Dear friends,

We only have few days left until the first word will be spoke at eLiberatica.We have managed to finalize the schedule.
You can see the complete one, on our website, at http://eLiberatica.ro/2007/eliberatica-schedule

Please note, the guest registrations will begin at 8.00 on Friday 18th May at Aro Palace Hotel, Brasov. Please try to register on time, it is important to stick to the schedule.

You will be a part of, we hope, the best event in IT in Romania this year. For those who didn't yet bought a ticket, the registration can be made at Brasov, from 8.00-8:30 on Friday.

For us, this is it. We will publish opinions, photos and stories from there to our website after the conference.

We are waiting for you at Brasov and hoping you'll have the best time there.

Dear friends,

As you might have noticed, under the Sessions and Workshops section ,we have listed the subjects that our keynote speakers will cover in their presentations at eLiberatica. You will notice that we decided that a part of the keynote speakers to give two speeches each.
We hope you will be as much enchanted as we are of their availability of discussing with the audience, so that every question you might have to find answers.

We also remind you that until the 1^st of May you can register for199 euro, afterwards the price being 249 euros for the BCT (Basic Conference Ticket).

We are waiting for your questions regarding the conference.

We hope everyone of you will be present at Brasov in the 18^th and 19^th of May, there will surely be moments we will all remember.

28^th February 2007 is the last day when you still can buy the special discounted ticket at eLiberatica – 40% off for Basic Conference Ticket.

You can find more details under eLiberatica Registration section:
http://www.eliberatica.ro/2007/eliberatica-registration

The registration is opened under Agora website:
http://www.agora.ro/eliberatica/

We remember you that eLiberatica will be held in the spring of 2007, on 18^th-19^th May at Braşov, Romania and some of the most prominent IT international personalities will present there.

More details about the speakers and reasons to attend this event can be found under eLiberatica Why Attend section:
http://www.eliberatica.ro/2007/eliberatica-why-attend

We are looking forward to see you at Brasov. We are sure you are not going to forget this event!

Starting this month, you can pay for your participation at the eLiberatica conference by debit or credit card, thanks to the electronic payment system setup by the ePayment company.

In addition, you can benefit from major discounts on your conference ticket(s) by registering and paying for your options before the end of February. Up until February 28th, you are able to take advantage of a 100 Euro discount for Basic Conference Tickets, paying only 149 instead of the standard 249 Euro price. At the same time students and teachers in the pre-university and university system can benefit from Discounted Conference Tickets ( 25 Euro ) by sending their application and proving appropriate documentation.

Starting today, www.eLiberatica.ro is almost complete. The last thing remaining is that you should start to communicate with us!

After around 5689 hours since the first official communication about the eLiberatica project, 3646 hours since we decided to work together, 830 emails changed, few operative meetings, some discussions on Yahoo Messenger, numberless tables with figures, some extinguished brain cells and few more extra wrinkles (for who’s counting), eLiberatica is since today a living reality.

Despite the fact that maybe in the last few months the external activity might not be noticeable, in the background, things moved with intensity.

Few public events can be mentioned although:

One of the most important events is " LOAD - Linux Open Alternative Days", which took place in Bucharest, 17^th-18t^th of October and where eLiberatica was presented by Alexandru Lăpuşan, another ROSI member. In the same month, eLiberatica was mentioned at " Linux Innovation" in Arad and "Studenţiada" in Iaşi by Dan Mutescu (also a ROSI member).

Another event, this time in Bulgaria, was "OpenFest" where eLiberatica was presented by Bogomil Shopov. We wish to highlight the remarkable support – every since the beginning of the initiative – offered by both Bulgarian FLOSS movement representatives Yovko Lambrev and Bogomil Shopov.

The month of August brought important achievements; eLiberatica manifesto was published, same with the ROSI presentation page. Agora Media published the first news about the initiative.

For the first time, eLiberatica was presented to a public IT&C international event: BarCamp – organized in Vancouver, Canada, between 25^th and 27^th of August. Lucian Savluc and Zak Greant presented the initiative and its objectives to some of the most active members of Vancouver IT community. More than 50 flyers were distributed and feedback from the public was positive and enthusiast. Among the ones let know about our project we can count Bruce Byfield who published information about the initiative in the famous portal NewsForge.

Both eLiberatica and ROSI have official logos!

All ROSI members brought their contribution to these ideas, but those who proved their artistic skills were Mircea Drăgoi with an excellent eLiberatica logo and Ionuţ Popa – one of the youngest members – with ROSI logo.
Another achieving this month was the purchase of rosi.ro and eliberatica.ro .com and .net domains as well as establishing the next steps in eLiberatica organizing process, the most important one being publishing a manifesto page on eLiberatica.ro and a presentation page on rosi.ro website.

In May 2006, for the first time, some of the ROSI members (Ştefan Petre, Adrian Florea, Laurenţiu Fogoroş, Leontin Bîrsan, Ciprian Alexandru and Lucian Savluc – who was in Romania for the whole month) met in Braşov and talked about future steps.

The need to attract new members, to involve companies from the country in the process and especially the necessity to find a strong, trustful partner were also brought into discussion.
After a carefully analyzing the possible options, with the help of another ROSI member (Mircea Sârbu) we were able to establish a meeting with Mr. Romulus Maier, the general manager of Agora Media.
The general feeling was that both ROSI and Agora share the same ideals: the willingness to promote new IT&C technologies and positive trends in Romania, building a connection between the Romanian IT community and the world one.

After careful consideration, we have decided to use "ROSI" as name for the movement.
We wanted that both Open Source and Free Software trends to be part of the name that came out as an abbreviation for "Romanian Open Source and Free Software Initiative" so we choose to use the shorthand of ROS(FS)I.

We also decided that " eLiberatica – The Benefits of Open & Free Technologies" will be the name of the conference. Proposed topics for the conference were subject of debate; the name is considered to be a good exponent for the essence of the event.

We pointed out the conference objectives: