To watch 360 video, first press PLAYBACK the main menu, then choose VIDEO FILTERS, and finally enable the SPHERICAL VIEW option to use the 360 viewing function.

For testing, I provide my 360 video on the link below for download. And to finalize at the end a demonstration video of the software running as the installation links ONE CLICK INSTALL in my openSUSE repository.

Video example for download AQUI!

Source in Brazilian Portuguese (Alessandro de Oliveira Faria A.K.A. CABELO): https://assuntonerd.com.br/2016/12/29/assistindo-video-360-no-linux/

On November 16th there was the release of openSUSE Leap 42.2. On November 24th, I had the opportunity to present openSUSE Project at school.

I was asked to make an introduction to FLOSS in general and more specific about openSUSE Project. The school was for middle aged people, for persons who quited school to work and conftibute financially to their families. There were 3 classes that they taught something computer related. It was a great opportunity for them to learn what FLOSS is and what makes openSUSE great Linux distro.

I busted the myth that “Linux is hard because you have to be a hacker, it’s terminal operated” I showed them how to install openSUSE Leap step by step (pictures) and also how to use GNOME (pictures). I mentioned our tools to make a very stable distro and finally I showed them that it’s not only a distro but there are people (the communtity) that take care of the software.

There were plenty of questions about linux software alternatives, how to install, if they can replace Ubuntu/Windows with openSUSE and what is perfect suit for specific systems. Each student took a DVD with stikers and a card with Greek community information. Professors will organize an install fest for their lab and/or laptops of their students.

I would like to thank Douglas DeMaio for managing to send me DVDs and stickers and Alexandros Mouhtsis that managed with his professors to organize this presentation. Finally, I would like to thank Dimitrios Katsikas for taking pictures.

You can find the same post at my blog.

We are happy to announce that Ramadoni Ashudi design from Indonesia is selected as official logo for openSUSE.Asia Summit 2016 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. As the winner Ramadoni Ashudi will receive a “magic box” from the committee.
Ramadoni Ashudi submit two designs and his design-2 selected by 28 voters. His design depicts his version of Tugu Yogyakarta, a monument built by Sultan Hamengkubuwono I, the first King of Yogyakarta in 1755.
Ana Maria Martinez from Spain also submit her version of Tugu Yogyakarta and selected by 17 voters on the 2nd place.
On the 3rd place, Shawhong Ser from Thailand submit a design that showing Arjuna character from Wayang Kulit, a traditional Javanese shadow puppet. Arjuna is the 3rd Pandava Brothers from Mahabharata. It is selected by 9 voters.

Total of voters = 65
Ramadoni Ashudi-2 = 28
Ana Maria Martinez = 17
Shawhong Ser =  9
Aris Winardi =  4
Ramadoni Ashudi-1 =  4
Kukuh Syafaat =  3
Danang Aji Bimantoro-1 =  0
Danang Aji Bimantoro-2 =  0

The complete result can be seen on the contest web page

Congratulation to Ramadoni, and many thanks and appreciation to Ana, Aris, Danang, Kukuh, Shawhong  for your participation in this contest.

Have fun.

The 8th Free and Open Source Software Communities Meeting (FOSSCOMM) took place in Athens (Greece), November 6-8th 2015 at the Technical Educational Institute of Athens.

The Conference started early on Saturday morning welcoming the participants and with the key note. Various presentations about open source software, hardware constructions and some workshops took place. Presentations such as Raspberry Pi arcade, openstack, OSGeo, ownCloud, Bitcoin and many more were quite interested by the visitors.

Greek openSUSE community was there with a booth and some presentations. On Saturday Alex P. Natsios presented “Enlightment on openSUSE”, an alternative GUI, and the other presentation was about “openQA”. Since openSUSE Leap 42.1 was very fresh, Alexandros Vennos took the opportunity to present what are openSUSE Leap 42.1 and Tumbleweed, the differences and what to install on what occasions. Presentation had title “openSUSE – Leaping Ahead”.

The booth was quite crowded. We had some left over DVDs of 13.2 but we proposed the visitors to install Leap 42.1. The question we were asked most was what is the difference between openSUSE Leap and Tubleweed and why to install and on what ocasion. We even created couple of bootable USBs from the ISOs of Leap. We had a Banana Pi running Tumbleweed with MATE playing a video loop of openSUSE Leap 42.1 KDE review. We gave almost all of our promo materials to the visitors since they were interested on openSUSE.

