Contact details
Full Name : AHMED SGHAIER Nickname : Neo31 Email : AHMED dot SGHAIER at UBUNTU dot COM Personal website : http://ahmed.sghaier.com/ IRC : Neo31 at irc.freenode.net (available on ##Neo31 and #Ubuntu-TN ) Launchpad : https://launchpad.net/~neo31 Photos : IRL Events photos (some photos are down, recollecting photos in progress) VoIP : Neo31 at ekiga dot net Google+ : ahmed dot sghaier dot com Facebook : facebook dot com / neo31 Twitter : _Neo31_ Diaspora : Neo31 at joindiaspora dot com
About Me
My name is Ahmed Sghaier, also known as Neo31. I am a Tunisian technology enthusiast who followed a Master's degree in Network Security and Services as well as a Software Engineering degree. And currently seeking a good Ph.D opportunity.
The first time I have heard about the Tunisian community was in fall 2008 when I started following the community online since then.
My first contribution was in Software Freedom Day 2009 where I had my first contact with the awesome Tunisian members. And since then, my journey with Ubuntu-TN have started and I learned a lot about Ubuntu, FOSS and the community.
All than inspired to be the founder with Anis El-Acheche the first FLOSS club in our university. As well as we have supported the opening of other FLOSS clubs in other universities.
During the following years we have supported the opening of other FLOSS clubs in other universities.
I have been approved as a FreedomFighter member of Ubuntu-TN community in the beginning of 2010 and joined the management committee board in 2011.
During 2012 I was following the activities with our LoCo contact offering assistance when possible. And later, in 2013 I have been approved to take LoCo contact responsibilities for Ubuntu-TN.
On the other hand, I am currently the secretary general of the NGO CLibre promoting FLOSS and open data.
Personal Linux Experience
I have first tried GNU/Linux in 2002 (Knoppix, Live Suse, Fedora Core and Mandrake 8), than it has become my primary operating system since fall 2005 as Mandriva and Fedora 7 came out.
At the same time, I have experienced with my first Ubuntu distribution and I have become interested in the distribution as I became more involved with Ubuntu-TN community in the beginning of 2009.
As my knowledge about GNU, FLOSS and Linux have grown, I have tested many Linux distributions along with some BSD and UNIX distributions.
But currently, I am still loyal to Fedora and Ubuntu as my main PC distributions.
Contributions
Since I have joined Ubuntu-TN I had the chance to learn a lot from the community and especially about the community. I first started giving back to the community the favor of learning, before things get reversed as I got used to community contribution. Even if I am always learning from our community now I am always giving every thing in every way possible that helps our community.
Briefly, it became my second family.
Events : Conferences, workshops, install parties and others
Most Ubuntu-TN events are listed on our Events page. You can find events details, reports, photos and blog links on that page. Our monthly report may sometimes contain further details or information.
Following are 25+ IRL events I have contributed to, either as a speaker in conferences, workshop trainer and presenter, assistant, organizer, coordinator or a combination of these.
During these events I have worked with members of Ubuntu-TN community and sometimes with members of other FLOSS communities, organizations, universities and clubs. I am very thankful to everyone who contributed to these events in any way possible.
2013
- Ubuntu Global Jam 13.03 (three days)
- Opening of the event and presenting Ubuntu Global Jam and the different activities to new members
- Packaging Trainer
- Packaging contributor
Ubuntu and free software day at Science Palace of Monastir 13.05 - Conferences day and install party of Ubuntu and FLOSS - Ubuntu and FLOSS conference
- Discussion with the public about Ubuntu and FLOSS, answering questions and encouraging the public to convert to Ubuntu and FLOSS
- Helping the main organisers of the event, taking pictures...
- Translation workshop assistant and contributor
2012
- Ubuntu Global Jam 12.03 (three days)
- Co-coordination and organisation of the event
- Ubuntu and FLOSS conference
- Packaging co-trainer
- Workshop assistant
- Contributor in other workshops
- Taking pictures...
TIME Private University of Tunis - Ubuntu conferences day and install party - Ubuntu and FLOSS economic models conference
- Install party Students assistance
Richard Mathew Stallman conference at Science Palace of Monastir - Organising and preparing for the event
TEDx Sousse 12.03 - Enterprenership, social networks and technologies : Ubuntu-TN conference - Simple participation, taking photos..
