MOSSCon 2013

Some of you may know me as a FLOSS and GNU/Linux enthusiast and activist since late 2009 (when I was 14) and that dealing with Free and Open Source software was always a natural outcome of my dedication and willingness to expand my knowledge and learn more about FLOSS ideology and the awesome community behind it.
You may know me as Altin, the FLOSSK guy that has been working together with his friends the last years on promoting, developing and translating Free/Libre and Open Source Software in his lovely small country – Kosovo. But this time the story takes place in Louisville, Kentucky.The city that I came in as an exchange student from Kosovo.

Folks, I wanted to share 1/4 of my great story of being an exchange student in this country, or better saying; an update on what i was working on during most of my stay here. I would like to keep it short this time as I will be blogging again after May 18th when this event is done! (That will be a more “in depth” story)

During my stay in a completely new environment with different culture, different language, different mentality, and knowing nobody, I managed to put a team together to organize the first (and looking to be very successful) Open Source Software Conference in Kentucky – MOSSCon (Midwest Open Source Software Conference).
Being still an High School student with a limited amount of time, MOSSCon is a challenge that was worth starting it and it is something that I will always be proud of. I am happy to have initiated and leaded this conference and I am even happier  to have met all these awesome people that taught me these important steps for my career. I am glad that after I leave this country, someone will remember me of doing a good thing and I will remember that I left something good behind. A group of people that I will never forget, a group of people that will continue organizing an awesome annual conference about Free and Open Source Software in Kentucky.
MOSSCon in now on the process of being a registered 5o1[c]3, we already formed the board of directors and we are almost done with the papers and all that… I’d like to point out here something that is very important about it and motivated me even more, something that I never expected to happen, especially (in US) at this time and at this age; The board members elected me as the “board president”.

This is not over yet, the most important part of it is yet to come, and we’ll see the results on May 18th. There is still lots of work to do!
We had lots of people joining and leaving the organizing team, but MOSSCon stays a community driven conference; “By the people, for the people” as we like to say it, and all credits go to the “organizing team” which is mostly made out of KYOSS (Kentucky Open Source Software Society) and a group of enthusiasts who share the same vision that the software should be Free and Open to the community to develop and adapt it to their needs. A community of enthusiasts of all age groups that is established to promote software freedom, open source software, free culture and open knowledge, a global movement that originally started more than 25 years ago.