Last friday I attended the III Taller Internacional de Software Libre, one of the events of the Fair Informática 2005, held in Havana.

I got firstly impressed with the size of the assigned room. I thought there was pretty more than 300 people. Last year, the Taller was in a little room, with about 60 attendants.

The first talk was given by an executive of Telecom Italia, basically publicizing his company, talking about the big changes that is experimenting the Telecom Italy Network. I wonder what that talk has to do with Software Libre.

In addition, its presentation had tons of slides. While the executive where talking, “accidentally” there was a short blackout in the room (oops), he wisely said:

…“It’s a polite way to suggest I should stop, I’ll finish in two minutes.”

Then follows a talk by Roberto del Puerto, director of Oficina de Informatización de la Sociedad (INFOSOC). He talked about advances, goals and plans towards Software Libre inclusion in Cuba. Worths noting that he didn’t forget the sniny Windows XP in his laptop because he claims that:

…“The first PC INFOSOC should migrate is my laptop”.

And then, the most exciting thing, a speech by Djalma Valois. He is assesor of Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia da Informação (ITI), the dependency of the Brazilian Goverment that is heading the migration to Software Libre in Brazil.

He was in Havana not to attending the fair but the organizing committee contacted and invited him to hear the experiences Brazil have had with the migration.

The speech, was very nice, prepared in a hurry, it was basically a “Get the facts of Brazil’s migration”, that was precisely what’s supposed to be. I really like when Brazilians (last year I did hear Sergio Amadeus) talk about Software Libre, they never forget to emphazise on the social impact asociated with the sharing of knowledge as the main advantage of the migration, over the economical and technical advantages.

It was enjoyable too that the organizing committee scheduled an hour for question and answers with Valois. Someone in the public give his best impressions and gratitude for Kurumin. Someone from PDVSA asked Valois for advises about official supporting. There was questions about costs, business model and so.

And then, lunch.

To be continued…