1. Helping to achieve real-world interoperability
OpenDoc Society
Helping to achieve real-world interoperability

2. OpenDoc Society
Launched on October 24th 2007 by minister of Foreign Trade Frank Heemskerk (EZ) and Patrick Durusau (editor ODF, chair V1-committee)
Supported by over sixty companies, government bodies, associations, cultural and scientific institutions, foundations, open source projects
We have members all over the world

3. How we are organised
Model proven by the Internet world (cf. Internet Society), applied on best practices for office productivity and open formats like ODF and PDF
Member based associated
Headed by a nine person non-remunerated board
Different subgroups
Working groups for accessibility, educational materials, municipalities, metadata (and ideas for many more such as mass deployment, tools, templates and scripting, archiving, etc.
Special Interest Groups

4. Why are we there
To bring together knowledge, experience, best practices and people throughout the entire ecosystem around office applications (including open document formats like ODF and PDF) :
users
Vendors of tools and libraries
governments
education
ICT-vendors
Individuals that want to dive into the technology or the usage

5. Share knowledge
Many countries need a network of experts that understand the unique capabilities of open documents
Everyone has a limited perspective so that we can learn about other disciplines and domains: science, law, legislation, technical and commercial
OpenDoc Society is about collaboration, learning from each other and building a netwerk of experts.

6. Users have a choice
Open standards (ODF, PDF) as the default for exchanging documents will allow a large variety of needs, situations and usage:
commercial Office suites
open source and online editors
embedded hardware (e.g. phones)
server- / batch tools
Let the best product win!

7. Approach
Breed knowledge on open formats in society at large by means of:
Bringing people together
Developers (e.g. Plugfests)
End users (working groups)
Online information
a directory of tools and technology providers that can help you
Test suites
Online services
Officeshots.org
Recipes.opendocsociety.org

8. And in addition workshops, tutorials and masterclasses Manuals
a newsletter that keeps you up to date
In short: lower thresholds.

9. Helping to achieve real-world interoperability
7th ODF Plugfest
Helping to achieve real-world interoperability
“a technical interoperability event where suppliers sit side by side to test how their products work together, in order to iron out any different interpretations of (parts of the) technical specifications that power their software.”

10. That means you!

11. “In making ODF support compulsory, the Netherlands can rightly be called a forerunner. This workshop is [..] the place to share knowledge with each other. ODF applications must have the right degree of interoperability.”
Frank Heemskerk Netherlands Minister for Foreign Trade

12. "Plugfests provide provide a neutral venue for implementors (commercial and open source), along with standards and policy experts, to work together to improve the interoperability of ODF applications. Without interoperability, standards are just pieces of paper. So Plugfests help bring the benefits of open standards closer to the users"
Rob Weir, chair ODF TC

13. “a fascinating event that brought together ODF implementers from many countries to talk about the issues and collaborate on interoperability testing”
Doug Mahugh, senior project manager for Office interoperability Microsoft

14. ODF PlugFest helps even small companies and individual developers who have limited resources to focus their activities on important issues. Lots of inspiring ideas and a great learning experience.
Jakub Ondrusek, Comsultia (SK)

15. ODF plugfests
Royal Library June 15/16, 2009, The Hague (The Netherlands)
Fondazione Cassa Risparmio Orvieto November 2/3 2009, Orvieto (Italy)
University of Granada April 15-17th 2010, Granada (Spain)
Belgian Federal Government October 14-15th 2010, Brussels (Belgium)
Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead February 24-25th 2011, RBWaM (UK)
Bundesmin. des Innern / für Wirtschaft und Technologie. July 14-15th 2011, RBWaM (UK)

16. Slides courtesy of Doug Mahugh, Microsoft

19. Say cheese ;)
7th plugfest will be held November 17-18th 2011 in The Netherlands
Hosted by the Netherlands in Open Connection and OpenDoc Society
Organised in the city of Gouda

20. You are warmly invited What will be new
Combined with a dedicated ODF developer event for auxiliary vendors and integrators that deliver to NL government
Already commitment from several large vendors with products doing:
Document generation
Document management/mid office
Record management
You are warmly invited