For more pictures check Flickr

Many thanks to openSUSE/SUSE who willing to become one of the sponsor for this event. I organized some friends from Indonesia openSUSE community to make an openSUSE booth. We prepare several PC and RasPi for some demo and displaying openSUSE 13.2. I really appreciate the help from Andi Sugandi, Yan Arief Purwanto, and Adnan Kurniawan for their time in this event. Joey Li from SUSE Taiwan, Max Huang from Taiwan openSUSE community and Bin Li from China openSUSE community, also came and joint us on the event.

During 2 days (May 8-9) of the event our booth always full of visitor. They asked many questions regarding openSUSE and we tried to answer it directly as we can. We distributed around 200 DVD (openSUSE 13.2 x86_64) and stickers. We also make a short quiz/questionnaire and the top 30 people with highest answer will get a nice looking t-shirt on the 2^nd day

On the 2^nd day me and Joey Li were also give talk. My presentation is “Linux for Basic Education, Is it Feasible?”, while Joey Li is talking about “Signature Verification of Hibernate Snapshot”

Thanks to wonderful people of openSUSE and GNOME, and finally some happy face with openSUSE t-shirt!

More photos can be seen on GNOME.Asia 2015 Flickr Group

We’ve seen how to gather some people and create a community (at least that’s the quick tutorial how it worked for us in Greece).

The product is cool (any product) but here we have people. They should know WHY they join a community as volunteers. Is it because they want to help FLOSS to make the world a better place? Is it because it is Fun? Is it because they like the pros that open source provides? Is it because they like to help other people? Find out WHY people want to join-form a community.

The key to increase the number of the members is to attend to events. Here a quick tutorial how to do that. The best possible scenario is a developer to come to your booth and join the team. But this is 1% possible to happen (maybe less). Usually developers we’re searching, they have their favorite distro/project and they don’t change so easy.

The best thing is to join events where you can find end users (end users = users they’re computer science students where they focus on windows, users that their computer being used for facebook/twitter/office suite). Why? Because those users can do some work that the developers hate. What’s that?

0. Junior Jobs. Write a junior jobs list where someone can find exactly what to do and how to do it. The list could have the following.
1. Report bugs to bugzilla. So developers can fix it (of course developers have to be polite and help end users to provide possible broken data etc).
2. Documentation. Developers just hate to write documentation.
3. Translation. Usually developers use some “strange” language. So if someone asks you, please be polite and reply.
4. Promotion. Everyone call it marketing. The term marketing seems that the distro/project earns money out of promotion. Maybe the best term is engagement. This is needed because if it’s the best distro/project among others, how more potential users will learn about it? And if it’s the best, if no one uses it, then it’s useless.

Usually end users join the community not because of the product but because of the people (remember to find your WHY people should join the community). They stay in the community ONLY because of the people. If he/she doesn’t feel good, then he/she leaves. Unfortunately community is a number of volunteers. There’s not someone that orders them to do something. If there’s someone that will present the result of the community as his/hers, then people will leave and community terminates.
Sometimes, members expect something in return. If there’s a company that supports your open source project, then maybe they expect material or money. It’s not like that because as volunteer you’re doing your hobby. If your hobby become your job later, that’s the best for you.

So the question is how to keep the community together? The answer is you can’t.
If everything is ideally, everyone grow. The time they spend as volunteers is limited. They have personal life. They have careers.
So what’s the workaround? Find more people before your time will become limited.

But why the article has a title:
From end user to developer

Well, as I mentioned before, it’s impossible a developer from Fedora to decide to do development only for openSUSE. So every project has to “develop” developers. How to do that? Volunteers in the community they join as end users. They like the various aspects of the project and want to search more. They can find a way how to contribute on bug fixing (there should be an end user to report a bug). Then they learn a programming language and they learn also how to package. So they become developers. Maybe the community is -1 person (because he/she might be tired-boring to travel and promote) but the project is +1 developer.

Develop developers. Help end users to grow.

Local open source community is bigger now and next step for you is to organise (or join) global conferences. One part of the organisation is the promotion of the conference. You want to have as many visitors as you can.

I will try to write down what I did during openSUSE global conferences and some local events.

BEFORE THE EVENT

0. Web page

There MUST be a web page and a system that accepts registration, paper submission, information etc. Write everything that visitor should know about the conference.
We use OSEM in openSUSE. Check out https://events.opensuse.org

1. Blog blog blog.

You’ll have some announcements for the conference. Dates, the place, new website, call for papers announcement, hotels that visitors can stay, schedule, keynote speakers etc. Usually, every open source project has a central blog or news site. You can write the articles there. Try to make fuzz by publishing your articles often.
Global communities can translate the announcements to their language and promote the conference locally.

