I'm Bonnie Merring from the Free Software Foundation Europe, and today I'm presenting
you packing for freedom to you.
Most of you in the room are not the target group, but I hope that you will share the news
of you packing for freedom with the target group who is between 14 to 18, so yeah.
And if this I will start, you're packing for freedom as the FSF East Programming Competition.
And yeah, what is it, what is it all about?
We have this competition where you come up with your own idea and program this idea.
This is the very unique part about it to be honest, because a lot of competitions that
you may be aware of, they propose ideas, they hand out ideas, and with us, the teenagers
come up with this idea, and this makes it very special, because there are so many great
ideas you can't believe this, because all of the students and all the people participating,
they are very creative, and they have a lot of ideas in mind, and I will come to those ideas
later, but I just wanted to prep you for this very unique competition.
The idea, everything is possible, everything, we have a lot of ground from music to very
techy and geeky ideas, the only requirement it needs to be free software, so this is basically
the whole thing that needs to be in the end, you know that this is quite complex, so we
do have this, but before we start, with the electromagnetic criteria and who are participating,
I just wanted to point out that this makes all of the programs that are assigned to this
competition, and that are submitted, are easy to use, study, share, and improve by others
as well, so this makes it also very special, sing about it that they programs that are
submitted are also around there for the next competition, and that people start getting back
to them, and they work on those, so it's also very much in this period of free software, the
teenagers as already mentioned before are between 14 and 18, they are from Europe, so it's
not a you, and they don't need to have European citizenship, so also refugees are welcome
to join us, and yeah, that's the people that are supposed to participate, and if you know
some teachers, if you know somebody to share this with please do because we are still open
for registration, and with this I will start about the concrete competition and what's actually
happening there, we have a programming phase that's first we have to register the phase then
programming and the evaluation, evaluation, prices, and awards ceremony, the programming phase
started in January, and it goes until June, so it's six months, and those six months, as I
already mentioned, they come up with their own idea, with their own project, their work on this
project, and they submitted in the end of June, I'm not sure if you can actually be
Carcourt because it's a bit awful, but you can see that your else is also easy to remember,
as already said, you can still join us, we are more than happy to still welcome people into
the onboard people, yeah, and there will be an extra one, so if this one is too late for you,
we do support those teenagers during the whole programming phase, we have monthly calls,
in which we put an input topic, and discuss this with them, there's time for questions,
and you can meet new people in the breakout rooms, friendship, friendships,
have been made through this, and yeah, it's very nice, the input topic in those monthly
video calls that we are range from free software topics to like virtualize and should I choose,
how do I make my software available, like we are get, how do I stay motivated,
because six months as you can imagine is quite a long time, especially for teenagers who also have
to focus on school, and yeah, a lot of other things in their minds, so six months is for them,
it's a huge timeframe, and it's quite a challenge also for them to stay motivated and to stay,
up to the top with their project, because sometimes they become very entangled in small problems,
as you can imagine teenagers, they are sometimes like, oh, this is a pattern that I need to
solve, and then they are really invested in this specific topic, so we try to help with this,
as well in those monthly calls, with project planning, how do I do this, how do you keep going,
when you have a drawback, for example, so we really want to support them in this kind of topic,
but we cannot offer, and what we always say to the kids then who participate,
we cannot offer programming help, because this is not our speciality, as the efforts of
EVO for legal help, we offer, as I said, programming and project management help, but programming
is something they need to figure out on their own or which other teachers, because as I said it
before, it's free software, and in this period of free software, there should be a community,
there should be more than just this one kid working on their project, it's supposed to be like
reaching out to others, it's supposed to connect with others and to, yeah, also learn what
free software is about, not only to submit their whole project in the end, yeah, that's what we do in
those monthly calls, after this input topic and the discussion, because there usually quite a lot
of questions then about the topic, like how to use, get, how to visualize institutes, et cetera,
we do the breakout rooms and in those rooms, we mix the kids up together and yeah, let them
just talk about their project for a few minutes and so they can connect with others from all over
Europe, and this is also quite a challenge, because English is the language that's needed for
this whole programming competition, but yeah, this is also very nice, then you drop in, then in
those breakout rooms, you see that I don't know, the person from Spain is talking to the person
from Portugal or from Poland, and they really connect and it's very unique about this competition
as well as how much the kids interact with each other, so this is, yeah, as I said,
for us have been made there and it's really, really nice to see those kids there, yeah, this is,
I really like those monthly calls, I don't know if it just came across, but I think they are
also something that makes this competition very fun and very much a competition that you should share
and share. And with this, yeah, I would say the most important thing is to have fun during this
whole competition and to meet other people, to learn more about free software as well and to
come up with the own project idea to realize this and in the end to get rewarded for this, and now
I will come to the evaluation, how do we evaluate those projects? But we have a jury with a lot of experts
as you can see there are a lot of people, maybe people you already know, so they are free software
project maintainers, coordinators, researchers, teachers and yeah, all of them bring their unique
history, so they have like, a speciality in LLMs or they know more about cryptographic topics,
so they really bring a lot of expertise to the jury, they look at the submitted projects
and they come up with a short list of around 12 projects and those 12 are then invited for an
interview session and yeah, in this interview session, we talk about the participant about the
project, we also come up with the idea, we basically find out how much they want to continue with
this project, how they did this project and all of those questions that are important for the
jury. Yes, and then in September, the six winners are contacted and are announced.
