Since I didn’t have a chance to participate in the “what I learned” lightning talks, I thought I’d write a few thoughts down on my blog. I’ve taken a few days to reflect on the conference while I was attending the Linux Foundation’s initial LinuxCon (more on that later).

As with any major event, I’m feeling glad that it’s behind me and it appears to have been quite successful. I’m also a bit sad that it was over so quickly and I didn’t have quite as much time as I wanted to talk to many of the contributors who attended. Of course, with more than 200 kick-ass people at the conference, it was impossible to spend much time with every openSUSE contributor I wanted to talk to in greater depth.

It was fantastic to meet so many people in person for the first time. Putting faces to names (or IRC nicks) was a lot of fun. Funny how people so rarely match up with the mental picture you form of them over a network connection!

No Network

The only consistent complaint I’ve heard about the conference was the lack of WiFi. We knew that would be missed, but unfortunately the choices were either no network or a very crappy network. We opted for no network so that the speakers could still have a wired connection for their presentations, if necessary, and a “email garden” where a limited number of connections were available.

I know that there’s quite a lot of withdrawl for contributors when they’re separated from email and so forth — and some sessions benefit from connectivity. However, in general, I think that the lack of network was additive to the conference rather than a problem. Seriously, it forced everyone at the conference to mix and talk to one another and give primary attention to the presentations and the people at the conf.

Over the last ten years, I’ve attended more conferences than I care to count. It’s been my experience that the better the network, the more likely it is you lose attention to whatever is on the other side of the network — be it Twitter, email, IRC, or whatever. Yes, it’s inconveient to be disconnected. But you don’t fly across the planet to do email — you go to meet with folks face to face.

To sum up: I think the advantages of focusing attention outweighed the problems associated with no WiFi network. Next time we do this we’ll probably have better acccess to a faster and more robust network. We need to think hard whether we want to utilize it, though.

Format

I think there was some skepticism around the BarCamp/unconference format prior to the conference, but it looks like the format proved very effective. For the most part, the unconf sessions and BoFs were booked solid and seemed to be very productive.

I wish I could have stayed Sunday for the lightning talks. I’ve seen the photos of the talks, but I would liked to have been there to see how well they went over.

The keynotes seemed to be well received, so we should probably look at doing something similar next time around. Maybe we should add more keynote slots? I’d love to hear suggestions for future keynotes.

Thanks!

The openSUSE Conference couldn’t have happened without a lot of hard work and planning. I’ve been involved in planning conferences before, but not as directly as this. I learned a lot in the process, which is to say that I had many assuptions about planning a conference that were corrected during the process of putting on the openSUSE Conference.

I’d like to thank (in no particular order) Michael Löffler, Alexia Henrie, Jacqueline Junghanns, Ulrike Beringer, Robert Lihm, Karl Cheney, Henne Vogelsang, Jan Blunck, the openSUSE Board and everyone else who volunteered their time and effort in organizing the conference. Each of you brought a great deal of energy, talent, and enthusiasm to this endeavor and it’s hard to overstate how important your contributions were to the project in general and the conference in particular.

I’d also like to thank our sponsors, B1 Systems, Linux Magazin, Aeroaccess, and (of course) Novell.

Finally, I’d like to thank all of the contributors who not only showed up, but jumped in with both feet and participated while having a lot of fun. Without you, none of the planning and organization would have made a difference. It was a distinct pleasure seeing so many openSUSE contributors together and getting to know one another. I have no doubt that we should do it again and again. Speaking of which…

Next Year

We don’t have an exact date for the next conference, but the current plan is to co-locate the next openSUSE Conference (we still need a snappier name!) alongside Brainshare Europe in May, 2010. We will publish additional details as soon as we have them.

And, of course, we’ll continue to attend and participate in other events like FOSDEM, LinuxTag, SCALE, and other important FOSS events.

Aside from the lack of network at the venue (something that, unfortunately, simply couldn’t be helped) things have been going amazingly well. Actually, the lack of network may have been a benefit in some cases because people have actually been talking to each other rather than just staring into their computers. But it’s also a challenge for some of the unconference sessions and so on, so we’ll be sure that the next event will have a rock-solid and beefy network.

Thursday was fantastic, we had great sessions and tons of great conversations. It’s been fun to meet community members I haven’t yet had a chance to meet in person, and catch up with all the contributors who’re attending. Thursday night’s party, pulled together by Henne and others, and sponsored by B1, was a blast. Great food (though a little less than we expected) and drinks (plenty), and fun. Thankfully, no dancing, but a great deal of fun.

Really impressed by the folks who’ve turned up — we have a great mix of Novell employees and community contributors, and the conversations and sessions have been very productive. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you get people face to face.

Today, for example, we had an excellent session on openSUSE governance with stakeholders from pretty much every aspect of the project: Novell developers paid to work on openSUSE, developers paid to work on SUSE Linux Enterprise who have an interest in openSUSE, members of the openSUSE community, and the board. Note that nothing final was decided in the meeting so community members who were unable to attend the conference will have the opportunity to weigh in later.We took two hours to talk through some of the recent decisions and how decisions are made with the openSUSE Project, and how things should be done.

