Libre Graphics Meeting 2007 Montréal, Québec, Canada 4-6 May – École Polytechnique de Montréal

The Conference

Projects

Libre Graphics Meeting 2007 (LGM), a conference for developers and artists of leading open source graphics software, will bring together the top open source graphics application development teams, along with artists and print production users.

LGM will take place at the Ecole Polytechnique from the 4th to the 6th of May 2007 and will be of interest to end-users, students of graphic design, editors, pre-press staff, printers and institutional archivists.

What distinguishes Libre Graphics applications is that they are created with and developed exclusively on a base of open document formats and open source software. Proprietary formats from most commercial graphics applications used daily in the print world create a host of problems for end users and companies. Such problems include imperfect compatibility among operating system platforms and difficulty upgrading from older versions of files to newer versions, as well as the cost of licensing applications.

These difficulties affect everyone in the print production workflow, from creators and editors to pre-press production workers. "In 2007, one can easily read a text that was written in the Middle Ages, but one can also count on encountering difficulties opening a file saved 20 years ago on a computer," noted Louis Desjardins, director and owner of a service bureau and printing company in Montreal.

The challenges in solving these issues are technological, social, economic and political. LGM is the ideal place to come and learn the latest on these subjects and other related topics.

FLOSS (Free libre open source software) is now mature enough that one can use it in real world production. As part of LGM, end users will give presentations to demonstrate the many ways in which they are using open source graphics applications to simplify their workflow. In addition, development teams will show their latest technology throughout LGM.

Just as Open Office competes with MS Office, today, FLOSS graphics applications, such as GIMP, Krita and Scribus, are becoming attractive alternatives to well known proprietary graphics applications.

Among the presenters will be:

  1. Bassam Kurdali, producer of Elephant's Dream, created entirely via open source applications such as Blender - the leading 3D application.
  2. Peter Linnell, a pre-press IT consultant and author of the Scribus documentation, will present the latest professional features added to Scribus.
  3. Cedric Gemy, author of "GIMP Efficace" and a graphics professor, will give several short talks including why graphic artists should consider using open source software.
  4. Louis Suarez-Potts from Open Office.org will address Open Document and the importance of open document formats.
  5. Alain Boucher from the Bibliotheque et Archives Nationales du Quebec will address issues with archiving electronic documents.
  6. Raphael Meltz, editor and publisher of Le Tigre, the first national newspaper published entirely with open source applications, will present on his experiences and successes.

The organizers of LGM would be pleased to arrange interviews, for print and electronic journalists, with these and other speakers at the conference.