Yes, that's the evaluation process which takes from July to December because as you can
imagine with a lot of experts and all of them doing this in their volunteer time, it takes some time
to get all those people together in our room and to have all the projects evaluated that are
on the short list and in the end those are the prices for the winners, they are very nice, I
would say. So the first price is 4,000 euros, the second price is 2,048 and third to six,
I would love to highlight that there are three special prices, so it's not like there's the place
four fifth and six, but those are special prices that be hand out, I don't know for example for
the best young purchase event because there's at least had there's 14 to 18 and this is quite a
difference. So a 14-year-old one has a different knowledge of different understanding of programming
then an 18-year-old one and we do take this into account. So for example a special price,
we try to highlight those parts. Now about the projects, this is also my favorite part because
this is such something that I love to share how creative those kids are and it's so impressive
because when I think back what I did with 14, I would never have come up with this idea.
This is one of our youngest participants and he came up with a game engine so that others can
easily develop their own games. It's 3, it's not 3D but it's very nice idea and so I would say
complex idea and he did this in only three months because he first had a different approach and
he first started with another project and then he was like he got stuck and he could not
really do this project because he realized it's not my full heart is in this project so he came
up with a new project and that's why we also have those six months so that once you get stuck you
can come up with another project, you can do something else and he did this in order in three months
so it was quite impressive. Then we had an open radio, I don't know if you know that but sometimes
on your phone you want to have I don't know for example an alarm with a radio and all and sometimes
this is very hard with free software and heated an open radio also very nice and cool solution
and then we had the winner this was a duro plot as you can see it puts the data from a micro
controller into graphics this was a bit of a more complex project this was the winner in 2023 and
yeah it showed the data input into a graphical way he is also very much in robotics and yeah this
is more for a very complex topic then because you have life data that you need to transform and
yeah this was very impressive as well and as you can already see from all of those projects
there are a lot of things that they come up with. We also had the one guy who used entry
the printer for a smart table assistant for people that are have a disability and can't move
on their own easily so he printed a whole smart table that you can control for micro controller
and then moves around it goes to the person that's in the wheelchair or in the bad and yeah you
can put drinks in it you can put food in it and you can then also put it bring it back to the
dishwasher and yeah it's easy and it's a handy tool for people with disabilities he
3D printed a whole thing he was from Barcelona and that's how he came up with the design because it's
yeah it looks a bit like the very famous church there and those are the winners from the first round
and yeah he had a lot of ideas there and this was then the second round as you can see it changed
now we also have a batch which we do in a workshop with them that is also a very fun part
during the whole of Barcelona money so get the kids together and to your program the
batch that you can see there and this is also a very fun thing and about this I would now start
with the other money their water and money is in Brussels and in October yeah it's a weekend a full
weekend that we cover we invite the participants who's one parent to join us there and it's a
vernacular it's a one weekend full of networking meeting new people making friends ceremony plus dinner
and yeah it's very nice to be there and it's very nice to see the kids and action and to actually
meet them in person because there is a difference to meeting them in front of the laptop and then
see them in person but the most important thing is we have a lot of food you need this whole week and
nobody goes ever hungry yeah who is the person organizing this well as I already said it's the program
in competition of the free software foundation Europe and the people taking care of this whole
competition are Alex and me yeah we are guiding the kids through the whole six months
organizing the monthly calls organizing their water money and we are also
therefore questions and yeah somebody needs some more motivation if you will always try to do that
and please share the registration please share this with your colleagues kids in your
area because it is quite a hard competition we know that we try to help as much as possible
and it is a very fun thing for the kids to be in but kids tend to be perfectionists they want to
have a very perfect project in the end and otherwise if you sometimes that this is not enough and
this is something I would like to really let you know that this is always something that we try to
encourage the kids to do as to head in everything they do because it's something that it's very
yeah that's something they're doing the whole six months they've worked on the project and they
put a lot of work into it and it's something that's very nice so please share this registration
let it know a lot of others know that we are still open for registration and that we would
lock to have kids from all over Europe and not trust people with European citizenship but
everybody who is living in Europe we also have an influence so if you would like the
subscribe feel free to join us there we share a regular information about the competition
about the next programming phase and yeah about how it's going
it can see people scanning the QR code they will leave us open for a minute
and please also follow us on my side on as I already said people share this information there as well
I am now open for your questions and I hope you have some
yes please
so participation around 90 is usual so currently we have around 70 people participating already from
all over Europe sorry I forgot to repeat the question so how many people participate and how many
people actually finished the project so 90 is usually the average number we had competitions and
rounds with over 100 but yeah so it goes up throughout the year because then friends are also
joining and yeah this is something that's very nice and then finishing do you mean like how many
