Organizing duo conferences

openSUSE Conference 2015Kolab Summit 2015

Both between 1 and 4 May 2015The Hague NL

About us

● Robin Edgar (EdgarBV)– International (security) consultancy

– Owner SaaS hosting company > 10 years

– Open source user and contributor > 15 years

● Hans de Raad (OpenNovations)– International open source and security consultancy

– Clients in government, SME's and enterprise

– Open source user and contributor > 15 years

● Both are project leads for openSUSE Conference 2015 and Kolab Summit (in The Hague).

openSUSE?

● Linux distribution, active since mid '90s.● Sponsored by SUSE Linux GmbH● Pretty much the Fedora for SUSE● Various tools for general purposes:

– Open Build Service

– Open Source Event Management

– SUSE Studio

– OpenQA

OpenSUSE?

● Home of the Geeko!● Previous conferences in Nuremberg, Prague,

Thessaloniki, Dubrovnik● Striving for ~ 200 / 300 participants● Devrooms, Bofs, talks, social events.

Kolab?

● Groupware suite (email, calendar, todo, file storage)

● Originally built in Germany by the BSI– Because they didn't trust Lotus Notes.

● Home of developers of Roundcube, KDE Kontact and other open source solutions.

● First summit since the projects inception!

Advantages of duoconferences

● Facilities can be shared– Networking

– Catering

– Social events

● Public has more options– More parallel sessions

– Diversity in audience

● Speakers have more opportunities– Multiple talks

Disadvantages of duoconferences

● Risk of confusing community identities– If big differences exist between communities.

● Issues with surges on facilities– Try to spread out lunches/program pauze moments ,etc

● Conflicts of interests between projects● Conflicts in program

– Speakers have to be planned careful

– Risk of recycling talks.

Preparations

● Set a date– Both communities have to be on

the same page

● Select a venue– For oSC and KS over 65 venues were approached....

● Organize the project structure– Both communities will have volunteers

– How to manage them both on overlapping tasks?

Preparations

● Announcements– Press releases

– Promotion

– Speaker invites

● Combined or separate?– Carefully discuss this with both projects.

Tooling: openSUSE

● OSEM– Built for openSUSE, reusable for other projects

– Hosted on Github

● Features– CfP handling

● Speaker profiles, talk abstracts, voting

– Home page for conference

– Attendee registrations

– Preconfigured authorization profiles

Tooling: openSUSE OSEM

● Advantages– Quite simple, one purpose tool

– Proven in earlier conferences

● Disadvantages– Not very feature rich or configurable.

● Home page is preconfigured, as are listings, etc.

– Some features had to be developed during project organization.

Tooling: openSUSE Redmine

● Project management● Issue tracking● Planning● Documentation● Wiki

Tooling: openSUSE Redmine

Tooling: Kolab Summit → Drupal

● Conference organization distribution● Originally developed for DrupalCon● E-Commerce integration● Content management

– Configurable content types

● Authorisation management● Built in search● Configurable theming

Tooling: Kolab Summit COD

● Issue tracking wasn't required, but is possible– Drupal Issue tracker module

– One tool for both project organization and website

● CfP handling– Speakers profiles, voting, planning

● Configurable timeslots for planning– Generic planning items (like breaks, etc)

● Flexible listings through Views module.

Tooling: Kolab Summit COD

● Advantages– Extremely flexible and configurable, just as Drupal

– Offers a great CMS and social functions out of the box

– Great mobile-first themes available

● Disadvantages– Drupal can be a little

complex.

Lessons learned OSEM, Redmine, COD

● Usability for team members is a key factor– Volunteers will not use complex systems.

● Custom built tools aren't necessarily better● Theming is important to give the conference an

identity● Don't overprepare

– Large lists of issues scares peoples

Let's go over some of the talks in the program!

● openSUSE Conference● Kolab Summit

openSUSE Conference

● Keynotes by Aaron Seigo and Markus Feilner● MySQL Secure deployment● Linux server performance optimization● Testing distributions with OpenQA● High availability clusters, monitoring and distributed

storage (Ceph)● RPM Packaging workshow (whole day)● Server administration with Puppet, Ansible, CFEngine

openSUSE Conference

● Developments on Yet Another Setup Tool (Yast)● Docker and other container technologiess (best

practices, security, etc).● Cyrus mailserver and JMAP, postfix● Linux disaster recovery practices● Lockpicking● Community branding and publicity ● Ruby and RoR workshops

Kolab Summit

● Keynotes by Georg Greve, Jeroen van Meeuwen and Brenno de Winter

● The future of Roundcube webmail.● Community building and policitcs● Cyrus 3.0 and scaling mailservers● LibreOffice groupware server collaboration● OpenChange, Kolab and MAPI● Security workshops● Docker talks and workshops

Social events!!!

● Awesome retro!– Vintage computers

● Music, beer, dj's, etc● Lockpicking workshop● Sleepover facility

at the venue!

When was that again?

● 1 – 4 May The Hague NL● http://conference.opensuse.org● http://conference.kolab.org● 2 conferences for the price of 1

free....

Questions?

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