Unlimited Potential strikes gold again for the ICT Capital with the Software Freedom Day event. SFD ’08 is for I.T. professionals who worship open source technologies or who simply love the joy of writing software code.

Software Freedom Day looks set to become an annual event and will be hosted this year by Nathan Torkington, author, Perl programmer and former web 2.0 provocateur for technology publisher O’Reilly Media. The event comprises a “bar camp” or “unconference”, at which participants set the speaking agenda, and a “hackfest” where developers will be set a task or can work on their own open source projects. There will also be the opportunity for users to upload and test various open source applications.

There is a great bunch of supporters bringing this event to Wellington, but special mention needs to go out to Don Christie and Catalyst I.T. Don, who is a founding director of Catalyst and president of the Open Source Society, has emerged as a leading light in the New Zealand technology scene through his public commentary, industry leadership and general willingness to pitch in and help out with events such as SFD. In fact without volunteers like Don, software industry networks would not be in the healthy state that exists today. Why does it matter? Well, arguably the best jobs, the coolest projects and the smartest new ventures get discovered and supported by way of networks. So making an effort to get involved can reap rewards. Places are limited, so hurry and register.

Being users of various open source products and services ourselves, the ideegeo crew will be present at the event throughout the day hacking code as well as helping out the event organisers wherever we are needed, so please stop by and say hello. Just look out for the ideegeo orange banner. We’ll also be blogging and twittering live from SFD ’08 and showing off our new i-Phone app to anyone who’s interested.