Sunday, September 26, 2004
Astricon 2004 was an amazing conference held in Atlanta last week. I was fortunate enough to be there and witness the birth of a Linux software that is poised to revolutionize the world of enterprise telecommunications: the Asterisk open source PBX.
What made this event exceptional was the vibrant enthusiasm of the 450 attendees, all prepared to devote their time and use their vast experience to make Asterisk a solution that will mark the end of the supremacy of Avaya, Nortel and other legacy PBX vendors. Compared to the regular “brainwash” commercial conferences, Astricon was a breath of fresh air.
Open source software is very much alive in Mexico (to my surprise, and relief). After all, Mexico boasts some famous open source developers, like Miguel de Icaza who created the popular GNOME desktop environment. Likewise, there are several active open source associations in Mexico.
Mexico City’s government decided in 2001 to mandate the use of open source software. However, to date this decision is only making slow inroads in the capital’s government offices, hindered by a fear to adopt “unsupported” software with no “brand name” vendor backing it.
Never mind, my company will try harder to bring Asterisk to Mexican private businesses and government entities. Open source is the right solution to fight the capital drain represented by hard currency software acquisitions benefiting vendors like Microsoft. Besides, open source fosters local development of software, a topic dear to my heart.
There were around a dozen Mexican participants in Astricon. Most of them stayed in the Marriott hotel where the event took place, while I opted for the Sierra Suites located next to the Brookhaven MARTA station. I highly recommend this hotel for its friendly staff and excellent location.
Posted by Serge @ 11:22 PM MEX [Link]
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Tonight, a simple but emotional movie made me realize a characteristic of Mexico that I viscerally felt for years but couldn’t name until now: here is a country whose nobility and majesty have vanished in the fog of a distant past, a society both uninspired and uninspiring.
Back to the movie, tigers are such beautiful creatures that they make me doubt whether we deserve our place at the top of the food chain. As a somewhat evolved ape, I can’t help feeling awed by the natural elegance of tigers, and wonder how my distant ancestors escaped finishing on the menu of these big cats.
Jean Jacques Annaud in Two Brothers filmed an eloquent denunciation of our relentless extermination of tigers, a mere 5000 survivors populating our planet today. The suffocating stench of fast food omnipresent in Mexican movie theaters did not detract me from enjoying the spectacle of the two tiger cubs playfully discovering the world, drawing my tears at many occasions during the film.
Hollywood movies are designed as an escape-hatch from the dull reality of daily life. Some achieve the “tour de force” of being truly inspirational. However, in present day Mexico, what role models exist for the younger generations? Vicente Fox or “El Hombre Araña”?
Everywhere I look, I see poverty standing next to shameless luxury, both built atop the ruins of a once proud civilization. My Mexican business partner likes to say that “Mexican technology” is an oxymoron. I would go as far as to write that “Mexico’s glory” is a topic belonging to a paleontology class.
First world societies are said to lack an ideal and a moral. Granted! Yet their social inertia is nothing compared to Mexico’s. In London, the proud monuments of a lost Empire not two centuries old co-exist with buildings housing modern icons of finance, publishing, etc. Britain re-invented itself in half a century. How many more years until Mexico crawls out of its dark ages?
Exceptional British personalities in sciences (e.g. Stephen Hawking), politics (e.g. Winston Churchill), sports (e.g. Sebastian Coe), etc. were the spearheads of this phenomenal re-birth. They were the produces of a vibrant society that deserves my admiration (it is worth noting that I’m not British by birth, hence I cannot be accused of blindly embracing the Union Jack).
One of my critics wrote that my failure in this country is due to my lack of humility. I would argue that the failure of Mexico is rooted in the absence of justified pride in its leaders, whom themselves are a reflection of a society unable to rise above the shoulders of its glorious forefathers. Living in Mexico is facing a daily struggle against mediocrity – there are no Bengal Tigers in the land of the tacos.
