- 
+ ![Ura Logo]()
-
-
+ ![]()
diff --git a/_layouts/default.html b/_layouts/default.html
index f4c1080..25c1017 100644
--- a/_layouts/default.html
+++ b/_layouts/default.html
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
{% include footer.html %}
diff --git a/_layouts/post.html b/_layouts/post.html
index 563e4e7..f79f336 100644
--- a/_layouts/post.html
+++ b/_layouts/post.html
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ section_id: blog
/
{% endif %}
- {{page.date | date: "%B %d, %Y" }} by {{page.author}}
+ {{page.date | date: "%B %d, %Y" }} by {{page.author}}
{{content}}
diff --git a/_posts/2017-01-24-wikispeech-wikimedia-project-has-a-logo-guess-who-designed-it.md b/_posts/2017-01-24-wikispeech-wikimedia-project-has-a-logo-guess-who-designed-it.md
index 4b2d0be..35af68a 100644
--- a/_posts/2017-01-24-wikispeech-wikimedia-project-has-a-logo-guess-who-designed-it.md
+++ b/_posts/2017-01-24-wikispeech-wikimedia-project-has-a-logo-guess-who-designed-it.md
@@ -7,8 +7,6 @@ date: 2017-01-24 12:00:00 +0200
categories:
images:
- images/blog/ura-wikispeech.png
-header:
-- images/blog/ura-wikispeech.png
tags:
- Wikimedia
- Wikispeech
@@ -18,19 +16,19 @@ excerpt:
At Ura we <3 Wikipedia and other projects empowered by the Wikimedia Foundation such as Wikidata, Commons and Wikivoyage to mention a few. Actually, the organization has initiated and manages amazing projects in the filed of open knowledge and open source software, which labels it to our conscience as one of the most important pillars […]
---
-At Ura we <3 Wikipedia and other projects empowered by the Wikimedia Foundation such as Wikidata, Commons and Wikivoyage to mention a few. Actually, the organization has initiated and manages amazing projects in the filed of open knowledge and open source software, which labels it to our conscience as one of the most important pillars of floss and open data culture. The latest addition to the list of the projects we really like, Wikimedia recently announced Wikispeech, a text-to-speech tool with a focus on accessibility.
+At Ura we <3 Wikipedia and other projects empowered by the Wikimedia Foundation such as Wikidata, Commons and Wikivoyage to mention a few. Actually, the organization has initiated and manages amazing projects in the filed of open knowledge and open source software, which labels it to our conscience as one of the most important pillars of floss and open data culture. The latest addition to the list of the projects we really like, Wikimedia recently announced Wikispeech, a text-to-speech tool with a focus on accessibility.
-> "The Wikispeech project aims to create an open source text-to-speech tool to make Wikimedia’s projects more accessible for people that have difficulties reading for different reasons. Wikispeech will be available as a MediaWiki extension. It will be a server based solution, which means that it can be used without having to install any software locally (something that is not possible on all devices used to access the Internet). All components will be open source and all data and documentation will be under a free license so that it can also be included on other platforms. The development of a text-to-speech extension for MediaWiki has been carefully investigated and planed during a pilot study in Autumn 2015.' Read the full blog post and the announcement here
+> "The Wikispeech project aims to create an open source text-to-speech tool to make Wikimedia’s projects more accessible for people that have difficulties reading for different reasons. Wikispeech will be available as a MediaWiki extension. It will be a server based solution, which means that it can be used without having to install any software locally (something that is not possible on all devices used to access the Internet). All components will be open source and all data and documentation will be under a free license so that it can also be included on other platforms. The development of a text-to-speech extension for MediaWiki has been carefully investigated and planed during a pilot study in Autumn 2015.' Read the full blog post and the announcement here
-
Being a non for profit Wikimedia has limited funds for many of its activities including design for some of the projects. That’s why a logo design competition for the project was announced some months ago. Knowing the importance of the design in such an innovative project, but also having financial support from our amazing supporters of the Patreon campaign, we worked and sent on different proposals and after a public discussion one of our proposal was chosen as the official logo of the initiative. +
Being a non for profit Wikimedia has limited funds for many of its activities including design for some of the projects. That’s why a logo design competition for the project was announced some months ago. Knowing the importance of the design in such an innovative project, but also having financial support from our amazing supporters of the Patreon campaign, we worked and sent on different proposals and after a public discussion one of our proposal was chosen as the official logo of the initiative. The logo incorporates the look and feel of the main Wikimedia projects and also the color palette used by these projects. At the same time it features elements related to audio in order to make it easily recognizable as a project related to a text-to-speech system.