Local communities are formed by members with blogs who publish on different planet sites. You can make a schedule so everyone can publish the announcement every other day. More eyes will see the announcement and will apply either as speaker or visitor.

Two things you want to have is contributors+visitors and sponsors. If your project is famous, then it’s easy. If not, then you better publish the initial announcement to magazines, newspapers, technical blogs-sites. If you don’t have access, then you better send it by e-mail or fax and then call them and ask them if they got the text. If they publish it, you’re lucky.

Translate those announcements and publish them, so local population will see that there’s a conference coming.

2. Promote to other FOSS conferences

There are plenty of FOSS conferences around the world.
* Community (local or global) has to apply for a booth and/or, if it’s possible, present why someone should attend.
* At the booth, you should have promo materials of your conference and give away to local LUGs or hackerspaces to hang posters at their places.
* Another cool thing is to have free coupons for beer at the conference. If beer isn’t the solution, then find another thing that can be found only at your conference and give free coupons.
* Wear special T-Shirts with the logo or #oSC or “Ask me for the conference”. You show people that you’re organizing something and can ask you questions.
* Finally, go to other project’s booth and invite them. You can ask them if they want to have a booth at your conference or apply for a presentation.

3. Messages to post

Create a list of messages you’ll post to social media.
First of all, you should post the announcements.
Then create a list of general messages that you should post before the conference. Content will be related to the subject of the conference or the country etc.
When you have the schedule ready, create a post with the name of the person (mention him/her on the social media), the title of the presentation (mention if it’s a famous project).
The messages can be 2-3 per day but not the same time. Try to have 4-5 hours time delay between tweets.

4. Twitter

Create a twitter account that will be used for the conference. Everyone can use it as hashtag (#) and also can communicate with you before and during the conference. For openSUSE we had #opensuseconf as hashtag. The account was @opensuseconf
The same account can create the Lanyard event (you’ll see next).

5. Facebook event page

Create a Facebook event page under the official account of the project. Post the tweets here as well. Post the messages (no 2). If you have some cool documentation of the subject that will be presented, just post it.

Since the address will be difficult to remember, create a subdomain under your project’s name (eg facebook.conference.opensuse.org) that will forward it to the event page.

6. Google Plus event page

Do the same as facebook. Some people hate to use facebook, so google plus is the solution. Do the same also with the URL.
Google Plus event notifies to e-mail every user about changes. So if you post, they’ll get a notification.

7. Lanyard event page

This isn’t very famous but it’s very cool. It uses twitter accounts. You setup the event and when you have the schedule, you can add the subject and mention the speaker. You can also use it to post announcements.
Here is the lanyard of openSUSE conference 2014

8. Meetup.com event

If money is not an issue for your project, you can create an event at http://www.meetup.com

9. IRC, mailing lists, forums

You have to create an IRC channel where you reply all possible questions. There’s also mailing list for that.
To promote the conference, you should post the announcement to mailing lists, forum of all possible projects (eg if we’re oprnSUSE, then post to GNOME, KDE, ownCloud etc). And try to inform the posts with the new announcements.

10. Flickr

Create a group where people can upload their pictures, so everyone who blogs can use those pictures. You can create it before the event starts and post picture from the venue, before you set it up.

DURING THE EVENT

1. Messages to post

Create a document with messages to post with all the presentations. The message has to be:

Presentation title (with mention) @ #Room_name. Not @ #oSC15 #openSUSE? Live @ Stream_URL

Create a table. Columns will be the rooms, rows will be the timetable. So you’ll check the time and post the right one.

WARNING: Check with program team if there was a day change of the program. Also check the right Stream URL.

2. Twitter

Here you start posting the messages per time. Don’t forget the mentions to people, projects and the #. Here you mention someone by using @username.

3. Facebook event page

Same as Twitter, don’t forget to mention. Here mention is with @Project name. Here you can use more characters that twitter. So here you can also add the hashtag of your project (eg #opensuse, #opensuseconf)
Ask people upload pictures here. Also ask people to post their reports.

4. Google plus event page

Same as Twitter, don’t forget to mention. Here mention is with +Project name. Here you can use more characters that twitter. So here you can also add the hashtag of your project (eg #opensuse, #opensuseconf).
Again, ask people to upload pictures here. Also ask people to post their reports.

5. IRC

You can post here as well. Some people didn’t join you or they just see live streaming and use IRC to ask the speaker. So it’ll be nice if theres the program of what’s in every room with the streaming URL.

