While 2020 is coming to an end, we felt like reviewing the past year. The improvement of our tools, the conferences and workshops, a project with the Ministry of Education, an education kit in the making… Here are some of the impactful events of the last twelve months.
More than 330 known trackers, over 155.000 analysis reports for over 82.000 applications… Our εxodus platform is slowly enlarging its knowledge base following your analysis requests. This year, we had few technical difficulties and improved what we had, allowing for instance to submit for analysis applications from F-droid, in addition to the Google Play Store. We also added several new translations from our community thanks to our Crowdin platform. The platform now exists in 5 different languages: French, Italian, English, Greek and Spanish.
The application is improving too: it detects applications installed via F-Droid, a new “Trackers” page appeared, as well as new translations (Italian, Russian, Greek, Arab, German, Catalan). Coming soon: the list of trackers on the application and other contributions!
We were asked by the French Ministry of Education to deploy an internal platform of analysis. The platform was delivered a few weeks ago, we still have a day of awareness raising with the academy heads. A big project, a first for us!
We also proudly discovered that Exodus-Standalone is part of the SILL, the inter-ministerial base of free software, the standard for French administrations.
French-speaking and international press still reference our work. If we were to remember a single event, it would be our participation in the France Inter podcast Le code a changé, conducted by Xavier De la Porte. We had a lot of fun participating and it brought us a lot of exposure. We now have almost 4.500 followers on Twitter, 2.500 on Framapiaf and close to 400 Facebook subscribers.
In order to improve our communication, we are now accompanied by Pouhiou from Framasoft. We have begun exchanging around Framasoft experience, which is really instructive.
We wanted to help the volunteers and professionals in digital mediation animating workshops around the topics of privacy and smartphones. We then submitted a financing file to the Afnic foundation in order to create an education kit. Its purpose: provide all the elements (teaching aids, practical application…) to help animating workshops targeting a beginner audience and an advanced audience around this subject. The Afnic foundation decided to support us and we give them a huge thanks!
We’ve began working on the graphic conception and content with illustrator and graphic designer _Lila* and the association Net-freaks. We intend to test the first prototypes in the second term of 2021.
We are regularly invited to present our association and our results in conferences and workshops. This year, we have been able to participate in 5 events: a conference organized by 42l, which has been filmed, an intervention during the Free software winter meetings in Saint-Cergue, in Switzerland, two interventions during the Digital Freedom Festival in Rennes and Nantes and the Digital invoice and citizen contributions day, organized by Ping and the Loire-Atlantique departmental council. We had also planned a speech in Lyon for the JDLL (Free Software days) to talk about the redesign of our platform, along with Maiwann, but the health situation forced the organizers to cancel it.
We wanted to give a warm thank you to everyone that invited us, but we felt like highlighting the Swiss welcome which struck us a lot! Let Lovis_IX, who was there, tell us about it:
During the first week-end of February 2020, we took part in the Winter Free Software Meetings, taking place in Saint Cergue, Switzerland. The organisation was perfect, taking my disability (I use a wheelchair) in consideration as well as possible. Beside fascinating lectures (for instance, the one about the amateur radio network), we were treated like foreign princes visiting. I have to tell you about “the place”.
Saint Cergue is a little village in the mountains with, as far as we saw, two ski lifts. The “Centre du Vallon” is the building the municipality made available for the event. Even if going from floor to floor is only possible by stairs, I discovered a bathroom+shower totally equiped for people with reduced mobility. I’ve seen bathrooms and showers less well equiped in hospitals…
The dormitories, adjoining to the main building, are… in a Swiss army fallout shelter. After going through the two 20 cm thick doors, I felt like I was in The Great Escape. The bedding is spartan, don’t sit up during the night or you’ll bang your head against the “bedframe” (a wooden plank) of the upper bunk. Once past the surprise, we slept well. And as I was saying, we were welcomed like princes. An outstanding kindness, a lot of joking around during the meals. If we were in a small committee the Friday evening, allowing us to get acquainted with each other, on the Saturday evening we enjoyed the cheese fondue. I won’t say anything about the “double cream meringue”. It has to be a first category weapon forbidden by the Geneva convention.
One can’t help but think of “Asterix in Switzerland”. A mix of laughs and serious conversation, only tiredness made us go to bed.
We like to say we are a small association of volunteers, but we have a huge community! A huge thank you to you, who talk about us, who contribute, occasionnally or regularly, and to our supporters. A special acknowledgement to the unwavering support from Gandi who provide us free hosting for our platform, and who organized for their 20-year anniversary a T-shirt design contest and are going to redistribute part of the earnings to us.
We are going on strong with our current projects and welcoming new lifeblood! You are all welcome, no matter what your wants or skills are… Come to our side, we have no trackers…