The Welcome Ceremony was capped by the welcome remarks by UP Manila Chancellor Ramon L. Arcadio, represented and delivered by Dr. Isidro Sia, Director of the National Graduate Office for the Health Professions, UP Manila.

[WELCOME REMARKS]? WELCOME CEREMONY, FOSS@Work Conference-Workshop by Ramon L. Arcadio, MD, MHPEd? Professor and Chancellor (Delivered on November 12, 2006, at Riviera Restaurant, Heritage Hotel)

Good evening.

With great pleasure, I welcome the guests and participants to this conference-workshop which is being hosted by the International Open Source Network and InWEnt? Germany. I also welcome the foreign participants to the Philippines and wish you an enjoyable stay in Manila.

I commend the organizers for providing developers from small and medium enterprises this chance to learn more about the potentials and possibilities of free and open source software or FOSS. Thank you for inviting the University of the Philippines Manila to participate in this activity through the National Telehealth Center.

For those not familiar with FOSS like me, I learned from the Internet that the basic idea behind open source is very simple. Briefly, free and open source software programs are programs whose licenses give users the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study and modify the program, and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified program without having to pay royalties to previous developers. Certainly, this system or mechanism raises many issues and questions but this time, you are all here to explore a different dimension to this topic; to explore the "cutting edge possibilities" that this system can bring. And this seems to be a very exciting and interesting task and challenge that await the participants.

Again, I welcome all of you to this conference workshop and to our beautiful country, the Philippines. I wish you a fruitful and insightful discussion.

--- END OF REMARKS ---

After the welcome address, the organizers and participants proceeded to the Riviera Restaurant for a sumptuous dinner buffet.

Noy Shoung, Carlton Pringle, Sovannarith Heng, and LyDouern? Phlong (Cambodia) were able to catch up as their flight landed at 650pm.