The Fabricatorz recently capped off an exciting and eventful week at the 6th annual Libre Graphics Meeting, in Montreal. The 4-day Conference was packed with developers and users of free software including Inkscape, Scribus, Gimp, Blender, DeviantArt, and many more. Developer Brad Phillips closed out the Day One talks with a guide to making our unique avatars, as well as announcing the Release of Open Clip Art Library 3.0.

As the talks rolled into Day Two, Christopher Adams revealed the highly-anticipated, refreshed Open Font Library, to much adulation.

The hits kept coming through Day Four, when Fabricatorz Founder, Jon Phillips, unveiled the Milkymist video synthesizer, alongside a vision of an open hardware future for LGM.

The Fabricatorz want to send out a big thanks to all involved in organizing and hosting events for this year's Libre Graphics Meeting. More great events and Releases lay ahead, as we look forward to the rest of 2011!

We Fabricatorz working hard to bring the world the best Libre Graphics Meeting ever! We have big releases planned, several core Fabricatorz will be speaking, and newest Fabricator CelineCelines is organizing the night events including one big Fabricatorz party. LGM2011 May 10-13 in Montreal is the place to be!

Please submit a presentation before April 20! Go register yourself now! And, if you use and support Free and Open Source Graphics, Multimedia and Creativity, please become a sponsor! Individuals please donate to our community campaign. We still have a ways to go and really need your help! Fabricatorz are pouring ourselves into LGM this year and we need you there there.

Cutting edge creative tools meet free culture

May 10-13, Ecole Polytechnique Engineering School

Programmers and artists from around the world are headed to Montreal for the 6th annual Libre Graphics Meeting in May. The Libre Graphics Meeting is an annual gathering for the users and developers of free and open source creative software: artistic tools that are free for anyone to use and modify. LGM gives software developers, artists, musicians, designers and other creative professionals the opportunity to collaborate, share their work and learn from each other.

A Preview

Every year, Libre Graphics Meeting focuses on individual and group interaction, emphasizing free media and the software that produces it. This year's attendees can expect a similar format that will include workshops, presentations, demonstrations, and birds-of-a-feather (BOF) sessions. Leading up to the conference, special lab sessions bring developers and artists face-to-face to make improvements in creative software. Gaps can form when developers and their users don't meet face to face; LGM gives artists and educators a voice in the building of their tools. Both content creators and developers will present, bringing a diverse community together to advance the technologies and strategies of high-quality free creative software.

Submit a talk!

LGM's strength comes from the presenters who talk about their work and inspire others by sharing their experiences, techniques, and best practices. Whether you are a developer, an artist, or an enthusiast, you can be a part of this year's event by sharing your story and your work.

The LGM community wants to hear your proposal for a session. Submit your idea any time between now and April 1, 2011 by visiting http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/Conference_2011/Submit_Talk

Topics of interest include: development of the applications, color standards and color management, designer and developer collaboration, web services, workflow, exchange between floss and artists, power-user techniques, and graphics business best practices.

• Proposals should have a title
• Describe your proposal in at most two paragraphs
• Include a short bio & contact informations
• Include any special technical setup you require other than radio-microphone, beamer, laser pointer, computer, network
• Talks are 30 minutes including Q&A and setup.
• Lightning talks are 5 minutes
• Tell us if you have specific date & time constraint to present your talk
• Tell us if your trip to LGM is already sponsored or if you need help from LGM to get to Montreal. In the last case, please evaluate your needs (cost of economy plane ticket for the round trip, for instance).

Help keep LGM free

Libre Graphics Meeting is an invaluable meeting ground for industry leaders and end users alike. It has also been free of charge since the very beginning -- but as the open source community continues to expand, attendance keeps increasing.

Your support is a vital means for the continued success of LGM, whether you are a readers, an attendee, or simply a fan of free graphics software. Click here to make a donation: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/14610

Highlights from LGM 2010

Last year's Libre Graphics Meeting, the fifth since the project's inception, took place in Brussels and was highlighted by important work on open color management systems and data interchange formats. The vector graphics standard file format, SVG, headlined many of the the discussions and interaction that took place, as it has become an integral element in communicating freely created content through websites and printed pieces. All major projects represented at LGM 2010 -- Scribus, Gimp, Inkscape, and Open Font Library -- spent time planning activities for the months and years ahead. Other hot topics in presentations and discussions included Blender, Krita, Open Web Graphics and Services, Python, Rawstudio, and many more.

