ITC Celebrations in general and Freedom celebrations in particular for 2022

Hello, everyone. This is Ignacio Agulló, and since the year 2011 I maintain the Information and Communication Technologies’ Celebrations Calendar for the professionals. The calendar registers all of the editions for a total of 19 yearly celebrations, beginning in 1969 - with some celebrations already extinct by now.

There are some rules for the calendar. An updated website is required. For instance, the World Backup Day is registered from 2011 to 2014, but not since because of the website being unupdated.

The Calendar is published through the Google Calendar application in formats iCal and HTML. This allows for subscribing to the Calendar from most agenda and e-mail applications, and also view the calendar as a web page or insert it in one. The calendar is available in English, Spanish and Galician. Because of many celebrations changing dates or delaying their announcements until mere weeks before the day, subscribing to the calendar is the best choice to avoid being surprised by unexpected date changes.

Subscribers from before 2020 must know that now the old Calendar is abandoned for a new one. The original Google account was closed by the organization administering the Google Enterprise account it was created from, with not a previous warning nor a posterior explanation. A new calendar had to be created from scratch. As for me, I am still waiting for an apology; as for you, you'll need to subscribe again.

English: International ITC Celebrations
HTML: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=fvmed1onkl70bjr3rh04k3012k%40group.calendar.google.com
iCal: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/fvmed1onkl70bjr3rh04k3012k%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Spanish: Celebraciones TIC Internacionales
HTML: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=95q18q1mkpco3fsgqua8rpnfi0%40group.calendar.google.com
iCal: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/95q18q1mkpco3fsgqua8rpnfi0%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Galician: Celebracións TIC Internacionais
HTML: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=1l40rdqqbkon1a3vmcennc39mk%40group.calendar.google.com
iCal: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/1l40rdqqbkon1a3vmcennc39mk%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Every year I update the calendar on the very first day of the year, and every year the very first celebration of the year is not set yet, so I delay the announcement until it is set. For this Trisquel forum in particular I waited until the first Freedom celebration for 2022 was set (I Love Free Software Day, February the 14th), which happened in the last 24 hours.

Things have been looking grim during the last years for Freedom celebrations. As a matter of fact, this years update deleted more editions of Freedom celebrations than it added! This was because of realizing, painfully, that some editions were announced but never actually celebrated. The website for Document Freedom Day updates the date most years, making everybody believe that new editions are happening - but then nothing else is done. Its list of "DFD Events Around The World" shows the same events since 2016, some of them even showing the 2016 year in their names. I noticed in 2019 that the events were old and stopped adding new editions, but this year I realized that I had to delete the 2017 and 2018 editions. I guess I have to make a rule of this: it doesn’t suffice to update the date on the website. As for 2022, they are at it again, showing the 2022 date with the 2016 list of events. I am counting it not as happening nor even as announced.

But let's not lose hope. Surely things will improve in the future. This is the updated list of the many Information and Communication Technologies' Freedom Celebrations celebrated through the years:

I love Free Software Day
Celebrated from 2010 to 2021 (12 editions).
Currently announced for 2022.
Website: http://fsfe.org/campaigns/ilovefs/

Document Freedom Day
Celebrated from 2008 to 2016 (9 editions).
Website: http://documentfreedom.org/

Hardware Freedom Day
Celebrated from 2013 to 2017 (5 editions).
Website: http://hfday.org/

Software Freedom Day
Celebratef from 2004 to 2021, except 2020 (17 editions).
Website: http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/
Currently unannounced for 2022.

Kind regards,
Ignacio Agulló.