Cutting edge creative tools meet free culture

May 10-13, Ecole Polytechnique Engineering School

Programmers and artists from around the world are headed to Montreal for the 6th annual Libre Graphics Meeting in May. The Libre Graphics Meeting is an annual gathering for the users and developers of free and open source creative software: artistic tools that are free for anyone to use and modify. LGM gives software developers, artists, musicians, designers and other creative professionals the opportunity to collaborate, share their work and learn from each other.

A Preview

Every year, Libre Graphics Meeting focuses on individual and group interaction, emphasizing free media and the software that produces it. This year's attendees can expect a similar format that will include workshops, presentations, demonstrations, and birds-of-a-feather (BOF) sessions. Leading up to the conference, special lab sessions bring developers and artists face-to-face to make improvements in creative software. Gaps can form when developers and their users don't meet face to face; LGM gives artists and educators a voice in the building of their tools. Both content creators and developers will present, bringing a diverse community together to advance the technologies and strategies of high-quality free creative software.

Submit a talk!

LGM's strength comes from the presenters who talk about their work and inspire others by sharing their experiences, techniques, and best practices. Whether you are a developer, an artist, or an enthusiast, you can be a part of this year's event by sharing your story and your work.

The LGM community wants to hear your proposal for a session. Submit your idea any time between now and April 1, 2011 by visiting http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/Conference_2011/Submit_Talk

Topics of interest include: development of the applications, color standards and color management, designer and developer collaboration, web services, workflow, exchange between floss and artists, power-user techniques, and graphics business best practices.

• Proposals should have a title
• Describe your proposal in at most two paragraphs
• Include a short bio & contact informations
• Include any special technical setup you require other than radio-microphone, beamer, laser pointer, computer, network
• Talks are 30 minutes including Q&A and setup.
• Lightning talks are 5 minutes
• Tell us if you have specific date & time constraint to present your talk
• Tell us if your trip to LGM is already sponsored or if you need help from LGM to get to Montreal. In the last case, please evaluate your needs (cost of economy plane ticket for the round trip, for instance).

Help keep LGM free

Libre Graphics Meeting is an invaluable meeting ground for industry leaders and end users alike. It has also been free of charge since the very beginning -- but as the open source community continues to expand, attendance keeps increasing.

Your support is a vital means for the continued success of LGM, whether you are a readers, an attendee, or simply a fan of free graphics software. Click here to make a donation: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/14610

Highlights from LGM 2010

Last year's Libre Graphics Meeting, the fifth since the project's inception, took place in Brussels and was highlighted by important work on open color management systems and data interchange formats. The vector graphics standard file format, SVG, headlined many of the the discussions and interaction that took place, as it has become an integral element in communicating freely created content through websites and printed pieces. All major projects represented at LGM 2010 -- Scribus, Gimp, Inkscape, and Open Font Library -- spent time planning activities for the months and years ahead. Other hot topics in presentations and discussions included Blender, Krita, Open Web Graphics and Services, Python, Rawstudio, and many more.

Continuing with the success of recent LGM incarnations, more attention was given to the rising numbers of professional graphics users and youth attendees. In fact, of the 51 sessions held during the 4 day extravaganza, 20 were given by creative professionals. Specific workshops were organized to engage students from art and design schools around the world. [http://lwn.net/Articles/390572/ Nathan Willis] writes of one such event:

''Denis Jacquerye, widely known from his work with the DejaVu fonts, discussed font design and features for African languages, encouraging the community to build more such fonts.''

About the Libre Graphics Meeting

The Libre Graphics Meeting exists to unite and accelerate the efforts behind Free, Libre and Open Source creative software. Organised by volunteers from the international Libre Graphics Community since 2006, this annual meeting is the premiere conference for developers, users and supporters of projects such as GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/), Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/), Blender (http://www.blender.org/), Krita (http://koffice.org/krita/), Scribus (http://www.scribus.net/), Hugin (http://hugin.sourceforge.net/), the Open Clipart Library (http://www.openclipart.org/), and the Open Font Library (http://www.openfontlibrary.org/). At LGM, teams gather to work on interoperability, shared standards, and new ideas. Work at prior LGMs has pushed the state of the art in important areas such as color management, cross-application sharing of assets, and common formats.

