I'm out front here.
So hello and welcome to our talk.
You're packing for freedom.
The FSF is program competition.
I'm Bonnie Mary and today I'm here with Sophia.
Hello, I am Sophia.
And I'm your packing for freedom alone.
I am currently part of the youth packing for freedom jury.
And I'm also currently working at the Free Software Foundation Europe.
Yes.
And so am I. I'm Bonnie Mary.
And together with my colleague Alexander Sander.
I'm taking care of the youth packing for freedom.
Coviding competition for the software for the Free Software Foundation Europe.
And I accompany this competition throughout the year.
And yeah, I'm very happy to introduce it to you.
So what is your packing for freedom actually?
Well, youth packing for freedom is the programming competition obviously,
but it is unique.
So it's a programming competition like you have not seen before.
How and why?
Well, because you can design your own program and your own idea.
So there are like many ideas.
And you've probably noted some of you have done different projects.
And all those ideas come together.
And they are all realized under the hood of you packing for freedom.
This is very unique and you won't find anything else like this.
I'm very sorry to say already.
Most of you in the room do not fit our age gap.
It's been fought into 18 years.
But please share this information.
Share this information about this programming competition.
With others around you, with people that you know that teach teenagers and all.
So stay in the room to find out more what you're packing for freedom is.
And then share it afterwards.
The only condition in the end is between day.
And you need to be eligible for the criteria to participate.
The projects must be free software.
So this is the only condition we have with free software.
We mean everybody is allowed to use study share and improve the software in the end.
Now I'm with the part where most people are like really.
Okay, this is not interesting for me, but it is.
As I said, please share the information with people.
You know who fit our age gap between 14 to 18 years.
They need to be firm Europe.
So not use the Switzerland and Norway are also happy to participate.
And also other European countries.
And they do not need to hold citizenship.
I just want to point this out very strongly.
It's not about citizenship.
It's about living in Europe.
So you need to be somewhere in Europe.
And that's basically the criteria of who can participate.
Then I have to say that this competition is not possible without those who support us.
If you are willing to support us as well.
Please come to us, talk to us, switch out to us.
So far, we have trucks, mugs, zoosa, msauce network, and color bar office.
Who are there and who make this competition all possible with autumn and would not be.
And now I'm handing over to my wonderful colleagues of year.
Thank you very much.
So now let's get into the nitty gritty of this wonderful competition, right?
So you are someone who wants to join you in hacking for freedom or no someone.
I want to get an idea of how this looks.
So first of all, see everything.
We need to register.
So you can scan this to our call, take a picture,
or you can also go to your hacking for freedom.org slash register to your hacking for freedom.
Now the largest part of the competition is the programming phase,
where the largest part is the programming phase,
which runs from January until June.
So the programming phase of these years,
it has already started, but late registrations are possible throughout the whole programming phase.
So if you are still doubting whether to join or not, don't worry.
You can join at any time.
You can join one day before the deadline and submit something,
but we will heavily encourage everyone who is thinking about joining.
To join, even if they still don't have a project idea or if there's still doubting what they're going to do
if they even want to participate, because we also run monthly video calls,
where we discuss certain topics.
So for example, there's an introduction to get.
There's an introduction to licensing.
There's this kind of topics.
And there's some time for questions where you can ask how these things work.
So for example, where is free software?
We give an introduction, where is free software?
People can ask them the participants, their thoughts or any questions they might have.
And they also have the opportunity to discuss their ideas with their peers,
to meet new people, in breakout rooms and everything.
Which is very nice when you're actually there thinking of ideas.
And you can hear from others, give feedback, it's very nice.
And moreover, we also support participants by providing information about how to stay motivated
through the programming phase, how to manage your projects.
Also, if you have any questions about licensing.
So for example, I had a question about linking between AGPL and another license.
So I sent an email and they quickly replied with the information I needed to clear up everything.
And also, you can ask any general questions for things that go more in-depth into the technical details.
We encourage people, so for example, if you have a mathematical project,
then it's better to ask your math teacher than to contact us.
Can only encourage us to ask yourself.
Yeah.
But the most important part of everything is to have fun, to enjoy programming, to enjoy playing with your ideas,
get feedback from other people, learning every month in these calls, and that's the most wonderful part.
And now I will give it back to Bonnie.
Once the participants passed those six months and have the project ready and handed it in and submitted it for evaluation,
the sureee will take a look at the project.
We have many sureee members.
That's due because we get a lot of variety in the projects as well.
As you can imagine, if you come up with your own idea,
we have hardware projects.
We have projects that are more mathematically.
We have projects that involve software and robots and everything.
So it's like crazy variety.
We need a lot of people that can look into this and that can evaluate it.
So we have for example, also cryptidare, who is like heavily with cryptography,
and who knows a lot about us.
We have class knopper from the knopper system.
And yeah, some people who are work of algorithms, as this is also getting more favorite with the kids.
And so this is the sureee members and the group that is evaluating.
They are all really kind.
So don't worry, they won't be any mean people.
And eventually, after they look at all the projects they evaluated,
then we contact the winners in September.
We also notified those who haven't won.
