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• I tried to reserve the conference website name when I was in vacation to Romania, on .com, .org, .net and .ro; unfortunately I couldn’t do it there. When I turned back and tried, Liberatica.com and Liberatica.ro was reserved. Hmmm, surprise? Laurentiu Buzdugan pointed me to this article…
• Of course I was upset, but I had a moment of ispiration and I picked up a new name, very close to the original one and more meaningful. We are going to announce it when all the legal papers will be settled, this time.
• Agora people are preparing the legal papers that will stipulate the conference and ROSI status.
• I finished a draft presenting the initiative and the conference (Conference Manifesto).
• Mircea is going to polish it and give it a nice shape – he is a professional in the field.
• Two of the newest ROSI members, Adriana and Madalina Nan (right, they are sisters, actually twins) are going to prepare a pdf document presenting Brasov city and Romania for the out of the country guests
• I set up the hosting for the conference website – a single one, on .ro (the rest of org, net, com are going to point to .ro )
• Ionut finished the graphic logo for ROSI (we are going to publish it soon, right now we are waiting for ROSI members comments)
• Stefan and a friend of him (a graphic artist) designed the first draft for the conference logo and probably is going to be ready till next week
• I’m also working on the conference website. There will be two phases; first time we are going to set a single page and we are going to promoting it. In the meantime, we are going to prepare a CMS that will hold the full conference website.
• Boris and Roland from Bryght promised us hosting for ROSI website; we are still working on the structure of this site. Probably we are going to focus on it only after finishing the conference website.
• Cristian  (from linux360.ro) integrated my blog into their planet (http://planet.linux360.ro/). Thank you Cristian!
• Last but not least, Alex started to blog and spread the word about the conference. The same is doing Zak and Carmen. And this is only the beginning

The bottom line, we are doing well and we are on the schedule.

A BarCamp event is going to have place in Vancouver this summer.
I decided to participate there and represent the Romanian Open Source and Free Software Initiative (ROSI). Would be a great chance for us to make new friends, promote our initiative and spread the word about Liberatica conference in this part of the world.
I’ll keep you updated about this.

More information provided by Darren Barefoot on this post: Vancouver Gets BarCamptastic.

————- Romanian version ———————

Vancouverul va fi gazda unui eveniment BarCamp in aceasta vara.
Am decis sa particip si sa reprezint ROSI (Romanian Open Source and Free Software Initiative) la acest eveniment. Va fi o sansa unica de a ne face noi prieteni, a promova initiativa noastra si raspandi vorba despre Liberatica in aceasta parte a lumii.
Va voi tine la curent.

Mai multe informatii sunt prezentate de Darren Barefoot in acest post: Vancouver Gets BarCamptastic.

I promised to myself when I’ll have time to post some of the pictures taken in my vacation in Romania.
I hope that my Canadian friends will have the chance to discover themselves the mystical beauty of these places.

I’ll start with one of the dearest places to me, Rasnov , my hometown.
I uploaded some photos with Rasnov citadel on my vacation Flickr set.

Some things that you don’t know about Rasnov citadel (”Cetatea Rasnov” in Romanian) is that a few years ago, an Italian entrepreneur take it in concession for 50 years. He done a great job there, rebuilding it, so right now it looks almost identical how it was hundreds of years ago.
You can visit the halls and dungeons, you can look at ancient weapons, throw a coin in the citadel fountain (143 meters deep, where the legend says it took more than 15 years to dig), take a look on the beautiful surrounding landscape and finally, you can rest for a cold beer on the rustic patio that is inside the citadel inner court.
When I was a kid, we use to spend days in between those old walls and ruins. I remember how fascinating was. And still remains.

By the way, the citadel was used in many movies. “Nemuritorii” (”The Immortals”) for example, who has one of the best soundtrack for a Romanian film made before 1989 signed by Phoenix, a legendary Romanian band of the ’70s.

Also, in Rasnov county was shot Cold Mountain a few years ago.
So if you wonder where are located that breathtaking landscapes, now you know.

Ok, I think that is time to reveal some details as far as serious Romanian bloggers start to talk about it (see Alex Brie post )

There is an effervescent activity on ROSI  Basecamp hosted project.
We got a lot of new members – important Romanian IT personalities and enthusiasts, and now the group has more than 35 members.
In the last month, when I spent my vacation in Romania, we had a few important achievements; first of all, we shake the hand with Agora Media - one of the biggest IT media groups in Romania - and they become our partner in setting up this conference. I have met personally with Mr. Romulus Maier, general manager head at Agora Media and we had a very proficient conversation. I the same time I met Mircea Sarbu (from IntraWeb Software), one of the most interesting people, big hart, and great soul – thank you for all Mircea!
I also met ROSI group members that are settled in Brasov spending a good time together .
In the same period, Stefan Petre introduced me to Dan Panturu (form Antique Design) and Remus Cazacu (from Bit Software). Both of them became ROSI members, their companies being interested in participating and help the conference.
On the other hand, turning back in Vancouver, I met Zak and together with the rest of the group we established the battle plan for the next period.

On short, right now Agora is setting the legal papers for the conference and the group. ROSI start to prepare the structure for the two websites future implementation (rosi.ro and Liberatica.ro, net, org, com), the logos and the content. It is a huge amount of work for a short time – we intend to publish both websites till the end of August.

Ah, something that you would be interested; right now we are preparing an invitation list with personalities belonging to Mozilla, MySQL, PHP, FSF and more.

We are thinking this conference is going to be a special one, something different from any other happened till now in Romania. And this is because of the Romanian enthusiasm met in the country, the participation and involvement of the ROSI group members and the encouraging of other people like Bogomil Shopov and Yovko Lambrev (the initiators of Bulgarian Web Tech conference) and most of all, because of Zak Greant, the person without this initiative wouldn’t have to many chances to succeed.
I also wish to say special thanks to Carmen Holotescu and Filip, who take the initiative and spread the word on their blogs about this initiative a long time before.

I don’t want to name here all ROSI group members yet. They will have a special place in the conference website and you can meet them on rosi.ro future site too.  But they are special people and I wish to say thank you to all of them; without you, this amazing thing, this great initiative couldn’t happen.

We are back in Vancouver!

It is strange; I didn’t know actually how much I missed this town. But I start already to miss Romania too… That is, you can not have both in the same time. At least if Canada was in Europe… or Romania in North America… Probably in that case I wouldn’t be here

After this great vacation I loaded my “battery” and I’m ready for the next steps. Next steps in my life, next steps with ROSI and the conference; I feel great!

It was so good in Romania and we was so very good impressed about a lot of things there that I decided to post in the next period - as far as my time will permit - some images from our vacation.

So, lot’s of images will come soon!