For More Information

For more information, visit http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org

Get involved by joining the Create mailinglist (http://create.freedesktop.org) or propose a talk via http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/Conference_2011/Submit_Talk

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''LGM 2011 is hosted by the [http://create.freedesktop.org Libre Graphics Community] and Polytechnique''

Press Contact

• Sponsoring Organization: Libre Graphics Meeting and Create Project.
• Contact: Jon Phillips
• Contact email: jon@fabricatorz.com
• Phone (USA): +1.415.830.3884
• Website: http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/
• Pledgie campaign: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/14610
• Photos: http://ur1.ca/a34y

Organization Contact

• Contact: Louis Desjardins
• Contact email: louis.desjardins@gmail.com
• Phone (MONTREAL): +1.514.994.9351

Totally inspired from seeing this great little short by Jakub Szypulka about our favorite conference that help put on, Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM), coming May 10-13, 2011 to Montreal.

Reclaim your tools. from Jake on Vimeo.

The Libre Graphics Meeting 2010.

A film by Jakub Szypulka

From the Create Project Mailing List, where LGM project is coordinated like many other plans and specs, Jakub said:

Hey guys,

I just finished editing "Reclaim your tools", a short film about the
Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 in Brussels.

Here is the link: http://vimeo.com/18568225

All the filming and editing as well as the music was done by myself.
The movie is just some two and a half minutes, but I believe it might
be a useful marketing tool for LGM.

What I'm especially proud of is that everything you can see was done a
HUNDRED PERCENT using opensource software! (minus camera firmware I
suppose, haha)

Feel free to share the movie where ever you want! The only thing I'm
asking for is that you include my name.

As I count film-making to graphics, I feel that open source video
editing software should be a part of the LGM conference. Thus, I'd be
more than happy to have a short talk about the film at the next LGM. I
would present my workflow as well as point out areas where improvement
is possible (and sometimes really necessary) compared to closed
source, commercial software, which I've been using for a longer time.
What do you guys think about that?

I really hope you'll enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed making it!
Can't wait to hear your comments!

Jakub Szypulka

Totally inspirational Jakub! We at Fabricatorz will be ramping up our involvement towards the conference, especially since we love Montreal, Status.Net, have Fab affiliate CelineCelines there, and want to put on some really great Sharism-based events on this year!

Make sure to put LGM2011 on your calendar and join us at the Create Project to get involved deeper.

San Francisco and Brussels, Thursday 15 April 2010 - Libre Graphics Meeting is an annual working conference for the free software graphics application community. Developers from the full spectrum of graphics applications -- image editors, photography, 3-D and 2-D animation, vector art, graphic design, typography - collaborate with each other on interoperability, push the state of the art in application functionality and user experience, and get important face-to-face interaction with users.

LGM 2010 will take place between May 27 and 30th at De Pianofabriek in Brussels, Belgium. Developers from GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, Krita, Scribus, Hugin, the Open Clipart Library, the Open Font Library, and other open source projects are scheduled to appear. Technical talks will showcase new work in digital asset management, natural-media simulation, and internationalized font design. The program will also emphasize real-world usage of open source graphics software in professional publishing houses, multimedia production, and both the secondary education and art school classroom. Developers, users, or community members who would like to give a talk at LGM 2010 are encouraged to submit a proposal by following the instructions at http://libregraphicsmeeting.org. The deadline for submissions is May 1.

Attendance at LGM is free for developers and users alike - so the conference counts on the generosity of the open source graphics community to help underwrite the costs of putting on the conference and to help make it possible for individual open source developers to attend. This year the LGM team launched a fundraising campaign called
10by10by10 to raise $10,000 USD from grants, $10K from corporations and $10K from the community. The funds raised from granting organizations, public, and corporate partners will allow participants who have no other means of sponsoring their travel to Brussels to attend the event.

The public sector in Belgium and the EU has been tremendously supportive of LGM, and has already exceeded its 10,000 dollar goal. However, some of the grant money donated is for specific tools, such as providing simultaneous language translation of the talks, and thus cannot be put towards the goal of allowing every developer who wants to attend to be there in person.

