Around 150 participants from the academe, local government units, non-government organizations, and small-to-medium enterprises participated in the 1st North Luzon Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) Conference held at the University of Baguio (UB) in the Philippines on 18-19 January 2010.
Dr. Filemon A. Uriarte, Jr., ASEAN Foundation Executive Director, delivered the keynote address underscoring the importance of ASEAN awareness and identity through the use of ICTs especially among the youth. Also present were UB Board Chairman Prof. Dhanna Kerina B. Rodas together with other university officials along with International Open Source Network (IOSN) ASEAN+3 Programme Manager Dr. Francisco E. Sarmiento III. Baguio City Mayor Reinaldo A. Bautista, Jr. extended his warm welcome to the guests and participants.
The two-day conference aimed at providing an avenue for resource sharing and collaboration among different institutions on F/OSS technologies and its diverse applications. The delegates participated in three F/OSS-themed tracks focused on different job levels in an organization delivered through lectures, discussions and hands-on laboratory sessions.
One of the highlights of the conference was the ASEAN Quest Game competition among 32 high school students from Northern Luzon in the Philippines. The ASEAN Quest Game is an interactive computer game developed by the ASEAN Foundation to promote ASEAN awareness and identity among the youth. Considered as a first in the ASEAN Quest's competition history, the game software which was originally developed to run in proprietary Windows platform, was successfully ported to Ubuntu (a popular Linux distribution) using Wine, a translation layer (a program loader) which is capable of running Windows applications on Linux. Among 16 high school teams, the Baguio City National High School garnered first place while Easter College landed second, and Pines City National High School-Magsaysay Annex, got third. This initiative demonstrated the potentials of using free/open source software in providing more opportunities to further increase ICT accessibility for the youth especially those coming from marginal areas in the ASEAN region.
The conference was co-organized by the International Open Source Network (IOSN) ASEAN+3 in cooperation with the Philippine Society of Information Technology Educators (PSITE), the Philippine Open Source Network (POSNET) and Baguio Association of Private and Technical Institutions (BAPTI).
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