site.btaSofia Tech Park Hosts 21nd Edition of "OpenFest" Software Conference in November

The 21st edition of the free software conference "OpenFest" will be held on November 4 and 5 at the John Atanasoff Hall of Sofia Tech Park, the organizers of the event announced at the BTA National Press Club on Wednesday.

"OpenFest" is the largest Bulgarian conference dedicated to open source software and free sharing of knowledge - a festival of free creativity, said Rosen Karpuzov, a volunteer in the organization of the forum. Free software is not a technology but a sense of freedom that leads us to feelings of humanity and justice. The Internet is part of this freedom and the best way to share it with others, he added.

The conference is free and without registration.

The first edition of the Forum was held in the autumn of 2003 in Sofia. Since then, the conference has been held every year during the first weekend of November. The event is organized mostly by volunteers with a core of 10 -15 people and a total staff of between 60 and 100 people. “We comply with data protection regulations and collect a minimal amount of data, so there is no information on how many people come to the conference, said Vladimir Vitkov, also a volunteer.

In the two days of the forum, about 2,000 people usually go through all the activities. The keynote programme at the OpenFest is free and open to all people who want to talk about their projects. The talks are often very short, and the shortest talk lasted 11 seconds. For young people there will be interesting workshops depending on their level of knowledge, from games for the very young to meetings and activities for advanced programming. Last year young people made levitation models and assembled robots.