Continuing with the success of recent LGM incarnations, more attention was given to the rising numbers of professional graphics users and youth attendees. In fact, of the 51 sessions held during the 4 day extravaganza, 20 were given by creative professionals. Specific workshops were organized to engage students from art and design schools around the world. [http://lwn.net/Articles/390572/ Nathan Willis] writes of one such event:

''Denis Jacquerye, widely known from his work with the DejaVu fonts, discussed font design and features for African languages, encouraging the community to build more such fonts.''

About the Libre Graphics Meeting

The Libre Graphics Meeting exists to unite and accelerate the efforts behind Free, Libre and Open Source creative software. Organised by volunteers from the international Libre Graphics Community since 2006, this annual meeting is the premiere conference for developers, users and supporters of projects such as GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/), Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/), Blender (http://www.blender.org/), Krita (http://koffice.org/krita/), Scribus (http://www.scribus.net/), Hugin (http://hugin.sourceforge.net/), the Open Clipart Library (http://www.openclipart.org/), and the Open Font Library (http://www.openfontlibrary.org/). At LGM, teams gather to work on interoperability, shared standards, and new ideas. Work at prior LGMs has pushed the state of the art in important areas such as color management, cross-application sharing of assets, and common formats.

For More Information

For more information, visit http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org

Get involved by joining the Create mailinglist (http://create.freedesktop.org) or propose a talk via http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/Conference_2011/Submit_Talk

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''LGM 2011 is hosted by the [http://create.freedesktop.org Libre Graphics Community] and Polytechnique''

Press Contact

• Sponsoring Organization: Libre Graphics Meeting and Create Project.
• Contact: Jon Phillips
• Contact email: jon@fabricatorz.com
• Phone (USA): +1.415.830.3884
• Website: http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/
• Pledgie campaign: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/14610
• Photos: http://ur1.ca/a34y

Organization Contact

• Contact: Louis Desjardins
• Contact email: louis.desjardins@gmail.com
• Phone (MONTREAL): +1.514.994.9351

Totally inspired from seeing this great little short by Jakub Szypulka about our favorite conference that help put on, Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM), coming May 10-13, 2011 to Montreal.

Reclaim your tools. from Jake on Vimeo.

The Libre Graphics Meeting 2010.

A film by Jakub Szypulka

From the Create Project Mailing List, where LGM project is coordinated like many other plans and specs, Jakub said:

Hey guys,

I just finished editing "Reclaim your tools", a short film about the
Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 in Brussels.

Here is the link: http://vimeo.com/18568225

All the filming and editing as well as the music was done by myself.
The movie is just some two and a half minutes, but I believe it might
be a useful marketing tool for LGM.

What I'm especially proud of is that everything you can see was done a
HUNDRED PERCENT using opensource software! (minus camera firmware I
suppose, haha)

Feel free to share the movie where ever you want! The only thing I'm
asking for is that you include my name.

As I count film-making to graphics, I feel that open source video
editing software should be a part of the LGM conference. Thus, I'd be
more than happy to have a short talk about the film at the next LGM. I
would present my workflow as well as point out areas where improvement
is possible (and sometimes really necessary) compared to closed
source, commercial software, which I've been using for a longer time.
What do you guys think about that?

I really hope you'll enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed making it!
Can't wait to hear your comments!

Jakub Szypulka

Totally inspirational Jakub! We at Fabricatorz will be ramping up our involvement towards the conference, especially since we love Montreal, Status.Net, have Fab affiliate CelineCelines there, and want to put on some really great Sharism-based events on this year!

Make sure to put LGM2011 on your calendar and join us at the Create Project to get involved deeper.

For Immediate Release:

Libre Graphics Meeting announces the immediate availability of the full schedule of talks, workshops, demo sessions, and birds-of-a-feather meetings (BOFs) for LGM 2010, to be held at De Pianofabriek in Brussels, Belgium, May 27-30.

As it has for the past five years, LGM 2010's planned sessions include status reports from the major components of the open source graphics suite: the Gimp, Krita, Inkscape, Blender, Scribus, the Open Clip Art Library, and the Open Font Library. Talks include cross-application collaboration topics such as color standards and fonts, and support for critical file formats ranging from SVG vector graphics to AutoCAD DWG.

LGM 2010 will also put real-world application of open source graphics on the agenda, including several talks from professional graphic designers, print publishers, educators, typographers, and professional design mentors.
In addition to the main program track, teams will host hands-on workshops demoing Blender, Scribus, Phatch, Inkscape, and type-design. BOFs are scheduled around OpenRaster, swatch formats, fonts, and color management, as well as team meetings for the Gimp and Blender projects and professional graphic designers.

This year's LGM will mark the debut of new releases from Inkscape, sK1, LittleCMS, Open Font Library, and the premiere screening of the trailer for the Blender Foundation's Project Durian animated movie, Sintel.

To Read the Full Press Release see here