6. Streaming

The social media guy is responsible to handle all the above. He checks if the streaming is working and if not, then warns the video team. It’s good for him because he can see all presentations but it’s kind of “I’m locked somewhere and I don’t mingle with people”.
Users who didn’t make it, they can see the conference over the Interent.

7. Flickr

Try to gather all pictures and upload them in the afternoon, so everyone who wants to blog, can use the pictures from there (there are Google Plus and Facebook events as alternatives). It’s very cool if the pictures are up very soon, so everyone can view them.

This is an attempt to make a list of things that someone-group of people can follow to develop a healthy community or team. This post is an overview of what I did with Kostas for the Greek openSUSE community.
A small detail is that we were only 2. So we took decisions fast. We didn’t have to vote or something.
We had an “advantage” because we have an awesome global community and we asked for something we weren’t sure how to proceed.

Let’s start:

0. Have a clear goal. What you want to do. Have a big goal that some parts aren’t “visible” when you start.
1. Web page: This is the web page-blog that will show information about community, the distro or the project. Make it visible on planets. BE CAREFUL. Don’t focus on how to make a great site-blog using personal wordpress, drupal etc. Set it up on blogger and start post articles. You want CONTENT (write an article every other day). Don’t spend time to maintain or secure your web page.
2. Mailing list: Ask the project if they can setup for you. If not, then try to find alternatives such as google groups.
3. IRC Channel
4. Forum: Prefer to ask from the project to setup a section for your language. If your project doesn’t have forum, then ask a LUG or tech forum to use their’s. Do not have your forum setup in your host for the same reasons as before. Don’t spend time to maintain or secure the forum.

The above list is the MUST have to start.
A key to everything is to try to have all information in your language, so it’ll be “attractive” to people who like the idea of open source but they don’t speak English. What’s the role of such people? They can organize local events.

Next step is to advertise the whole project-distro. This can happen:
1. Write to blogs-forums (technological or not).
2. Create Facebook group/page and advertise your attempt to other groups/pages.
3. Create Twitter account and tweet news about your community.
4. Create Google Plus Profile/Community.
5. Contact press. First contact local and then national press.
6. If you have a newsletter or weekly magazine, it’s good to translate it (or a piece of it), so the open source community in your country will learn about you and your projects.

Before deciding what social media accounts to create, be aware that you have to maintain them. So search the web, what social media is more famous to users. For “tech” users, Google Plus Communities is the perfect place. It also can be used instead of Forums.

A distro or project, it’s not all about write code. It’s have fun. So advertise it.
1. Release parties. When a new release is out, it’s time to party.
2. Meet ups. A good place to organize them is http://meetup.com/. A meet up can be also a hangout.
3. Special teams. Check Fedora‘s example.
4. Beer-drinks. Check out ChicagoLUG.
5. Organize events on your own (start small and then go big). For example install fest or special nights (2 hours of projects presentations and 3-4 hours hacking). Join events (even cohost with other organizations) or conferences that will show people what you do. You should search some big events in your country and attend. Here is a tutorial about your presence at conference.
6. Then go big. Examples? Organize something like openSUSE summer collaboration camp or if there’s a global conference, you can host it.

After you find people to follow you, then you can let them run special tasks (such as social media handling or forum moderator). When you’re all set locally, then you can go global and show what you did.

During the process, don’t act as leader or president. Since we’re all volunteers on this, no one likes if someone is ordering people to do tasks. People like coordination. Someone that will remind the community deadlines, news, special days. Announce the results of a task, cheer up people by reward them (somehow).

People don’t follow you for what you do. They follow you for why you do it.
So you have to know why you create a community.

A very good reference is Jos Poortvliet’s blog about 5 steps to organizing a meetup. It’s a small start that might go big.

Original post:
Personal Blog

1. Read the tech news
Read the news (RSS, social networks, mailing lists). There are many conferences that you can join (some conferences are annual). Unfortunately, the organizers might skip to sent you invitation because you’re either too small project without any marketing section or they forgot you for their reasons. You should contact them and ask them to join as community-project. Most conferences have call for papers period, where you can apply for a presentation.

2. Community Meetings
Now that you made the first contact, you should sent an e-mail to your project mailing list, informing them about the conference and asking for an IRC meeting. At the kick off meeting, someone MUST be the coordinator of everything (the tasks are following). Another thing that should be clear is how many members of the community will join. You have to decide early because you can book your trip and accommodation (if the conference is quite big, there won’t be any rooms available for you). Travel as a team. If you decide early, you can ask for sponsorship, like openSUSE Travel_Support_Program or GNOME Travel sponsorship (GNOME for smaller events).

