Introduction and Israel

Hi list,

I have been a lurker up until now, but as things do seem to start moving 
forward, it's time to update.

First - an introduction.

My name is Shachar (never mind the pronunciation just now, you can get 
the background at http://www.shemesh.biz/sun.html). Besides being a free 
lancer consultant (both Open Source/Linux and Networking/Security), I am 
also a board member on "Hamakor", which is an Israeli NPO for promoting 
Free and Open Source software (http://www.hamakor.org.il - most of the 
site is in Hebrew, though). I am also a Wine developer, and am in charge 
of the BiDi support there.

Last Thursday we (the NPO, with cooperation from several commercial 
bodies) a huge conference called "Go-Linux". about 1400 people attended 
(way more than any similar conference held recently). One of the 
speakers was the assistant to the general governmental financial 
supervisor in the ministry of finance. The MOF is sponsoring a project 
carried out by IBM, Sun and consulted by NetMask, of adding BiDi support 
to OpenOffice (already in build 644). He talked about several 
initiatives where we ("Hamakor") can participate, including helping 
reallocate old hardware to Linux. I got a phone number, and have been 
trying to get in touch since (so far with no success).

I will keep you posted on updates, if there are any.

          Hope this helps,

                Shachar

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Open Source integration consultant
Home page & resume - http://www.shemesh.biz/


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