IRL National Ubuntu-TN meeting at Hackerspace Tunis - National meeting to discuss community progress and main issues - Organising the meeting
Opening event and install party for ISIMUX club - Linux and free software club at the Higher Insistute for Computer Science and Mathematics of Monastir - Supporting club founders during preparation for the opening event and for an Ubuntu-TN event day
- Assisting club founders with a short conference
- Discussing Ubuntu and FLOSS with students
- Supporting students during install party
Software Freedom Day 2012 in cooperation with Science Palace of Monastir - National FLOSS community conference - Ubuntu and FLOSS conference
2011
- Ubuntu Global Jam 11.09 (three days, more than 30 members) - The first UGJ for Ubuntu-TN, introducing five contribution activities to the local team (Training and contribution activites : translation, testing and upgrade, bug triagging, packaging, documentation)
- Coordinator and organiser of the first UGJ in Tunisia
- Speaker, Trainer and coordinator for the bug triagging and packaging workshops
- Sticker design
- Sponsoring
Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technologies of Sousse - --- Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technologies of Sousse - ... Opening event of FreeMind FLOSS club at the Higher Institute for Computer Science and Communication Techniques of Hammam Sousse - Opening event for a local club at the Institute introducing Ubuntu conferences and install party - Founding local FLOSS club
- Coordinating and organising opening club event
- Install party trainer
- Taking pictures...
Software Freedom Day 11.09 - National FLOSS community conference - Ubuntu-TN community conference : speaking of Ubuntu-TN community experience
- Organization on Ubuntu-TN part
- Sponsoring a bus to bring community members and audience from Sousse to Sfax
- Talking to public at Ubuntu-TN workshop stand, taking pictures...
National Engineering School of Gabes (Two days) - Opening event of the FLOSS club at the engineering school, in this event we followed an intensive conference and training days - Ubuntu and FLOSS conference
- Install party and Virtualization workshop
IRL National Ubuntu-TN meeting - Urgent national meeting to recreate a new management commitee - Coordinating meeting organization
- Restructuring Ubuntu-TN
- Supporting new management commitee members
2010
- SIB 2010 Yearly national computer expo of Tunis (four days) - Participation in the national yearly computer expo of Tunis with a stand for FLOSS communities and clubs
- Preparation of FLOSS stand at the expo
- Assisting new Ubuntu-TN members
- Introducing and converting the public to Ubuntu and FLOSS
- Distribution of CDs
Open Source, leader of new technologies - Organized by JCI Kalaa Kébira & JCI El Mourouj at Science City of Tunis. - Ubuntu conference : presenting Ubuntu and FLOSS
- Ubuntu workshop : Practical introduction to Ubuntu and distribution of CDs
Higher Institute for Computer Science of Mahdia - Ubuntu conferences day and install party for students - NetBeans and Java development under Ubuntu, conference
- Install party, student assistance
Higher Institute for Computer Science and Mathematics of Monastir - Ubuntu conferences day and install party for students - Virtualization technologies conference
- Install party, students assistance
Software Freedom Day 2010 Sfax & National Engineering School of Sfax Migration (two days) - Ubuntu community, IEEE student branch and FLOSS companies - Participation in SFD, taking photos, blogging and writing report
- Supporting Engineering School technicians, writing deployment scripts of Ubuntu
Private Polytechnic School of Sousse - Ubuntu conferences day and install party for students - Coordinator of the organization and preparation of the event
- Install party, students assistance
Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technologies of Sousse - Ubuntu conferences day and install party for students - Writing report, taking pictures
- Install party, students assistance
IRL National Ubuntu-TN meeting at Tunis - Introducing a new type of event for Ubuntu-TN members - Participation in meeting preparation
- Participation in the meeting, discussing Ubuntu-TN issues, finding solutions and action plans
2009
- Software Freedom Day 2009 / Cité des Sciences de Tunis - Participation in the yearly national Software Freedom Day where FLOSS communities and clubs meet to present conferences and workshops to the public.
- Ubuntu and KDE introduction Workshop : The goal of this workshop was to demonstrate practical advantages of Ubuntu and FOSS operating systems to the public and to help new users convert to Ubuntu.
- Taking photos, distribution of CDs and staying at Ubuntu-TN Stand
Other contributions
My contributions vary from IRL events, but I also started with respected contributions over IRC, ML, forums, blogs, and other mediums. I have also done many individual contributions when possible outside Ubuntu-TN. I have assisted many Ubuntu users, prepared conferences and classrooms, assisted IRC classroom trainers, helped keeping organized IRC meetings, shot photos, designed logos and posters, administrated social networking mediums, IRC channel and recently became an administrator of our launchpad groups and ML...
