openSUSE Summit Geeko-ing Up: Website up, Call for Papers out!

We’re happy to announce that starting March 29 the openSUSE Summit team will accept session proposals for the openSUSE Summit. The openSUSE Summit will take place from September 21-23, 2012 in Orlando Florida at the Caribe Royale Hotel. The proposal submission period ends on June 15, 2012 at midnight EDT. Final announcement of the program will occur on or before July 23, 2012.

It’s live!

The Summit aims to continue the tradition of a fun and exciting gathering. We will deliver a bi-lingual event with some sessions offered in English and some in Spanish. In good openSUSE spirit we also want to make this event as welcoming as possible by inviting other projects to participate in the Summit.

On summit.opensuse.org you can see the results of the hard work of our marketing and artwork teams. We’re very proud that this website is live now, that we have a great logo as well as lots of other artwork like postcards, posters and even t-shirts. Aside from the prettyness we also have a sponsorship brochure on our Sponsors page and we’ve got our Call for Papers up.

Tracks

The openSUSE Summit will have 3 tracks as outlined below. Presentations, BoF (Birds of a Feather) sessions, and work shops are expected to align with the track topic.

openSUSE Community

The openSUSE Community track provides information and discussion around the openSUSE community. Topics include but are not limited to:

• Project governance and organization

• How can we improve and evolve as a growing community

• What is the task of an Ambassador

• How to get involved

openSUSE Tech

The openSUSE Tech track provides information, discussion, and hands on experience with the technology that makes openSUSE tick. Topics in this track include, but are not limited to:

• The openSUSE Factory development model

• Packaging hands on

• Wiki editing help

• What is OBS and how do I use it

• Tools of the trade of the Artwork team

open World

The open World track provides a platform to present your project, or listen to the interesting things our sponsors want to share. Topics in this track may cover demos and HowTos, FOSS project introductions, or other interesting topics from areas such as the “Maker movement”. This is also the platform for cross-community collaboration with upstream or other Linux distributions.

Fun

The openSUSE Summit, by virtue of being an openSUSE event, has fun high on the agenda. Therefore, proposals that are “outside the box” of a “regular” software focused conference are encouraged. Collaboratively Building a Giant Paper Mache Geeko has already been proposed and rejected due to environmental concerns.

How to submit session proposals

Submit proposals for the openSUSE Summit using the registration and submission website. If you have not spoken at a previous openSUSE event, please create a new account to submit an abstract. The abstract submission should contain at least a 200 word description of the topic you plan to discuss, as well as a short (~ 50 word) description of yourself.

Please note: All openSUSE events are governed by the openSUSE Code of Conduct. The speaker guidelines outline requirements for the submission of proposals and provide other valuable information for speakers.