Around 30-something technology enthusiasts, software developers and IT educators gathered at the ELearning Center in Zamboanga City on September 17 to celebrate this year’s Software Freedom Day with the theme  “Open Source gives me the freedom to choose the best option.” Software Freedom Day is globally celebrated every 3rd Saturday of September, and this year, 439 different venues worldwide celebrated to promote open source technologies and methodologies to the public.

The day kicked off with the showing of short animation films ?Big Buck Bunny made in Blender and Sita Sings the Blues a story about Free Culture Movement (but not Free Software). Both of the films are creative commons share-alike licensed. Blender is a free and open source animation tool that has started gaining ground and attention these past few years. The day’s activities were streamed live at ustream.tv, so that others who were not able to join the other SFD parties in other venues can view our event online.

The program started with an introduction by ELearning Center’s Yolynne Medina, followed by FOSS advocacy videos sent by Meric Mara and his team from sfd.ph and recorded videos by successful IT practitioners who have specialized in different open source tools, who shared their experience, activities and words of wisdom — namely Paolo Falcone (Quezon City), Brent Paderanga-Lipke (New York City), Dax Solomon Umaming (Baguio City), Dean Mikhail Berris (California, USA), Joset Anthony Zamora (Pasig City) and Jerome Locson (Cebu City).

Local developers and practitioners who were present during the event to deliver their talk live were; Gener Cerna of Ateneo de Zamboanga University (Moodle Administrator and contributor), Rizalino Reyes of Pilar College(Network Administrator’s Open Source tools) , Lenfree Yeung of NCC Field Office (Social Engineering and Hacking), Grace Sojor of COMTECH Institute (Qt programming and cross platform development) and Erwin Olario who shared his Open Source GIS expertise.

To further enthuse the participants with the spirit of FOSS, free CDs of FOSS softwares were distributed such as Ubuntu 11.04 given by Canonical and Netbeans by Oracle. Raffle winners also won SFD shirts from Software freedom day organizers , pens from Oracle and ELearning Centre, Gadgets Magazines and all the participants were given certificate of participation.

The event was organized by ELearning Centre, an IT training provider in the city and sponsored by ZamboTimes.com and Gadgets Magazine.

Photo Journal below sponsored by ZamboTimes.com

A group photo ops during the Software Freedom Day Celebration held at e-learning building, Zamboanga City. In the photo were the enthusiastic I.T students and professionals, Event Speakers, with Instructor Yolynne Medina and Grace Sojor of COMTECH Institute - Photo by Jigs Nep.  Click the link to see more photos out of the event. Software Freedom Day 2011