+
Some of us contribute to Wikipedia with article creation and editing, but also though the organization of events at hackerspaces and universities with the ultimate goal of engaging more and more people. We, the contributors of the open source culture and community members, have to understand that good design is essential to communicate quickly, easily and universally the main elements of these projects to everyone that has the potential to join our movement.
We can only achieve this goal only if teams like ours here at Ura dedicate more and more time to make better design for open knowledge initiatives such as Wikispeech. That’s why we ask your support from people like you though our Patreon campaign. More support from you means directly better design, and better design means more engaged and bigger floss communities. -Help us hep floss initiatives communicate better with their audiences through open source design: https://www.patreon.com/ura!
+Help us hep floss initiatives communicate better with their audiences through open source design: https://www.patreon.com/ura! diff --git a/_posts/2017-02-11-open-source-design-workshop-open-labs-hackerspace-tirana.md b/_posts/2017-02-11-open-source-design-workshop-open-labs-hackerspace-tirana.md index 1baefd3..4156052 100644 --- a/_posts/2017-02-11-open-source-design-workshop-open-labs-hackerspace-tirana.md +++ b/_posts/2017-02-11-open-source-design-workshop-open-labs-hackerspace-tirana.md @@ -7,8 +7,6 @@ date: 2017-02-11 12:00:00 +0200 categories: images: - images/blog/osd_event.png -header: -- images/blog/workshop-1.jpg tags: - Open Source Design - Workshop @@ -17,10 +15,10 @@ excerpt: When we started our Patreon campaign we had a simple vision; to use the financial resources of our supporters to provide better design to free open source and open web initiatives that we think are important to communicate better with the outside world through better design. In the first days we thought that this was […] --- -When we started our Patreon campaign we had a simple vision: to use the financial resources of our supporters to provide better design to free open source and open web initiatives that we think are important to communicate better with the outside world through better design. In the first days we thought that this was enough to change the quality of visual communication. This perception changed gradually after discussions with graphic designers that are doing their first step in this field. We quickly understood that they have many questions about the usage of free open source tools in the process of designing for their needs.
With this in mind it was clear that that we definitely need to educate the new generation of designers through workshops and talks about our philosophy. Without further delay we started organizing the first Open Source Design workshop at Open Labs hackerspace in Tirana, home of the open source community in Albania.
When we started our Patreon campaign we had a simple vision: to use the financial resources of our supporters to provide better design to free open source and open web initiatives that we think are important to communicate better with the outside world through better design. In the first days we thought that this was enough to change the quality of visual communication. This perception changed gradually after discussions with graphic designers that are doing their first step in this field. We quickly understood that they have many questions about the usage of free open source tools in the process of designing for their needs.
With this in mind it was clear that that we definitely need to educate the new generation of designers through workshops and talks about our philosophy. Without further delay we started organizing the first Open Source Design workshop at Open Labs hackerspace in Tirana, home of the open source community in Albania.
+
+
In conclusion: it was a great first step in educating the next generation of visual designers about the values designing in the open. We definitely need more of your support though Patreon to host even more workshops not only in Albania, but also other countries.
Interested in the next events? Visit this dedicated page from time to time, or follow us on Twitter.
+
In conclusion: it was a great first step in educating the next generation of visual designers about the values designing in the open. We definitely need more of your support though Patreon to host even more workshops not only in Albania, but also other countries.
Interested in the next events? Visit this dedicated page from time to time, or follow us on Twitter.
+
+
+
+
Two weeks ago we had Silva Arapi to join our team as our new communications manager. Silva has been a member of Open Labs Hackerspace in Tirana for the last two years and she has been contributing for different open source projects, so we were pleased to welcome on board someone who knows and believes in the open source ethics.
+Two weeks ago we had Silva Arapi to join our team as our new communications manager. Silva has been a member of Open Labs Hackerspace in Tirana for the last two years and she has been contributing for different open source projects, so we were pleased to welcome on board someone who knows and believes in the open source ethics.
