privileged audience that we are!

Being part of a fairly visible non-profit software foundation like OSAF makes us privileged audience to quite some prominent speakers. Last year we had Vice President Al Gore who gave us a truly enlightening talk on Global Warming which is now made into a movie called 'An Inconvenient Truth' - a must see if environmental facts interest you. We had no media, no cameras just some 50 of us between OSAF, LPFI and Creative Commons and him. Even though most of us have heard of the alarming effect of global warning, pure statistics presented in his slides were staggering. We all came out pretty shocked at how little we are doing to fix this. Eventually something was done about it - OSAF office became the only green office in all of San Fransico city. We use only recycled products, we recycle all unused food items into compost and use vendors and restaurants who adhere to environment friendly standards. It feels quite rewarding being part of such an environment aware organization.

Next was Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. An eloquent speaker who walked us through how he founded Wikipedia and how it became the biggest free encyclopedia on the internet. He also gave us some insight on how it is a self-governing organization managed by a handful of paid employees and hundreds of dedicated volunteers.

Later part of the year we had Mayor of San Francisco city, Gavin Newsom who had come for a student fund raiser hosted by our sister organization, LPFI.

Well, with the new year only a few days away we eagerly await the new list of prominent speakers who might walk the ramp of 543 Howard Street.