IRC
- IRC operator - Updating IRC channel topics, next meetings and classrooms announcements, keeping order on the channel and abusing users out. Meeting president - Organizing IRC meetings and keeping order during meetings. IRC community support - Providing support to Ubuntu users on our local Ubuntu-TN channel Classroom assistant - Keeping order during IRC classrooms, assisting IRC trainer and making sure attendees are following the trainer with no problems (technical or non technical) (assisting in LVM and packaging classrooms...)
Reporting and Blogging
- Wiki updates - Event preparation, event reports, uploading photos, other... LoCo directory updates - Updating LoCo dir with new important events etc... Personal blog - Blogging about few Ubuntu-TN events
Quick events and contributions
- Ubuntu Flash Coffee - Meeting IRL with Ubuntu-TN members Random - Printing, transporting of Ubuntu promotion material and Ubuntu-TN stuff. Shipping and dealing with authorities - Receive some loco packs, deal with authorities and some leagal papers...
Other
- Design contributions and suggestions for other designs - Designing few posters, and first Ubuntu Global Jam sticker Ubuntu-TN website development - Coordinating efforts for developing Ubuntu-TN website, helping in website development, hosting and domain administration Creating conference presentations - Creating presentations for Ubuntu-TN conferences Assisting non Ubuntu users migrate to Ubuntu
Future Goals
- Join the MOTU team - In progress, currently working on packaging and other development skills Get an Ubuntu Phone and become an Ubuntu Touch developer - In progress Join Ubuntu Planet - Blog about Ubuntu-TN and other Ubuntu news, work more on publications and documentation Make a partnership between Ubuntu-TN and CLibre NGO - This will help Ubuntu-TN as a community to overcome legal recognition by the Tunisian state and on the other hand it will help CLibre promoting FLOSS in Tunisia and getting community support Collaborate with international LoCo teams and help un-approved LoCo teams Reach a much younger public even in primary schools if possible Improve Ubuntu-TN performance and integrate new active members
Testimonials
- Neo is one of the most active member in our LoCo Team. he organized/participated to the almost all of our last three years events. He help many people on ML and IRC and he is doing a hard job to promote the use of ubuntu, and to provide a first support to ubuntu user. He's our LoCo Contact and he's doing his best to enlarge our community. Cheers Neo
- MaWaLe, 30-06-2013.
Neo was the first member to know in ubuntu-tn community , he encourage me to join it and he is not just a community friend but one of my few IRL friends , he is a hard worker and a big opensource lover, we shared a great geeky moments in events that we organized in ubutnu community. he helped a lot of people.and am sure he will contribute more and more. - Manel Lamine, 30-06-2013.
After the first wave of the founding members of the Ubuntu Tunisia community, Ahmed is one of the most remarkable members of the second wave. Active, present in most of FOSS activities in Tunisia and always smiling. He, with a group of young people, are giving a boost to our community. His election as the LoCo contact demonstrates confidence that gives him the community. I highly recommend his approval as an Ubuntu member. - Nizar Kerkeni, former LoCo contact, 01-07-2013.
Il n'est pas facile d'être activiste du Logiciel Libre, du monde GNU/Linux, et d'Ubuntu en Afrique du Nord sans connaître Neo, un personnage incontournable, qui répond toujours présent pour les logiciels libres, Neo s'investit de toute son énergie, son âme, et ses connaissances, afin de faire connaître, d'aider, d'améliorer, et de faire découvrir Ubuntu. - Omar Sadeg, Ubuntu Algérie LoCo Admin, 02-07-2013.
Ahmed is an active member in our Loco team. I worked with him in many project and he was a person who I can count on him. He was elected unanimosly as the new LoCo contact. I highly recommend his approval as an Ubuntu member. - Zied ALAYA, former LoCo contact, 03-07-2013.
Neo is one of the most active members in ubuntu-tn. I worked with him in a lot of events during last years and his contribution was impressive. I highly recommend his approval as an Ubuntu member. - Abdelmonam Kouka, 04-07-2013.
Neo is one of the most active members in ubuntu-tn,who encouraged me to join the community and to use the Free and Open-Source Software.I worked with him in a lot of events during 2 years I highly recommend his approval as an Ubuntu member. - Hammouda Mariam, 04-07-2013.
If you know me and have something nice to say, please leave a comment here - Please do not remove this template testimonial. - name, dd-mm-yyyy.