-Since she was going to attend the SHA2017 Hacker Camp in the Netherlands, this was a great opportunity for her to also meet people from the Open Source Design community and people from other open source projects we’ve been working with.
+
Since she was going to attend the SHA2017 Hacker Camp in the Netherlands, this was a great opportunity for her to also meet people from the Open Source Design community and people from other open source projects we’ve been working with.
For those of you who haven’t heard of SHA before: this is an outdoor hacker camp which took place in the Netherlands on August 4th to 8th and was the successor of similar events which have been taking place every 4 years and thousands of visitors have been joining it. Thousands of activists,free-thinkers, hackers, geeks, scientists, makers and others from all over the world joined SHA2017 to share their ideas, thoughts and knowledge, to discuss, build and hack with others.
+
By Erik Albers (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
One of the things that Silva noticed during these hacking days was the fact that people were not talking so much about design in general, which is not that much of a surprise since the event is quite technical in general. But of course, there were so many people there and she also had the chance to meet some of those who were also concerned about the design of their products and would like to meet and talk to people who are experts of the field, and having projects like Open Source Design makes it easer to show them a place were they should go and ask for advice or help.
-> Still Open Source Designing Anyway!! #sha2017 #sha2017camp @SHA2017Badge pic.twitter.com/rmejAIL1YM +> Still Open Source Designing Anyway!! #sha2017 #sha2017camp @SHA2017Badge pic.twitter.com/rmejAIL1YM — Ura Design (@uracreative) August 7, 2017 -During her days at the camp Silva had the chance to meet Victoria, a UX Researcher/Designer who is part of the Open Source Design community. Victoria told her a bit more about the the community, what the people who are part of it have been working on and what are some of their future plans. She also met Herman one of our clients who is the founder of OSSO, a company which specializes in open source infrastructure, development and operations. We have been working with them during the last months to improve the design for some of their products.
+During her days at the camp Silva had the chance to meet Victoria, a UX Researcher/Designer who is part of the Open Source Design community. Victoria told her a bit more about the the community, what the people who are part of it have been working on and what are some of their future plans. She also met Herman one of our clients who is the founder of OSSO, a company which specializes in open source infrastructure, development and operations. We have been working with them during the last months to improve the design for some of their products.
The camping days were intensive, with so many great talks, workshops and hacking sessions. Silva says that having more presence in such events by people who work with design would help in increasing awareness about the importance of good design while building technological products.
-Check her blog for more details on the camp.
+Check her blog for more details on the camp.
+
+
+
+
The Ura Team
The first day started with some photoshooting for the whole team which was quite a fun experience, and everyone had an updated profile within the day in all the platforms we use for our daily work. We spent the first day mostly by going back to what we had been doing so far, what had gone good and what could have been done better. As everyone shared their thoughts, we started planning what our next steps would be. While going through this process, feeling confident about we had achieved and also a bit challenged for what’s going to be next, we were all very optimistic and motivated to keep doing our work and find ways to be more creative. We had already been searching for an alternative which would help us to better organize our work and while looking for the different options, we decided to proceed with GitHub as a task manager and have our whole working process fully in the open.
+The first day started with some photoshooting for the whole team which was quite a fun experience, and everyone had an updated profile within the day in all the platforms we use for our daily work. We spent the first day mostly by going back to what we had been doing so far, what had gone good and what could have been done better. As everyone shared their thoughts, we started planning what our next steps would be. While going through this process, feeling confident about we had achieved and also a bit challenged for what’s going to be next, we were all very optimistic and motivated to keep doing our work and find ways to be more creative. We had already been searching for an alternative which would help us to better organize our work and while looking for the different options, we decided to proceed with GitHub as a task manager and have our whole working process fully in the open.
-Being a new company that promotes openness and believes in open source values, we wanted to be fully open too, about the way how we operate, how we work with our clients, how we get resources and support from different organizations and the future projects we plan to be part of. We believe that by working in the open, we are part of a more productive and transparent process especially because we have constantly been getting support from people and organizations, some through our Patreon donators but also from other sponsors and supporters. We also believe that in this way we can also get feedback from other professionals in the field and this can help us improve our work daily. Just as it happens with other open source projects, we give something and get something else back. This is our repository for our tasks management which you can feel free to take a look at and share your opinions and thoughts with us if there is any topic you are interested at or related to.
