-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Being part of the core FOSDEM organization staff, I'd like to trigger this again, giving a few more details. Christoph Thiel wrote:

Hi everyone, the sixth Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (commonly known as FOSDEM, [http://www.fosdem.org/]) will take place during the last week-end (25&26) of February 2006 in the city of Brussels, Belgium. It's an annual 2-day event hosting talks, tutorials, and stalls for the free software/open source community. It is organized by volunteers at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. Access to all parts of FOSDEM is free, but donations and sponsors are welcome to help fund the event.

As a side note for those who don't know the event... FOSDEM is one of the top FOSS events in Europe (for many projects it's even the major event of the year). Last time (2005) we had an estimated 2500-4000 visitors over the week-end (it's a gross estimation, as the entrance is free we don't have any exact numbers ;)), with even more visitors to expect this year (number of visitors has been growing constantly every year). Yes, you read that right: entrance is free for everyone (although donations are welcome, and you get T-shirts, O'Reilly books, ... ;)). While other events in Europe are larger in terms or raw size (e.g. LinuxTag), we believe to have the edge in terms of quality and "being a _real_ community event". FOSDEM is particularely appreciated for not being spoiled by sponsor/big vendor talks/show-offs as well as being highly technical, packed with talks by key developers and project leaders of the Free and Opensource community. As an example, here's last edition's (2005) lineup in the main tracks: Ethan Galstad (Nagios), Marty Roesch (Snort), Gerald Combs (Ethereal), Alexander Dymo (KDevelop), Andreas Zeller (DDD), Benoit Minisini (Gambas), Mathias Ettrich (KDE), Olivier Fourdan (XFCE), Alex Larsson (Nautilus), Marius Mauch (Gentoo), Jeff Johnson (RPM), Stuart Winter (Slackware), Alax Cox (Kernel), Alasdair Kergon (Kernel), Pat Mochel (Kernel), Olle Mulmo (Globus), Alan Robertson (Linux HA), Ken Preslan (OpenGFS) => http://fosdem.org/2005/index/schedule.html We also provide FOSS projects with so-called "DevRooms" (Developer Rooms) where we basically assign conference rooms to various projects (upon request), where they can schedule their activities as they wish (talks, hacking, sessions with other projects, ...). Here's the list of devrooms/projects we have this year: openSUSE, KDE, Gentoo, GNOME, Debian, Embedded Linux, Mozilla Europe, openGroupware, GNUstep, Tcl/Tk, Jabber, GNU Classpath (GCJ+Kaffee+Harmony+GNU Classpath+SableVM+...), Calibre, Ada, Debian (and one I may not disclose as of now ;)). Last year, the talks in the devrooms alone summed up to 140 over the week-end (not counting the 24 talks in the main tracks + 2 introductory + 1). Just to make clear this is a major event and a place to make a lot of contacts as well as to attend great talks ;)

As you may have already noticed (because Pascal blogged about it), we will have an openSUSE 'DevRoom' (Developer Room) @ FOSDEM and most likely a booth as well. Therefore, we are in the very early stages of preparation and would like to team up with you to organize the openSUSE @ FOSDEM event.

Precisely, I think that would be the most interesting option. - - getting information about the progress and future plans of openSUSE/SUSE Linux from Novell/SUSE staff members - - people from the openSUSE community make presentations about e.g. SUPER, SLICK, community repositories, documentation, ... - - serve as a showcase to other FOSS projects and visitors But, and that's probably the most interesting part, we can also make use of that event to make very interactive sessions, where we (Novell/SUSE staff + community members) meet up to discuss future directions, possible improvements, initiatives, etc... We'll have a large room with 150 or 200 seats for the whole week-end (= 1.5 days). The event kicks off at 10:30 with the 2 introductory talks, and from 13:00 on the devrooms and main tracks have their go. This means for devrooms: - - Saturday 25th Feb: 13:00 - 17:00 - - Sunday 26th Feb..: 10:00 - 17:00 We also organize a few side activities: - - key and CAcert signing - - Tutorial sessions (6 x 1h) - - hacker rooms, open for anyone - - a buffet at a hotel in Brussels (good occasion to meet a lot of interesting people ;)) Wireless internet connectivity is provided almost everywhere, with cabled access available in the "hacker rooms" (and in most DevRooms). Also, LPI will organize 4 Linux certification exam sessions over the week-end, at a (*very*) reduced rate (exact price to be announced in the next few days).

To start off, we would like to get your opinion on what topics, presentation, talks, tutorials, etc. you would expect from openSUSE @ FOSDEM? And if you would like to deliver a presentation, talk, tutorial? The ultimate goal would be to have presentations distributed equally amongst community members and SUSE / Novell employees.

Here are some possible topics, that are basis for discussion far: - presentations + openSUSE in general (what happend so far, what's up next)

Yes, also to give a chance to visitors and people from other projects to have a look at what openSUSE really is and what (y)our plans are.

+ openSUSE build infrastructure

That's a must. Adrian, you won't escape from doing this talk ;))) And for end of February, maybe we could even see a demo... ? ;)

+ SUSE Linux 10.1 - highlights and features - dicussion + SUSE Linux 10.2 - dicussion / plans for the future

That pretty much hits what I mentioned above, an open discussion about openSUSE's future.

+ Usability and Documentation - tutorials + packaging the SUSE-way

This could be held by someone from Packman (or me) ;)

+ using the build infrastructure + LIVE CD construction

Or rather a presentation of SUPER or SLICK.

+ Customizing SUSE Linux

That's it for the moment, we are all looking forward to a lively discussion and a great collaboration.

... which didn't really happen up to now. Cmon folks, there have been a lot of people criticizing openSUSE for "not being open enough", now that's a great occasion to show off and move forward as a community ;) As a side note, every project that has a devroom _must_ send in a schedule of the planned activities. The deadline hasn't been set yet, but expect it to be something like mid January. That means we have to start discussing it right now. Who would be interested a) to come to the event, and attend the openSUSE devroom b) participate and make a presentation or demo (30-45) on something about openSUSE/SUSE Linux c) propose a topic to be presented by Novell/SUSE staff members Send in some feedback. cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ <pascal.bleser@skynet.be> <guru@unixtech.be> _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFDj4S+r3NMWliFcXcRApXrAKC6gIaLNQ/9zyLlHHZNZEAoWTB7lQCcDpE0 lR9eO02IiCTSVnkOSA0gRFw= =zTT0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----