Hi!

My name is Gustavo, I am in my 20’s and I am reaching you from Portugal. I am currently finishing a master’s degree in Industrial and Firm Economics and I have a bachelor degree in Bank & Insurance Management.

I found out about Ubuntu a while ago (like, 8 years ago) but I could not find use of it back then. I was too young to understand its potential and usefulness. More recently, I got tired of the Windows operative system and used the advantage that I no longer needed to work with colleagues to, finally, make the switch. Meaning that I could do my thesis in whatever software I would like. I ended up using a TeX interpreter that is also available for Windows – and it is actually more up-to-date – but I took advantage of other important things too. Nevertheless, I had a work experience in the mean time and the greatness about cloud alternatives (like Google Docs) is that it is compatible with numerous extensions. I was able (and still am) to share files to anyone – I have even helped reviewing some business plans in LibreOffice, that were written in Microsoft Office.

Switching over to Ubuntu created the opportunity to meet a lot of people from all around the world. We believe in the capabilities of open-source technologies, and that means we believe that it can be as good as other alternatives. However, it is a fact they require more autonomy from the user itself. Nonetheless, this is what makes this experiences unique – Working together towards a common objective/goal/purpose.

I met Walter and Phill , two important guys in the Lubuntu‘s community, that used my skills to improve some bits of the available information about Lubuntu. It started as a suggestion to improve our Wiki land page and they let me propose some changes to the staff. I was bothering frequently Jens that the current version back then was not readable by common people and he decided to give me an opportunity. Everybody loved it. Walter thereon used my skills and ease to get along with MoinMoin to start developing interesting bits to our Wiki – Like this one I made by myself.

We gathered and talked for a couple of days and they were in the need of a new leader to the Wiki & Doc sub-team. Since I was showing that I was more than capable to work with our Wiki, they proposed me to help lead the team. I was immediately interested in being a part of such project.

In a side project, I found out about the Open Knowledge Foundation, by Svetlana, another contributor to the cause, and I was interested in the work group that covers some of my fields of expertise – The Open Economics Work Group.  The group has already developed huge projects and it is a pity that it went dormant throughout time. Nevertheless, I still find it massively interesting and thus I sent my application to lead the group to new endeavours. I believe it can create impact in our lives and economics/finances still are a huge part of our life. I got my place as the leader/coordinator of the Open Economics Work Group.

The purpose of this blog is to talk about my experiences leading these two projects. They have some things in common that are very relevant to management/economist enthusiasts: Both are non-profit/open-source orientated projects and both have people contributing from all around the world. Inspiring and leading people in this special set of conditions is highly difficult and it is a challenge that I am very excited to take onwards. Being so young has the problem that people/firms rarely trust you to the point you can lead projects, departments or small teams. This is the perfect scenario that I can put many years of study and research into practice and it is also a great way to achieve great things for the good of principles I believe: The capabilities and importance of the Open source world. Technology is something I admire a lot too and both are linked to technology in their own way.