+Being a new company that promotes openness and believes in open source values, we wanted to be fully open too, about the way how we operate, how we work with our clients, how we get resources and support from different organizations and the future projects we plan to be part of. We believe that by working in the open, we are part of a more productive and transparent process especially because we have constantly been getting support from people and organizations, some through our Patreon donators but also from other sponsors and supporters. We also believe that in this way we can also get feedback from other professionals in the field and this can help us improve our work daily. Just as it happens with other open source projects, we give something and get something else back. This is our repository for our tasks management which you can feel free to take a look at and share your opinions and thoughts with us if there is any topic you are interested at or related to.
-We also decided to switch to Mattermost as a tool to communicate. As we always try to find open source solutions for every choice of platform we make, Mattermost as an open source, self-hosted approach resulted as one of the best options for us since it offers more control and privacy, which we all value so much.
+We also decided to switch to Mattermost as a tool to communicate. As we always try to find open source solutions for every choice of platform we make, Mattermost as an open source, self-hosted approach resulted as one of the best options for us since it offers more control and privacy, which we all value so much.
Of course, there were many other side activities during Work Week. We all went at the cinema together, had dinner and drinks and a great time as well.
So, now what?
-We plan to collaborate and work this way now on, share our knowledge with other people and keep spreading the open source love. More efforts now will go for our brand new product, Identihub, an open source and self-hosted software to manage and share your brand and visual assets which is keeping all the team very enthusiastic for what’s to come.
+We plan to collaborate and work this way now on, share our knowledge with other people and keep spreading the open source love. More efforts now will go for our brand new product, Identihub, an open source and self-hosted software to manage and share your brand and visual assets which is keeping all the team very enthusiastic for what’s to come.
diff --git a/_posts/2018-01-15-chaos-communication-congress-2017.md b/_posts/2018-01-15-chaos-communication-congress-2017.md index d4b8270..dac48db 100644 --- a/_posts/2018-01-15-chaos-communication-congress-2017.md +++ b/_posts/2018-01-15-chaos-communication-congress-2017.md @@ -7,8 +7,6 @@ date: 2018-01-15 12:00:00 +0200 categories: images: - images/blog/34c3_thumb.png -header: -- images/blog/elio-ccc.png tags: - Chaos Communication Congress - CCC @@ -17,19 +15,19 @@ excerpt: Chaos Communication Congress or simply CCC , is a four-day conference focusing on technology and social issues of our times. The organizers, the Chaos Computer Club, try to bring up to the spotlight privacy issues and the importance of the human rights on the digital world we “breathe” every day. Through workshops and presentations the […] --- -Chaos Communication Congress or simply CCC , is a four-day conference focusing on technology and social issues of our times. The organizers, the Chaos Computer Club, try to bring up to the spotlight privacy issues and the importance of the human rights on the digital world we “breathe” every day. Through workshops and presentations the attendees have the chance to get updated on how the unethical use of the digital resources that we have on our disposal can harm or transform our society.
+Chaos Communication Congress or simply CCC , is a four-day conference focusing on technology and social issues of our times. The organizers, the Chaos Computer Club, try to bring up to the spotlight privacy issues and the importance of the human rights on the digital world we “breathe” every day. Through workshops and presentations the attendees have the chance to get updated on how the unethical use of the digital resources that we have on our disposal can harm or transform our society.
Our team, as a collective of creative individuals dedicated to work in the open, couldn’t miss the chance to be there. We share the same values with CCC when it comes to the use of free and open source tools for our work and that’s why Elio, one of our team members and the founder of Ura, was there on the last week of December to present at the FSFS assembly track.
+
During the Identihub presentation
The major focus of his talk was the introduction of the attendees to our creative process, the way we operate, our works with our clients so far and our latest product Identihub, the open source hosting platform for brand and visual asset management. A special part of the talk was to explain why we choose to work with open source tools and why we decided to go fully open by having a task manager on Github, which means that everyone has the chance to see our progress as weeks go by and why we support other open source initiatives out there. Of course, working in the open means that even more fellow hacktivists can contribute in every operational process of Ura, which is something we aim to grow even more in the next months.
