Second ODF Plugfest: Everyone is invited!

The second ODF Plugfest will eventually take place in Orvieto (Italy) on the 2nd and 3rd of November, and I want to personally thank all people who helped to make my dream a reality. The event will be held at  the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio Di Orvieto and everyone is invited (below the original invitation).

The Hague, October 14 2009

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have the pleasure to invite you to participate in the second OpenDocument Format (ODF) Plugfest, a two day ODF Interoperability Workshop which taking place in the Italian city of Orvieto on 2 and 3 of November this year at the
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Orvieto.

The plugfest is important for several reasons. Organized by the OpenDoc Society in collaboration with the OASIS ODF Technical Committee (TC), the ODF OIC TC, the ODF Adoption TC and the Netherlands government (through the Netherlands in Open Connection Program), this second in a series (after The Hague’s this June) will bring together the key vendors and organizations implementing Open Document Format.

The point of the plugfest is to provide the necessary vendor-neutral opportunity for the impartial evaluation of ODF implementation issues. This in turn improves the quality of everyones code, reduces support costs and raises
customer satisfaction. The will and ability are there, and since June’s plugfest, we have seen significant progress among ODF implementations. The beneficiary is the user, who, because of our work, can be more assured that ODF
is truly vendor neutral.

But there is a lot of work to do – on internationalisation, accessibility and other areas. The aim for Orvieto is to provide a low-level, hands-on interoperability testing environment in which vendors and community members can fine tune the interoperability capabilities of various productivity applications and make test scenarios, recommendations, ultimately creating guidelines for implementors. The ultimate goal is to achieve full, seamless interoperability for the entire feature sets of ODF across all suppliers, platforms and supported technologies. The strength of the event is the
opportunity to work with many vendors at once.

This collaborative effort will work best with your participation; it’s crucial that all who have a stake or an interest in ODF – or simply in choosing the right set of tools for document manipulation – engage early on in the evolving
process. We hope, then, that you will send a delegation, as well as participate directly in the process. With many of the teams behind the competing productivity tools on the market attending with their lead developers, technical management, as well as their community leaders, the Plugfest‘s importance transcends the narrow remit of the technical and embraces the reality of use.

There is no fee required to participate, thanks to generous sponsorship from the city of Orvieto, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Orvieto, Centro Studi Città di Orvieto, and NLnet foundation. Special thanks to Roberto Galoppini
and Dr. Antonio Concina Stefano Mocio, mayor of Orvieto, for their time and continued support of the event. If you have any questions, need assistance or just need more details, we will gladly help you out. Please contact Fabrice Mous (fabrice.mous at opendocsociety.org) or Michiel Leenaars (michiel.leenaars at opendocsociety.org), or one of the other members of the organising committee

(*).

Would you be so kind as to inform us if you or a representative from your company plans to attend this event or not? At your request we can send you a formal letter to assist with any visa applications. Meanwhile, you can already go to the Plugfest website (http://plugtest.opendocsociety.org) to look at the results of the previous ODF Plugfest as well as the preliminary plans for the next one.

We hope to see you in Orvieto!

Regards,
on behalf of OpenDoc Society

Bert Bakker
President

————
(*) The organising committee for the second ODF Plugfest consists of:

Jeremy Allison (Google)
Peter Amstein (Microsoft)
Zaheda Bhorat (Google)
Pim Bliek (Netherlands in Open Connection)
Basil Cousins (Open Forum Europe)
Roberto Galoppini (OpenOffice.org)
Dennis Hamilton
Bart Hanssens (Fedict) – chair ODF OIC TC
Don  Harbison (IBM) – chair ODF Adoption TC
Peter Junge (Red Office)
Morten Kjaersgaard (OSL)
Michiel Leenaars (Opendoc Society)
Doug Mahugh (Microsoft)
Marino Marcich (ODF alliance)
Fabrice Mous (OpenDoc Society)
Sachiko Muto (Open Forum Europe)
Andrew Rist (Oracle)
Luis Suarez-Potts (SUN Microsystems)
Graham Taylor (Open Forum Europe)
Rob Weir (IBM) – chair ODF TC
Jan Wildeboer (Redhat)
Oliver-Rainer Wittmann (SUN Microsystems)

About the ODF Plugfest: The ODF Plugfest is a series of events bringing together implementors and stakeholders of OASIS OpenDocument Format/ISO 26300 to test standards conformance and discuss ODF implementation issues.

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