Please make a donation to the community fundraising campaign at: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/8926 - and help a free graphics software developer benefit from the in-person collaboration at this year's LGM.

Community donations have already raised $3,020 - help us make the total by May 1st. Any amount, no matter how small, is helpful; many developers in Europe need only a small stipend for rail travel to make the trip a possibility. All donations are tax deductible for US taxpayers. For larger donations from corporations and individuals, contact us directly at lgm@gnome.org

For more information about LGM 2010, previous years' meetings, and the Create Project that organizes the workshop, please visit http://libregraphicsmeeting.org

Press Contacts

Nathan Willis
nwillis@glyphography.com

Jon Phillips
jon@fabricatorz.com
+1.510.499.0894

For the last four years, the Inkscape, Scribus, Gimp, Blender, Krita, Open Clip Art Library, Open Font Library and other Free and Open Source Graphics communities have come together to make an annual developer and users conference. The Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) is an annual workshop for developers and users of free software graphics applications to collaborate and advance the cause of high-quality free graphics software. The fourth annual LGM will be held May 27 - 30, 2010 in Brussels.

We are seeking sponsorship in a campaign we are calling "10 by 10 by 10" which will allow us to put on this event. We have already raised $10K from Flemish Ministry for Culture, Youth, Sports and Media for government sponsorship and are trying to raise at least another $10K from corporations, and another $10K from the global community. Sponsorship will be used to provide travel subsidies to the developers who work on Free and Open Source Graphics projects around the world, often for free in their spare time and to help offset the cost of assembling the top developers and users of free and open source graphics software to make it better. LGM is THE annual meeting they need to coordinate their efforts towards better applications and better integration between applications. For most teams, LGM is the only moment these people will be able to talk between eyes. It’s not only important, it’s crucial work.

For 2010, we are providing sponsorship levels which we hope you will consider:

Platinum (Greater than 10K $USD)
Your company logo and link on each page of the website: http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2010
Once sponsorship received, will be thanked in email communications and press releases
Special Press Release to announce support together
Special dinner with all LGM Organizing Committee Members if representative attends the conference

Gold (10K $USD)
Your company logo and link on each page of the website: http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2010
Once sponsorship received, will be thanked in email communications and press releases
Special dinner with all LGM Organizing Committee Members if representative attends the conference

Silver (5K $USD)
Your company logo and link on sponsors page of the website
Thanked in a sponsorship announcement release
Bronze (3K $USD)
Your company logo and link on sponsors page of the website

And, if you or your company want to contribute under $3K, we hope you will consider personally or through your organization to contribute to the community fundraising campaign we kicked off a month ago. Pledges can be made online at Pledgie.com. Visit http://pledgie.com/campaigns/8926 to make a contribution. All donations are tax deductible for US taxpayers since the Gnome Foundation is graciously hosting our donations.

For our community fundraising campaign we have raised approximately $2,500.00 USD towards our goal of $10K with 42 supporters in about a month. It is still tough to raise funds this year, but we are encouraged by the responses received. We are tenacious in our efforts to put this conference on for the benefit of all. In addition to the community campaign, we are asking you and your organization to contribute towards our goal of $10K from large donors and other organizations. We hope that you and/or your company will help sponsor Libre Graphics Meeting 2010.

With the growing, but still tough economy, many companies, governments and people are turning to Free and Open Source Software. We are committed to improving Free and Open Source Graphics and getting more people to use the software we, including you and your organization, make together.

About Libre Graphics Meeting
For four years, the Libre Graphics Meeting has been the premiere conference for developers, users and supporters of free software graphics applications. Developers from projects such as GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, Krita, Scribus, Hugin, the Open Clipart Library, and the Open Font Library gather to work on interoperability, shared standards, and new ideas. Work at prior LGMs has pushed the state of the art in important areas such as color management, cross-application sharing of brushes and other assets, and common formats.

The face-to-face meetings and opportunities for collaboration are important to developers, and LGM offers plenty for end users as well. Tutorials, talks, and birds-of-a-feather (BOF) meetings to help free software users get the most out of their applications fill out the LGM schedule, and demonstrations from artists showcase what is possible.
For more information, visit http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org/