+The major focus of his talk was the introduction of the attendees to our creative process, the way we operate, our works with our clients so far and our latest product Identihub, the open source hosting platform for brand and visual asset management. A special part of the talk was to explain why we choose to work with open source tools and why we decided to go fully open by having a task manager on Github, which means that everyone has the chance to see our progress as weeks go by and why we support other open source initiatives out there. Of course, working in the open means that even more fellow hacktivists can contribute in every operational process of Ura, which is something we aim to grow even more in the next months.
-As the new open source kid on the block, Identihub was on the primary focus of this lecture. The software and its features were presented to the participants of the assembly and explained capabilities, the license and the need of free open source organizations to improve their visual representation. At the end, our teammate explained how everyone can contribute and support this initiative, either by contributing on GitHub or supporting us financially on a monthly basis by signing up at our dedicated Patreon page. Most important, our participation at 34C3 resulted in using Identihub to host the visual identity of the conference.
+As the new open source kid on the block, Identihub was on the primary focus of this lecture. The software and its features were presented to the participants of the assembly and explained capabilities, the license and the need of free open source organizations to improve their visual representation. At the end, our teammate explained how everyone can contribute and support this initiative, either by contributing on GitHub or supporting us financially on a monthly basis by signing up at our dedicated Patreon page. Most important, our participation at 34C3 resulted in using Identihub to host the visual identity of the conference.
Of course, from an event of this kind we couldn’t miss sharing some swag. We had our stickers and 3D-printed logos distributed to the participants of the Congress.
diff --git a/_posts/2018-02-09-ura-fosdem-2018.md b/_posts/2018-02-09-ura-fosdem-2018.md index 6233560..9d9bc70 100644 --- a/_posts/2018-02-09-ura-fosdem-2018.md +++ b/_posts/2018-02-09-ura-fosdem-2018.md @@ -7,8 +7,6 @@ date: 2018-02-09 12:00:00 +0200 categories: images: - images/blog/Elio-FOSDEM2018-thumb.jpg -header: -- images/blog/Elio-FOSDEM2018.jpg tags: - FOSDEM - FOSDEM2018 diff --git a/_posts/2018-02-23-inkscape-workshop-tirana.md b/_posts/2018-02-23-inkscape-workshop-tirana.md index f1bce73..93a0c00 100644 --- a/_posts/2018-02-23-inkscape-workshop-tirana.md +++ b/_posts/2018-02-23-inkscape-workshop-tirana.md @@ -7,8 +7,6 @@ date: 2018-02-23 12:00:00 +0200 categories: images: - images/blog/Inkscape-Workshop-1-thumb.jpg -header: -- images/blog/Inkscape-Workshop-1.jpg tags: - Inkscape - Open Source Design diff --git a/_posts/2018-03-12-ura-now-part-open-tech-funds-usability-lab.md b/_posts/2018-03-12-ura-now-part-open-tech-funds-usability-lab.md index 2b0daeb..e2b02c9 100644 --- a/_posts/2018-03-12-ura-now-part-open-tech-funds-usability-lab.md +++ b/_posts/2018-03-12-ura-now-part-open-tech-funds-usability-lab.md @@ -7,8 +7,6 @@ date: 2018-03-12 12:00:00 +0200 categories: images: - images/blog/home-banner.jpg -header: -- images/blog/home-banner.jpg tags: - Open Tech Fund - Usability diff --git a/_posts/2018-03-19-new-ura-website.md b/_posts/2018-03-19-new-ura-website.md index ba837c5..3f63b11 100644 --- a/_posts/2018-03-19-new-ura-website.md +++ b/_posts/2018-03-19-new-ura-website.md @@ -7,8 +7,6 @@ date: 2018-03-19 12:00:00 +0200 categories: images: - images/blog/website_thumb.jpg -header: -- images/blog/new-website.jpg tags: - Website - GitHub Pages diff --git a/_posts/2018-03-31-introducing-cryptopayments-for-our-services.md b/_posts/2018-03-31-introducing-cryptopayments-for-our-services.md index 41e26cc..8685e4c 100644 --- a/_posts/2018-03-31-introducing-cryptopayments-for-our-services.md +++ b/_posts/2018-03-31-introducing-cryptopayments-for-our-services.md @@ -7,8 +7,6 @@ date: 2018-03-31 12:00:00 +0200 categories: images: - images/blog/CryptoCurrencyThumb.jpg -header: -- images/blog/CryptoCurrencyBanner.jpg tags: - Cryptopayments - Open Source Design