We have several tracks at the conference — two tracks of pre-planned discussions, two rooms for the “unconference” which have been consistently lively and full, and the “hallway” track. More on those later, but I wanted to say — if you haven’t made it over to the conference yet, you’re missing out. We still have two days of awesome and room for more.

Tomorrow we have the Open Day track, in German, for Software Freedom Day — new users more than welcome! Tell your friends, your family, even your enemies if they need to learn Linux.

openSUSE Day kicks off at 10:00 a.m. (a completely reasonable and sane time, plenty of time to grab breakfast and coffee even if you’ve been to social events the evening before!) with a break for the LinuxTag keynotes between 13:00 and 15:00. Here’s the rest of the schedule:

• 10:00 – 10:30: openSUSE Day Introduction — Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier
• 10:30 – 11:00: Easy-LTSP – Configure an openSUSE LTSP server easily – Jan Weber
• 11:00 – 12:00: Was ist neu in openSUSE 11.2? – Andreas Jaeger
• 12:00 – 13:00: Do it Yourself: openSUSE Home Theater PC – Henne Vogelsang
• 13:00 – 15:00: Break for keynote
• 15:00 – 16:00: Wine – Windows Applikation und Spiele für Linux – Marcus Meissner
• 16:00 – 16:30: Warum mein WLAN nicht funktioniert? – Helmut Schaa
• 16:30 – 17:00: AppArmor in der Praxis – Christian Boltz
• 17:00 – 18:00: SUSE Studio: Maßgeschneidertes Linux für Jedermann – Cornelius Schumacher

If you’re in or around Berlin, you don’t want to miss it!

CPOSC organizers are looking for openSUSE contributors to speak at the event, so if you’re local to the area — please do put in a speaking proposal. The CFP is open through July 10th.We’re looking for openSUSE enthusiasts to spread the word at CPOSC, so be sure to sign up if you’re nearby.

If you need help prepping a talk about openSUSE, ask on the openSUSE Marketing mailing list — plenty of people on the marketing list would be happy to help proof and help develop the talk. If you need more info on CPOSC, ping the organizers or drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch.

A large part of the conference will be in “unconference” format — meaning that contributors attending the Conference will have the chance to set the agenda for much of the time, and discuss and work on topics of greatest interest. (Rather than sitting around watching someone give a presentation the entire time!)

A couple of folks have asked “why do you ask for my phone number and/or mailing address?” Generally speaking, we may not need these but it’s not uncommon to need to get in touch with a presenter or track leader quickly, especially right before a conference. We’d also like to have snail mail addresses in case we need/want to send something to you that doesn’t travel over TCP/IP. You will not be spammed or telemarketed to.

Have questions about the Conference? Drop me an email at zonker@opensuse.org.

*There is a bit of leeway here, so don’t worry if “end of day” in your time zone is later than end of day in Europe or North America.

This is the chance for contributors to get up and lead on the topics that are near and dear to their hearts. Note that’s contributors and not only developers (though, of course, developers are very welcome!). Whether you contribute as a translator, wiki editor, packager, developer, member of the marketing team, etc., this is for all openSUSE contributors.

The summit is not going to be composed exclusively of presentations and such. Much of the summit will consist of workshops, birds of a feather, hack sessions, and other hands-on participatory sessions. So come prepared to give a lot of input and have a lot of fun!

Deadline is May 20th. Get those proposals in!

Lots of great speakers this year – Jon ‘maddog’ Hall will be there, Monty Widenius, Allison Randall, and many more. I’m also giving a talk, and looking forward to that.

I had the chance to attend last year, and it was a great time. LFNW is organized by a really fun group of people, it draws a great crowd that’s pretty diverse — some experienced Linux users, some new users, some contributors, and all-around enthusiastic and great to talk to.

Meet  new and interesting people: We’ll also have an openSUSE Booth at the event. If you’re interested in helping with the booth, would love to have you there. If you’re interested meeting people and talking about openSUSE, drop me a line and we’ll get you on the schedule for a few hours!

Rideshare: Also – I’m arriving in Seattle Friday night around 9 p.m. — if you need a ride to Bellingham from Seattle, let me know!

Announcement for openSUSE here. If you have questions, please ask on the opensuse-project mailing list, or in IRC in the #opensuse-project or #opensuse-gsoc channels on Freenode. If you have general SoC questions, you can also ask in the #gsoc channel. Email me if you have additional questions, but asking on -project is probably the best way to go.

Ah, anyway – there are actually a couple of CFPs – one for Akademy, one for GUADEC, and they’ll also be posting CFPs for the local programme.

The CFP closes on April 10th – so not a lot of time if you want to get your proposal in. I’d like to see several openSUSE representatives at the Desktop Summit, so please be sure to submit those proposals! (I wouldn’t mind a few postcards from the Canary Islands, either…)