3. Ideas for the coordinator
Coordinator doesn’t mean that he/she does everything himself/herself. It means that he/she knows everything about the trip and contact the organizers:

* First of all create a wiki page about the event. See some examples at openSUSE or GNOME. Ask members who will join, to write down their name and what materials can bring (even if they’ll have their laptops).

* Contact organizers for the booth. How many people will help at the booth. How many plugs do we need. If there’s a possibility to provide us with projector or monitors or tv.

* Blog post at community’s blog. Re post from members of the community to their personal blogs on different days (we want many people to read it on different days).

* Social media team. Find the conference’s facebook and google plus events and join. If they don’t have, contact them and ask them if it’s OK to create one. Ask members of the community to join the events. Ask members of the community to post everyday something about your project at the social networks event pages (something like: DON’T MISS THE PRESENTATION BY … AT …). Don’t forget to use a hashtag you want for the specific conference (like #project_is_coming). Remember to use also the “normal” hashtag (example #project). Ask members of the community to retweet you.

* Don’t forget to bring a camera. Bring one or more cameras to take pictures or videos. Those pictures will be used for reports (blog posts), upload them to your facebook-google plus groups. Also ask everyone that brought his/her own camera to upload the pictures to your groups or send them directly to you, so you upload them to public place. Don’t forget to take the family picture.

4. Swag for the booth
If you’re lucky and there’s a global project that sponsors your swag, then ask them to send you promo materials. Here comes the coordinator. If the conference is away from your home, then he/she can contact the organizers and the project’s marketing materials coordinator to mail them directly to the organizers’ address. If you want to keep some promo materials for future events, then you can ask them to mail them to your place. Regarding openSUSE, they can sponsor you to create some promo materials yourself with the openSUSE Travel Support Program.
If your project is small and you don’t have enough money to support it, try to have some brochures about it and maybe some promo cd/dvds.
Other promo materials are stickers, posters, T-Shirts, buttons, cubes, caps, plush toys etc.
Here comes the confusion. In my country (Greece), people think the swag is free. On the other hand, they ask us “how the community-project earn money?”. Well, personally, I think someone who wants something should “donate” to project. Unfortunately some countries have strict financial rules and it’s hard to “sell” something unless you give receipt. Well, I won’t analyze this now since it’s out of the scope of this post.

5. We’re at the conference
Tips to remember:

* Try to wear the same T-Shirt, so everyone will know that you’re from the same project and can come talk to you.

* Remember only one person stays behind the table and all the others in front of the table and speak with visitors. It’s better to stay 2 of you in front of the desk so it’ll be easier for the visitor to talk to you and ask than just one person and wait for the visitor to talk to him (it’s psychology). Remember to smile.
Another idea is how to setup your table at the booth. The best solution to have as many visitors as possible is to setup you table behind you, at the wall. That way you’ll have free room to stand and talk with visitors. You’ll make them to pass you to get some swag as well and either you or the visitor can start talking. Also this setup is just like hug someone and make him feel welcomed (thanks to Jos Poortvliet for this tip).

* Visitors like people from the projects to “goofy” around. Try to play games each other or with friends from other projects. Visitors are very bored of serious guys with suits to try to “sell” them products.

* If a smaller project cannot be present with a booth, you can host them at yours. Let them bring their swag. It’ll be cool for visitors to know about their existance and also they’ll talk to you about your project.

* Another cool thing you should do (if the room for the booth is enough), you can organize small talks (10-15 mins each). Make a small schedule and print it. Then go to put it on the wall around the venue. Everyone will notice that you’ll have short presentations and also your project’s logo.

Check out my presentation at openSUSE conference 2012:

Non verbal communication (presentation file)

* It’s prohibited to sit and work at your computer. Visitors aren’t interested on projects with someone watching his laptop screen at the booth. You’re there for a reason. Talk to people. If there’s emergency and you have to chat or reply mails or write code, go to a presentation and do it there. No one will notice.

* Someone should be at the social media. Repost what the official channels post and also do the same if someone from your team is at a presentation and uses his/her social media. That person could be from home (someone didn’t attend) since he/she can view online streaming all the presentations. If the person is at the conference, try to upload the pictures right after the photographer took them.

6. Aftermath, afterparty, after after…
You’re back. What happened? People MUST know about it. Write a report (even short one) at your community’s blog and the wiki page. Use the pictures you took. Send the link to the channels you promoted your party (facebook, google plus, twitter, mailing lists, forums etc) and ask members of your community to repost to their blogs-social media accounts (on a different days).