openSUSE Conference 2011 to be creative and open!

Time to get ready for the openSUSE Conference 2011

On Sunday the 11th of September it will be that time again: the openSUSE Conference starts. And of course we want an exciting program. Today, the proposal submission time starts and you have until July 11th to let us know what you want to discuss at the conference!

The openSUSE Conference

The openSUSE conference is where Free Software people meet. And a meeting of so many developers, artists, translators, documentation writers and others leads to great things! The latest Free Software technologies will be showcased, cool projects initiated and great ideas discussed. Last year, the conference was awesome and resulted in many new projects and collaborative efforts. This year, the conference will be combined with the SUSE Labs conference to bring even more brilliant minds together! The SUSE Labs conference has traditionally been about advancing low-level technology like the kernel and surrounding infrastructure as well as server related, deployment and management tools.

The openSUSE Conference 2011 will happen from Sunday 11th to Wednesday 14th of September in Nuremberg, Germany. This date shouldn’t conflict with too many other conferences. We’ll be open for registration and a pre-party on Saturday night! The website on conference.opensuse.org is being updated still and we’ll let you know once you can register.

We expect about 500 visitors this year and hence had to find a new location. A perfect spot was found in a previous industrial complex from AEG named ‘Zentrifuge’. This cultural center might not be the ‘usual’ space for an IT conference but offers a very creative and open space, currently used for art and music. Exactly right for the openSUSE Free Software gathering!

[caption id=”attachment_5315” align=”alignright” width=”300” caption=”The group hug 2010”][/caption]

This year: read AND write

Last year, the conference had the motto ‘Collaboration Across Borders’ and brought together an international crowd from many communities in one place. This year we’ll be shifting our attention a bit deeper, aiming for hands-on discussions to get work done. Smaller, more focused meetings with a strong “read-write” attitude are at the core of the openSUSE Conference 2011.

Hence the subtitle of rwx³, commonly known as the UNIX acronym for “Read, Write, Execute” - three times, for you, your community and the rest of the world!

Does that make sense to you? If so, join us and submit your proposal on what you want to do on the conference. Focus on activity, try to engage the people into your idea, pull the ideas out of them, make them get their hands dirty and their brains droopy.

We will accept workshops, brainstorm sessions, design meetings, question and answer sessions, hands on happenings and every activity where people get into interaction for the openSUSE project and the distribution of Free Software, Free content or Free culture in general. Yes, and we will accept traditional presentations as well…

[caption id=”attachment_5350” align=”alignright” width=”300” caption=”The Lizzard Lounge 2010”][/caption]

About what

The committee is looking for a wide range of talks and sessions from Free Software contributors, however openSUSE related topics are obviously very important. Some areas we are interested in include:

• Cloud, virtualization and appliances

• (multi) touch screens, new form factors and architectures like ARM

• OBS, packaging, Studio, KIWI

• Educational software

• Upstream and across project borders collaboration

• upcoming and hot technologies

• Google Summer of Code results

• Upstream project collaboration

We’d also like to give the local community a chance to join us on the evening of the first day (Sunday) and we look forward to a few generic ‘what is Free Software’ and ‘Installing openSUSE’ type workshops.

Types of sessions

To simplify the wide range of activities one could plan, we have created four different sessions following the Read/Write/Execute theme. For Read-Only there are talks with the traditional slides and 5-10 minutes Q&A at the end. For Write there are the BOF sessions where discussions can take place. Finally, in Workshops and Hacking sessions the Execute bit can be set!

Each session will last 40 minutes but for complicated subjects it is perfectly OK to ask for 2 consecutive or non-consecutive discussion or workshop slots! For more information about the format and how to give a talk, organize a Discussion/BOF or give a workshop, please refer to our guidelines for speakers. Authors are also advised to consult the code of conduct before submitting their paper.

Submission

The proposals can be submitted via the conference website.

Deadline for the submission is July 11th 2011.

EDIT: the deadline has been extended to July 24th 2011!

We look forward to your proposals. Have a lot of fun!