submit or how many projects in a state that their kids say they are finished
okay so I met around 30 to 40 submit usually so we do have a last number there but we try to make this
as accessible as possible with all the monthly calls and yeah the help that we offer
but as I said kids tend to be perfectionist and they would love to have everything perfect
before they hand something in and this is something that we are aware of but we support them as much
as we can and we are always happy to also have unfinished projects because a project is
honestly a project is never really finished you can always find something new you can always
keep on breaking on a project I don't know how you feel about this but at least that's how I
feel about a project I feel like just something that will never stop and I will always do some more so
and does yeah so please share it with your friends share it with your colleagues share it with teachers you
had or maybe teach us you know and yeah let them know that we are still for registration
yes I'm sorry my name is not I'm very interesting the one that I have a question
why the price is small and cash I have not educational things or experience why
what do you mean so the question is why is the money cash and like the cash prices I'm not an
educational experience I think it would be quite hard to come up with an educational experience
for this age difference so we have 14 year old ones some of them are so they need to be 14
in October for our ceremony when we take them so some of them are even just 13 so in this is the
difference to a person who is 18 then joining yeah I would not know of an educational program
that would cover the whole range of them and also I think it's something that motivates the kids
to be honest because this is quite a lot of money for them and yeah it's something that they really
look forward to and really want to get so yes do you have the participants who wants to
team up with each other or wants to work together yes we so the question is do we have teams yes we
do have teams we are also happy if teams join we will only invite one of the team people of the
team members to join us for their words ceremony and Brussels so even if they attend people because
then they get all of the friends in there and we encourage them to do that we cannot provide help
on team building processes so this is something they will need to do on their own and this is
something where we know that this can also need some time and some help so if you know people
that would love to join us a team please make them aware of that team building and team processes
are also a very important part of this yeah there was a question here same question about the
teams okay yeah
Germany has a high rate of joining but there are also Spanish I don't know to be honest I don't
know we reach out to a lot of schools and a lot of associations a teacher associations so there
are a lot of Spanish and a lot of German joining us there but there are also people from the Ukraine
so and there are also people from the UK or Portugal and so far we had nobody from Iceland as
as far as I can remember I would love to have that one day but yeah so I am not quite sure why
that's the case and France is also very high in the ranking yeah so but all other countries I will
say there are then there are single or like a few people so like some people from one area we also
had one from Tupan so yeah Cyprus that's called an English so there are a lot of variety
and the people joining us there yeah yes I think this is probably around the last
question oh do we have this person there also had I think they could do that and they did
support each other so like for example a person from the Netherlands who joined us for a lot of
France and who also won in the last edition he did translations for somebody else so they do that
and they can organize themselves in the matrix room and they get to know each other in a breakout
room so they do make friends but that also something of the language barrier I would say that
they building a team has not happened yet I would love to see that I think that would be really
impressive especially as they have such a different background then and they bring so many
so much knowledge than to the project so I think that might be a really really nice thing
if this would happen sadly so far this has not been the case that there has been a cross country team
but it is possible there are no there are no other eligibility criteria then that the
teenagers need to be between 14 and 18 years that's the only thing but they can happen teams they
can comment on their own yeah but did you take this into account so like a team project is
evaluated differently then a single project so it's by the surety they do take this in account and
we know down how many team members are working on this project yeah because of course a team can
build a whole other project then a single individual can yeah but that's why we have this
theory why we have those interviews and we try to make this as as life orientated for these
students as possible so this is something that we really want to have we want to support those kids
we want them to get to know about free stuff it to realize their own project idea and to
yeah come up with this idea yes just a short question oh perhaps not we have the open source software
but do you have teams or participants who want to rebuild and work on content also that they might
have the issues with copyright so that you so my question is do you have situations where you
help the participants with finding content that doesn't go against copyright if they agree
are you mean like with large large language models no if they're going to remix an art if
they're going to remix music okay so the question the question is if we do have a finding content
that is under copyright and that's and find an alternative that's in the public domain or
under CCC I would say if somebody approaches us with a question like that we might be able to
have a life in questions but this is something that I would advise them to reach out to their
teacher to be honest because this is not our expertise and if I would so doing this for
90 programs are project then this would be quite busy yeah I'm not quite sure if this is
something that's within our domain yeah okay times up I really be grateful for all the questions
thank you so much thank you for having me and it was a pleasure of letting you know what you
thanking for freedom I hope you share this with your colleagues and friends and kids in the age
and yeah I'm happy to see many more faces there and yeah many more pre-suffered projects
Thank you