This edition of the openSUSE Conference is unique in many ways. If you’ve read the recent blogs by main organizer Kostas and openSUSE team member Jos Poortvliet reminiscing about the history of our conference, you know what we mean. Until now the former Boosters (and now openSUSE team) and some other SUSE employees were the core organizers of the event. This year, we’re in a far more supportive role. In this post we’d like to detail some of the things we’ve been working on!

Finance and administration

Of course, like previous years, SUSE is the Platinum sponsor of the openSUSE Conference. But we don’t just give money, we help spend it. We provide administrative and legal support to the organization team, helping execute tasks like dealing with providers, venue and sponsorship contracts, payments and more. Several departments at SUSE are involved in these activities internally coordinated by the openSUSE Team at SUSE and in particular by Agustin.

There is an important part of the administrative and financial support provided by SUSE related with the Travel Support Program. The openSUSE Conference is the most relevant community action openSUSE organizes so the workload related with this program increases this time of the year, specially this edition that the financial support has been doubled compared to the previous one. A report about the TSP will be publish during oSC13 by the TSP Comittee so you will get all the details there.

Video editing at oSC12

Technology: video, network

We are preparing the video coverage for this years oSC like we did it in 2012. That means we are recording all the talks of the three main rooms and we’ll try to publish them as sooon as possible. However, due to the reduced manpower of this years video team we might not be able to publish them on the day after. We’re aiming for perhaps during the week after the event.

Additionally we will provide live video and audio streaming of the talks worldwide. So even if you are not able to come to Greece you will able to see the talks you are interested in. And if you’re at oSC you could even try to attend two talks at once if you bring a video streaming capable device. The local team will try to make sure that the room chairs share questions from people joining remotely with the presenters.

SUSE also provides networking expertise in the form of Lars Vogdt, who’s also in charge of infrastructure in the Nuremberg and Prague offices and took care of networking for oSC12.

the openSUSE Booth at oSC12

Marketing and communication

A conference needs lots of communication over lots of channels and this is where community manager Jos Poortvliet helps out. There’s of course the main website, set up by Henne Volgelsang. Jos has done a fair bit in writing texts for it as well, helping Henne in maintaining the site with tasks like adding the sponsors when they came in or speakers for the program. Jos has also written or edited the majority of conference articles for news.opensuse.org, announcing things like the start of the travel support program request period, the Call for Papers, the program, sponsors, keynote speakers and more. Some of these were send out on our press channels.

Speaking of Press, Jos has tapped into his pool of press contacts, inviting journalists for the conference, helping to organize Media Partnerships and interviews. At the event, he’ll take care of the press, help them find people to interview and make sure they have a place to quietly work. He’ll also coordinate the communication, with help from the local team, making sure we send out tweets, facebook and Google-Plus messages and of course daily articles informing those who didn’t make it to the event about what is going on.

oSC12 workshop

Content

Michal Hrusecky was active for the openSUSE team on the CfP committee. That was in part due to his expertise as main organizer of the openSUSE Conference 2012 but also because the openSUSE team as a whole is committed to provide content for the conference: each member will perpare presentations and workshops, sharing their knowledge and experience. Michal coordinated this and made sure that if the CfP team saw gaps in the current proposals, the openSUSE team would attempt to provide the desired content. For example, Michal and Jos will provide daily “how to give awesome presentations” workshops.

Just part of the machine

All these activities represent a small fraction of the effort needed to organize such a conference. The heavy work is done this year by openSUSE community, specially by the local team lead by Kostas and Stella, among others.

The openSUSE Team, together with some other members of the Operation, Services and Communities department, are coordinating and/or executing most of these tasks assigned to SUSE. We are not the only ones, since other SUSE employees involved in openSUSE are helping in many different areas, like usual. But is the community who leads the event organization.

For SUSE, as you can imagine, it is easier to provide support close to any of our offices than in other countries. So we are open to have openSUSE Conference again in Nuremeberg or Prague in the future. In any case, our commitment to the openSUSE Conference is clear no matter where it take place.

The openSUSE community is getting mature so our relation as company with the project has to evolve. This new role that SUSE plays in the openSUSE Conference organization is just another sign of this evolution.

Statistics

And here then the statistics we promised two weeks ago and forgot last week… The top ~10 contributors to Factory last week, AND the list from the week before!

The top-10 contributors to openSUSE Factory in week 25:

The top-10 contributors to openSUSE Factory in week 24: