda, so if they don't answer, we just  brought them again and again and again until they got bored and say, who are these guys?  Let's have a meeting over coffee. Okay? And it's really important to understand what's their  incentive and what they want and what they're... Usually these people need something. In this case,  it's very good publicity for the municipality of Tirana, so we go to every conference and  we like we mentioned them. So also they go to different events and say, hey, we did this,  this and that, so it's a win-win situation for all the involved parties. So some last thoughts.  There is last slide, there is the premise. There is the last... If you do a little research about  whatever each of you are up to, you're going to see that there are going to be a lot of  active communities in some countries and none in other countries. And the potential there is  quite big. For example, I don't know, Africa, probably for logistical issues because it's very  hard to go there, doesn't have a lot of free and open source enthusiasts right now, but the potential  there is huge. Some Asian countries, there are countries where if you go and visit them, they're  going to have so many, you're going to see so much potential and even if you... We start talking  like online, it's going to be also very good. It's very important to think long-term. I know it's  tough. I mentioned mortgage, we are busy, we have families, but if we don't think long-term,  nothing is going to work in my perception. Start a community in a coffee shop in a hacker space  in cities that do not have anything. Even if there are five people, I think the potential  there is huge. I've seen this happen six years ago and I think it's quite important to talk to  local small communities, small cities about this. And some airport books, read some airport books  like the Tower of Coaching, which is about business, but in general also applies to communities as  well. And last but not least, agree on some main values of the community you are starting from day  one. Values I think are more important than having budgets or having sponsors for a conference or  event or anything else like that because it's going to spare you a lot of time fighting.  If you have one pillar and say, hey, we agree to do only this and we will not diversify,  I think it makes the life easier for everyone that is involved in this kind of communities. And  yeah, that's it. It's a tough process. At Vocasit, you need to do it on your spare time.  That's why there's a lot of money in lobbying in the US. Google spends a lot of money. Google  started three years ago, I think, one division in-home, like not outsourcing it only for lobbying  in the EU, which means that it's very, very important. And we just need to do the same with  zero budget or less budget at different levels because again, it's very good for each one of  us, for our companies, for our institutions, and for our communities. So thanks a lot. If you  have any questions or if we have time for questions. Okay. I'm going to be around so if you have any.
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