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Caracas Trollparty 2006: Part 1

January 25, 2006 by jdaviescoates 7 Comments

Day 3 – Sunday 22nd Janaury 2006
After breakfast at the hotel, all the Trolls head off to to work in the SAPI offices (near Capitolio metro)

Trolls at SAPI

Erwan works on setting up the NOC. Nicod begins recycling operations, re-assembling bits old computers into more functional machines. Vale installs debian on some decent machines to be used to for multi-media. Mose and Tati work on the the Troll’s press pages and program. Julia gives me a lesson in making up ethernet cables. Daniel talks with Maria about our radio interviews the next day. Alex Main (the main who convinced Eduardo Saman to fund the Trolls) pops in to say hello. Luis Fagundes arrives from Brazil. Etc etc.

Around 8pm it transpires that we will not be able to work in the SAPI offices on Monday, that we can either work all night or leave straight away, and that there is nowhere else with connectivity we can go. This news provokes a mini-crisis of concern about how we’re going to get stuff done in time for our first planned activities. A Trollish meeting, and news that 5-6 of us would be able to work at SAPI on Monday, quickly resolved these issues.

We packed up our stuff, helped SAPI to clear the office for Monday morning, and got taken out for Arepas and beer by the SAPI Big Boss, Eduardo Saman.

Trolls eat arepas with Eduardo Saman

At dinner I had a good chat with Marc Laporte, Jason Diceman and Luis Fagundes about the pros and cons of drupal and tikiwiki. Tiki is easier for designers and developers to customise, but drupal’s (more complicated for coders to get into) architecture is more consistent. Drupal also has a better user and admin interface and better categorisation of content. Not a developer myself, I’m more impressed by the power and ease of use of drupal for end-users than by how easy it is for coders to hack into what they want. In fact, I’m so impressed with drupal’s progress over the last year that I’m working on being able to offer Bryght-powered services in partnership with The Phone Co-op in the UK. However, I have good friends in the tiki community, and I’ll be keeping a keen eye on tikiwiki developments as the community seeks to resolve tensions within the CVS admin group (something that came up again and again).

Back at the Hotel, the Trolls have a little party in room 403 🙂

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Filed Under: Uncategorised Tagged With: Activism, Activism, All stories, All stories, Caracas, Events, Events, Free Software, Latin America, Media, Media, Open Source, Open Source, Projects, Update, Venezuela

Comments

  1. sonia says

    January 29, 2006 at 9:57 am

    Heya there! Keep up the blogging – i have been linking to you and hollering about this on my blog..

    have a great time..

    Sonia

    Reply
  2. Thomas Heiser says

    January 29, 2006 at 8:17 am

    Hello mate

    Really impressed and proud of what you are doing. Nice one. Sounds amazing and like the diary. Cant wait to see the pics and the film. When are you getting back?

    See you soonish

    Baked.

    Reply
  3. Pav says

    January 29, 2006 at 2:38 pm

    hey mate can you explain to me more about what this mission is about? cheers Pav

    Reply
  4. Laura says

    January 29, 2006 at 1:38 pm

    Great stuff. I’ll post about it on my blog as well.

    Reply
  5. dave bones says

    January 29, 2006 at 7:12 pm

    great gun story! look forward to seeing the footage. Say hi to charley. wish I was over there. is it hot?

    Reply
  6. gloria says

    January 30, 2006 at 4:37 am

    Hello you,

    Glad you’re ok. All sounds very impressive – look forward to catching up properly.

    big hugs.

    Reply
  7. Eleanor says

    January 30, 2006 at 6:40 am

    Monsieur de Coates,

    You are the international man of mystery! Not sure what you’re up to exactly with the trolls but such good faces and such tall tales! What’s more you are a lanky for a troll – it may blow your cover. Try to hunch.

    Look forward to introducing you to Cecily, who will be walking soon and is a spirited little lady.

    Take care – sounds like the radar is switched on.

    yours,
    e

    Reply

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