And we notified them with feedback.
I find it's very important because this also gives you feedback in for freedom.
The value that we provide to feedback so I can improve on it.
And I do have an example for this.
So for example, the sureee takes into account eight criteria.
One of them is documentation.
Because we believe it's not only important that you have code that compiles,
but also documentation that the idea is created, that the idea has an impact, et cetera.
On all of those criteria, we provide the feedback.
And once we had a participant who did a hardware project and documentation was lacking,
nobody could rebuild, there's nobody had an idea of what he did in the end.
And we provided the feedback.
Oh, please think about documentation for the next time.
It came back the next year.
And the documentation was the most awesome thing I ever saw.
It was like a full PDF with pictures of explanation on everything.
And it was like really thorough.
And you can really see how the teenagers take the feedback into account
and how they profit by it.
Also for later life.
Because I'm sure there are some software developers among you.
And you probably know how hard it is to keep up with documentation,
but also how important it is.
So just something that they can benefit from.
And yeah, that's really nice.
As well as when we contact the ones that are not among the winners.
And yeah, giving them the feedback and getting in this interaction there as well.
So it's benefit as well.
But now for the most fun part that all of us think is the best thing about it.
There are prizes.
So if you know anybody who is among this age gap.
If they are among the winners, they can win up to 4,096 year.
Second prize is then 248.
The third is 1,024.
And then we have three special prizes.
Those special prizes are each year.
Yeah, decided by the jury on what to give.
So for example, if there are a lot of games,
they won't hand out three prizes to games most likely.
But then we do the best game, for example.
So this can be a special prize.
If there's some really young person, we can hand out the prize to the youngest participant.
If there's somebody, once had one from the Ukraine,
from a very son, they do have different problems.
And we in daily life.
And we handed out a special prize there because we said,
this person really submitted something.
And really went through the full six months despite all the things happening there.
And we wanted to recognize this.
And that's why the jury can also decide upon three special prizes.
The projects that have one of our very different,
very, very briefly go over them.
And we have, for example, once a game,
mentioned by a really young participant was just 14.
We had an open radio.
We had somebody who was like,
oh, I work with microcontrollers.
I want to have a graphical interface.
And he programmed this by himself.
And yeah, it was really challenging for him.
He had different challenges throughout the six months.
But he went through.
And it looked really nice.
And yeah, it was grounding.
So yeah, this was really cool.
And we had once somebody who did a robot that was like,
that you could control for microcontroller,
for somebody in a wheelchair.
And this can bring them water, or, for example,
can carry the plates through the dishwasher.
And also, it's like, also,
persons that taste the detergent or the teenagers face around
and that they want to solve.
Want to follow their interest, obviously.
Yeah.
So then, in the end, when they are invited,
or among the six winners, they are invited to Brussels.
And there's, what's our money taking place?
It's an October.
It's a full week.
And there's networking, meeting new people.
We have a workshop where you can solve there.
And think around with LEDs.
So three fun.
And then we have the ceremony and dinner.
And don't forget, we have loads of food.
During this whole ceremony, there's loads of food.
And nobody will stay hungry in the end.
Yeah.
I always find that this is very important.
So please let others know if you know somebody who's
eligible or if you know it, each a youth club,
hex space in your town.
Share the news about you checking for freedom.
It's a really fun and cool program and competition.
And we are happy to have teenagers participating.
Yeah.
You can also follow us on Maserdan.
And, of course, you can support us as we are charity.
And rely on support from the public to stay in the penant.
Yes.
Thank you very much.
We have two minutes.
And.
Sorry seconds.
Thank you very much.
Do you have any questions?
Hi.
Thank you for the presentation.
I was wondering if you have any regulations
regarding vape coding?
Yes, we do.
So.
We will not follow up on like if they are doing vape coding.
We accept the project, but if they are selected
on the short list, so the show will draw up a short list,
based on the eight criteria and say those 12 projects
are really amazing.
And they will do interviews.
And be expect that you will know what the project does.
Like in detail.
So you can use it.
You can understand what it does.
Then fine.
Yeah.
And we also.
Like we encourage everybody to get air free help.
They can because in free software, we believe in community
and we believe that it's important to reach out to others
and to ask for help if you don't know something.
Yes.
I hope this answers the question.
Thank you for this presentation.
How do you deal with languages?
Because you can't expect everybody to speak English, I guess.
We do expect that people will have a bit of understanding of English.
We try our best in the interviews to match with the language
because we have this broad jury.
We have several people who speak several other languages in this jury as well.
So we have French, we have Portuguese and Spanish obviously.
And other languages as well.
So we try our best to match them.
And yeah, otherwise we are also happy to take this into account.
It's not that we will not follow through.
And we mainly communicate with the teenagers through email.
And we have the monthly calls.
But we are also happy to have there.
And if there is a language barrier, we are more than happy to help out.
However, it is a European by programming competition.
And we cannot speak all the languages that are around there.
Sadly, I would love to.
Do we have any more questions?
We also have only 10 seconds left.
Yes.
I think that's it then.
Thank you very much.
You can find us in the closing case if you have more questions.