Today Matheplanet.com has celebrated its annual awards for the 8th time. Members of the forum were honored for their contributions during the last year, 260 members have voted this time. There were many categories, from mathematics and physics to LaTeX and more.
In the LaTeX category Marco_D and I have got an award with only one vote difference. Congratulations to Marco and I thank the Matheplanet members very much for their votes.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

The German Ubuntu Linux User Conference “Ubucon” will be held for the third time in Göttingen, hosted by the Georg August University, October 19-22, 2009.

The conference program includes three LaTeX events:

• LaTeX in the year 2009: talk about new TeX software and features like TeX Live 2009, Biber, Asymptote, LuaTeX and XeTeX, further small tools will be presented. Friday, 4-6pm.
• LaTeX introduction for new users: a workshop introducing the LaTeX system, presenting basic features and commands. Users are encouraged to bring their own laptops to the workshop for participation. Saturday, 9-11am.
• Producing magazines with LaTeX: a workshop for advanced users dealing with layout topics like wrapping text around figures with the goal of creating a magazine. Users should join with a laptop. Saturday, 11-13am.

For further information like program, accommodation and news visit the Ubucon Homepage.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

Les than two weeks left - the GuIT meeting 2009 will be held on October 17, 2009 at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy. GuIT (Gruppo Utilizzatori Italiani di TeX) is the Italian TeX User Group, inviting to the 6th annual conference about TeX and LaTeX. Many talks will be held in Italian, only a few in English. More information including registration, program, arrival and accommodation can be found on the official conference website.

The conference page of 2008 is still available, there you can find even photos made during the meeting.

Today is the Software Freedom Day 2009. This event is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software with the goal to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality free and open source software in education, in government, at home and in business. The non-profit company Software Freedom International coordinates this event at a global level, volunteer teams around the world are organize local SFD events.

TeX and LaTeX are very remarkable examples of free software.

The autumn conference of 2009 and and 41st general meeting of the German TeX Users Group DANTE e.V. will be held on September 12th in Esslingen. There will be a meeting already on Friday 11th in the evening.

The program will include talks about

• using Postscript in PDF documents,
• the perl program biber as successor for BibTeX,
• the graph visualization software Graphviz-dot,
• using LaTeX for creation of dynamic books like individual conference programs on web servers,
• comfortable make files,
• some small LaTeX package being presented
• and about news of the upcoming TeX Live 2009.

For more information concerning location, registration, accommodation and program visit the announcement on the DANTE homepage.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

I’ve read on the texhax mailing list today that Karl Berry has posted the schedule of talks for the TUG 2009 conference. There you can read about the program, workshops, talks and participants of this years annual meeting of the TeX Users Group on July 29-31, 2009 plus the workshop day on July 28.

Tomorrow on April 29th, 2009, the author Dr. Herbert Voss will give a talk in the specialist bookshop Lehmanns in Hamburg, Kurze Muehren 6. This talk will be held in German and it’s called “Erstellung grosser, druckreifer Dokumente mit TeX/LaTeX“. The speaker will explain how extensive documents (more than 1000 pages) can be created and managed by several authors until it’s ready for printing such that no post-treatment by publisher or printing company would be needed. Among the topics will be revision control systems, the possibility of postprocessing of directories by external scripts and creation and inclusion of high-quality graphics. The talk will start at 8pm. For further information visit the LOB events page.

On January 22nd I’ve informed about the LaTeX Community know how article contest. On April 5th the winner has been announced: Thiago S. Mosqueiro from Brazil has got the award for for his brief and concise description of RevTeX 4 package. Congratulations, Thiago!

Until now there are 4 articles in the know how section:

• Defining operators like sin, log etc. by Marcin Borkowski,
• A brief and concise description of RevTeX 4 package by Thiago S. Mosqueiro,
• Glossaries, Nomenclature, Lists of Symbols and Acronyms by Dr. Nicola L. C. Talbot,
• Boxes and more boxes by Ivan Pagnossin.

On April 23, 2009 the version 9.04 of Ubuntu Linux will be released. The user group Ubuntu Berlin is inviting to the Jaunty Jackalope Release Party:

The party in the c-base Berlin will start on April 25, 2009, 4pm, admission will be free. There will be presentations showing new features of Ubuntu 9.04, encryption, localization, Ubuntu on USB sticks. I will come to that party too of course.

If you cannot come to Berlin but want to celebrate the Jaunty release too, have a look at the Jaunty release parties worldwide.

The big german math portal Matheplanet.com has presented its 7th annual awards yesterday evening, Jan 25th. Those awards honor the efforts of community members who are providing help, knowledge, work and time to all of the Matheplanet users. More than 4000 votes were given in different categories like mathematics, physics, computer science, moderation, information, article writing, book reviewing and more. Because that math site has a lively LaTeX forum there’s also an award for honoring the best LaTeX advisor. This year (and the last year too) the voters have chosen me, and I’m very proud of it, because I’m part of the Matheplanet community for many years and I appreciate this site and its members. At this place I want to say thank you for your feedback.
If you’re having LaTeX questions, especially if they are concerning mathematics, you’re invited to visit the Matheplanet LaTeX forum to post questions and also to help other users. If you’re interested in LaTeX or just look for advice you may also visit our LaTeX User Group.