ODF plugfest
Towards real world interoperability.
Past experience has shown developers and technical management from larger and smaller vendors as well as community leaders have valued the chance to attend and work on real world interoperability.

7th ODF plugfest in Gouda

Concerns: ODF Plugfest

September 14th 2011, The Hague

Dear sir, madam,

We have the pleasure to invite you to participate in the 7th ODF Plugfest, a two day interoperability event on Thursday 17 and Friday 18 November 2011 at the historical city hall of Gouda, the Netherlands.

OpenDoc Society, the Dutch ODF government usergroup and the Netherlands government (through the Netherlands in Open Connection programme) bring together key vendors and organizations implementing the Open Document Format. This plugfest is important for several reasons. Plugfests provide both vendors and implementing organisatons knowledge and experience on the details of ODF and available software systems supporting this standard. Previous Plugfests have proven to be a useful instrument for vendors to evaluate the interoperability between each other's product in a private setting. This helps vendors improve their product, interoperability and in the end, customer satisfaction.

At this plugfest in Gouda, additional attention will be given to suppliers of auxiliary ODF-supporting products and services important to government customers, such as document generators and document management/record management systems. This gives the opportunity to broaden your and our knowledge on a larger landscape of IT while you can meet vendors with experience in Dutch government.

On Thursday two tracks will offer vendors several scenarios for creating and importing ODF documents. Sitting side by side, the compatibility of documents between applications in these scenario's can be easily checked and openly discussed in the privacy of the workshop. On Friday, a series of presentations will update you on the status of ODF, technical implications and lessons learned in implementations. You are invited to submit your own presentation.

By the end of the plugfest, vendors will be able to show their end users they worked together with partners in IT on integrating systems. Participants can meet many colleagues in this field at once, share experiences and gain knowledge.

It's essential to have all stakeholders with an interest in ODF engaged in furthering the implementation of ODF. We hope that you will send a delegation, as well as participate directly in the process. Past experience has shown developers and technical management from larger and smaller vendors as well as community leaders have valued the chance to attend and work on real world interoperability.

There is no fee required to participate, thanks to support of and collaboration by several organisations. There are still some sponsor opportunities to help make the event even more attractive..

you can enroll and find more details about the programme and previous editions on http://odfplugfest.org. Would you be so kind as to inform us if you and/or other representatives from your organisation plan to attend this event or not? If you have any questions, need assistance with a visa application, inquire about sponsor opportunities or just need more details, we will gladly help you out. Please contact Arthur Buijs (a.buijs@ opendocsociety.org) or visit: http://odfplugfest.org

We hope to see you in Gouda!

Regards,

on behalf of the Dutch government programme NOiV on behalf of OpenDoc Society on behalf of the city of Gouda and the Dutch ODF government usergroup,
Ineke Schop
Programme manager
Netherlands in Open Connection
Bert Bakker
President
OpenDoc Society
Paul Rekveld
Head IT, chair ODF gg
City of Gouda

Gouda plugfest organised and hosted by: