OSCAL (Open Source Conference Albania) is the first annual conference in Albania organized to promote software freedom, open source software, free culture and open knowledge, a global movement that originally started more than 25 years ago. I have attended Oscal conferences since the beginning, except last year and I am very glad that I didn’t miss Oscal 2017. The Conference took place at 13 & 14 May 2017 in Tirana and gathered free libre open source technology users, developers, academics, governmental agencies and people who share the idea that software should be free and open ; that knowledge is a communal property and free and open to everyone. Oscal’s mission is to educate Albanian youth, and not only, on Free and Open Source Software, its ideology and the great community behind it.

Oscal 2017. Credits : Andis Rado.CC-BY-SA 4.0

The conference is supported and organized by Open Labs , the community that promotes free libre open source culture in Albania since 2012. The conference itself was well-organized, with multiple tracks of talks, workshops and of course infobooths.I attended some interesting talks and workshops and met new people and old friends, folks of open source, geeks and nerds. I wanted to mention something else thing that makes OSCAL special and it the fact that male/female ratio seems to be the inverse of what you usually see in these kind of conferences. There are girls everywhere: infobooths, speakers and visitors. GREAT, huh? There were also some cool and funny posters ( albanian idioms and opensource jokes). I LOVED THEM! Can’t wait for the next Oscal!!