Re: Update from Casablanca

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Abdulaziz Al-Arfaj <aalarfaj at gmail dot com> wrote:
> English is our language of choice and its what were most comfortable
> with, but unfortunately its not very widely understood here. Thats
> mainly why not many in the western Arab world did not get to see us
> in action.

Not sure there is much we can do there beyond looking into, again,
the need to translate into Arabic some of our static webpages (it
would have been ideal if we were able to generate .POT files of our
website to turn that into a project :-)

> Throughout the day I talked to as many people as I could. Gentlemen,
> we have a wealth of incredible talent here just waiting to be tapped
> into. Dozens of people expressed a willingness to join and help,
> however I think most of those declarations were made in the excitement
> of the moment. BUT, I have a few names here with me who seemed very
> serious. I will give a detailing of this list of names at a later time
> when I am able. I will just say right now that the bonuses we can look
> forward to include a very robust OCR program for Arabic, a font
> enthusiast/future-expert, a very hopeful applicant for our Sys admin
> position, and a volunteer who wanted to contribute to the wordlist.
> (this list is not exhaustive)

Great, let's hope they come through and stay motivated.

> At the end of the day came the awards ceremony, and the last thing I
> expected was that we would win something. Of the 4 awards given, one
> went to RMS, one to Tarik Fdil, one to Mohammed Kibdani, and the
> fourth, the Best Free Project award, went to Arabeyes. I accepted the
> trophy presented to me by RMS himself, and thanked the organizers in
> the name of all of us. I have the trophy here with me. Its quite
> pretty. Should I keep it or send it to someone so we can start our own
> awards curio cabinet?

Heheh - another first :-)  Just take a number of photos of the thing and
upload it with the rest of the collection I guess - as to where this trophy
ought to live, well I'm not sure :-)  The Smithsonian might not accept
it just yet :-)

In passing, Kebdani has a bit of history with Arabeyes; he helped out
with duali's data awhile back (check the duali project page) - so we
all know he's a very nice/helpful person.  Congratulations to all.

> I am quite pleased all in all really. I never thought there would be
> this many people (I mean DOZENS) who just wanted to shake my hand and
> have their picture taken with me, and this was all _before_ we got the
> award. I also got an invitation for Arabeyes to attend a similiar even
> which will be held in Morocco sometime in the undecided future. If it
> becomes a reality it will be a nice follow up for us, and lets hope
> that by then we will have actual men-on-the-ground in Morocco.

Heheh, you've become a bit of celebrity then :-)  Let's hope we get a
bit of reasonable notice next time around (2 days were most certainly
not enough), but it does sound like going there certainly helped us
and everyone else interested in this field from a data exchange point
of view.
 
> I also have to say I am quite impressed by how orgainzed this event
> was. I spoke with the organizers about what it took... I will tell you
> this, it is VERY possible for Arabeyes to hold an event like this
> annually or bi-annually if we wanted to. It doesnt take that much
> resources really, just a lot of work. We should discuss this in depth
> once I get back to .lb.

Yup, given time and effort almost everything is possible.  Beyond having
events, one should really consider the need and what sort of results one
would want to get once the event is over (social gatherings vs. focused
technical agendas).  All things to discuss at a later point once we get
really going.
 
> I think thats enough updates for today. I'm tired. Doesnt anybody have
> any questions for me?

Sounds like you did well - rest-up and come back home safely.

> BTW I took several dozen pictures myself, and others took pictures for
> me and promised to email them. It will be quite a photo album...

Looking forward to seeing 'em and hearing more about this and how things
can be improved further.

Salam and continue to have fun ;-)

 - Nadim


		
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