Dear Cologne-List,
Once again, it is this time of the year! We have almost jumped into 2024, and ‘I Love Free Software Day 2024’ is fast approaching.
Over the last years, ‘I Love Free Software Day’ has become quite a tradition for us, as well as for many other Free Software communities out there. It is heart-warming to see how ‘I Love Free Software Day’ has evolved over the past years and how it became a special day for the Free Software community, specially its contributors.
Celebrating ‘I Love Free Software Day’ encourages us to stay motivated and to continue working, together, on achieving software freedom. It creates a lovely and welcoming Free Software community that appreciates its contributors and their effort, that values the thoughts of the community, and that believes in the power of collaboration and contribution. Together, we can create welcoming, friendly and motivating Free Software communities that share our love for Free Software. We can do this by simply saying “Thank you” to each other.
Join us and be part of ‘I Love Free Software Day 2024: Forging the future with Free Software’!
How can you participate?
As last year, we want to support you our, local groups, in organising ‘I Love Free Software Day’ events across Europe. Ideally those events should take place on 14 February, but any closer date to that day is also possible. If you need some budget for Pizza or non-alcoholic drinks please reach out to me via e-mail: bonnie@fsfe.org
On ‘I Love Free Software Day 2024: Forging the future with Free Software’ our focus is the younger generations. Therefore, we ask you to organise a meeting that includes them under the slogan “Forging the future with Free Software”.
Here are some ideas for ‘I Love Free Software Day 2024: Forging the future with Free Software’:
• Talk to your local youth club and organise a Free Software information day with them • Talk to your local library and ask if they would be interested in organising a reading of “Ada & Zangemann” or other Free Software books • Reach out to your local hackerspace (https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces) and ask them to organise an event together, like a workshop for writing your first line of code in python, C++, (but please do not choose Java as this would take ages to write just one line ;) ) or a PGP-Key signing party, or a Linux-Distributions information event • …and many more possibilities!
If you want to participate but you want us to help with the first out reach, please do not hesitate to contact either Tommi (in CC) or myself. I have in the past worked together with hackerspaces and public administrations so I at least have some experience in those cases.
For all of you who want to celebrate online we have our sharepic-generator (https://sharepic.fsfe.org/#ilovefs). Create a personalised thank you image and share it via social media.
And last but not least: share your love for a Free Software project in a more personal way, while using our I Love Free Software postcards (https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.en.html#ilovefs)
Let us support those around us and let us create a wonderful ‘I Love Free Software Day 2024’ together!
Best, Tommi and Bonnie