whoeps!

Sorry for the old blog posts flooding the planets - was not intentional... Not sure why that happened.

But at least I've got good news: If you're in or around Prague it is time to hurry to the SUSE offices - SuSE LINUX, s.r.o. Lihovarska 1060/12 Prague 190 00 Czech Republicn - for the KDE 4.8 release party!!!

I'll be showing what's new in the latest release and there are a few more talks. On the right proof that the CAKE IS REAL!

Remember - have a lot of fun!

GSOC 2012 for openSUSE

While writing this, the openSUSE Project meeting takes place on IRC and Manu Gupta is telling us about GSOC 2012. Yup, yup - openSUSE wants to join GSOC again! For that we need mentors and ideas - anyone who has not put any ideas up yet should do so asap at this page.

Other cool stuff going on is the organization of oSC 2012 - we hope to have a location soon and from then on we need help to make it happen. It will take place somewhere in October in Prague, that much is known. But finding a good place for 300-500 people, with proper BOF rooms, reasonably priced and preferably allowing us to do our own food (me loves cooking) is not easy at all.

The openSUSE Summit in the USA already has a location and place - check the awesome poster design on the right, done by andi. We're getting ready for a CfP and the other things needed to really make it happen. Anyone interested - let us know!

/me now goes for food with a bunch of crazies

openSUSE Travel Support Program

Heya all!

There is an exciting piece of last night... There is now a community-led openSUSE Travel Support Program!

This is something I've wanted to do since the day I became community manager for openSUSE. I've always believed that the budget I had in SUSE should be used for the openSUSE community. Initially, that meant that I moved money from the sponsoring of conferences to supporting openSUSE people going to conferences as well as providing them with goodies like DVD's, openSUSE beer, flyers and t-shirts.

But one thing never felt entirely right: who am I to decide on sponsorship for travel? I think that that is something the community should decide. So for a long time I have been discussing how to do this with a number of people including Bryen in his former role of Marketing team lead, the openSUSE Board, Andreas Jaeger and a number of other community members.

Now, finally, we have secured funds, and two community members have stepped forward to run this: Izabel Valverde from Brazil and Kostas Koudaras from Greece. I'm very happy with them doing this as the many events they have organized and the roles they play in their respective local communities has proven them to be more than capable. Over the last few months they have already been working closely with AJ and myself to decide upon and handle sponsorship requests and I'm sure they will do an excellent job going forward.

The travel program

So what will this mean for openSUSE? Well, the goal of this program is unfortunately not to give you all a nice holiday on a beautiful beach - SUSE has been rather reluctant when it came to funding beach parties and the like. I tried, really!

So the goal is to support those who would otherwise not be able to go to an event to (re)present openSUSE. If you're a student or want to make sure openSUSE has a presence at an event which is rather far away but has nobody else able to visit it - we want to help you. Just to give an idea - we'd pick poor students over rich working class, events which would otherwise have nobody over events which are well visited by Geekos already (like FOSDEM or LinuxTag...); we'd rather not always support the same person although we do prefer to support someone who's been active in openSUSE for a while and has proven to do a good job. I know it's impossible to make clear rules over who and when to support and we're always open for feedback but the final decision lies with the Support Program team.

Of course, as funds are limited, so is reimbursement. To support as many people as possible we reimburse only hotel and travel and both up to 80% of the total travel- and hotel costs. Also, those supported to go to an event are expected to send in a nice report afterwards (we really prefer a blog if possible!) and of course uphold the openSUSE Guiding Principles.

You can find more information about the travel program on the wiki page.

So go forth and spread the word!

So, if you were planning on going to an event but had to decide not to go due to a lack of funds - let us know! We can and really want to help you. Some of you put in an extraordinary amount of time and money to spread the word on openSUSE and you really deserve some help with that!

If you have any questions or concerns about the program, you can bring them up at the next openSUSE Project meeting (Wednesday 22) or email me or the team directly.

Almost done!

Jay. More C&J house news, feel free to skip :D

So we're almost there. I have my work space set up:

Yes, I like Club Mate... *click*

The only thing still coming is a couch to replace these two:

Two bean bags in the work room *click*

Once that's in, we have everything and just have to do the hanging up of the last things and clean up in the guest room. Need a guest to make us do that - anyone care to visit Berlin?

Bloody mess! *click*

The couch in the living room is rather awesome imho - a good relaxing space.

The clean side of the living room *click*

More pics starting here...

The other nice piece of news is that I've got my N9. And a German mobile phone number. I'm very happy with my new gadget... and can recommend the N9 to anyone, it's a great device!

And Bruno send me an awesome hat:

Silly faces rock! *don't click*

FOSDEM: Green Beer, Open Advice and more Cool Stuff™

Last weekend was FOSDEM and it was a blast! Camila's first and I get that she didn't look forward to it that much - we had some trouble on the way there. As I'm now just on the way to the airport to pick her up (she had a meet-up with some KolabSys people) I dunno if she changed her mind but I bet she did. If only because she got some Brazilian beans from Izabel Valverde ;-)

For me it was the usual - there was little visiting of talks for me. Seriously, 200 hours of talks in 2 days? Attempting to visit the interesting ones just leads to frustration so I've given up on that. There are just too many people to talk to, too much beer to drink and sell and little catch-ups to have. FOSDEM needs to become a week-long event. Seriously.

A cool highlight of FOSDEM was of course the release of Lydia's awesome Open Advice project. It's a book for people who want to participate and make a difference in Free Software, explaining our culture and drawing upon some bright minds for real-world experiences. It is quite a read - I only got as far as the introduction by ex-FSFE Dude Georg Greve and some first paragraphs of a few chapters. But it's worth it if what I've read is any indication. Of course, in true Free fashion, it's open and even ready to edit and improve if you want!

There was a lot of fun around the openSUSE crowd as usual. The crew did a great job selling t-shirts, hats, beer and other stuff all for the benefit of FOSDEM (we donated the proceeds of the sales as usual). The awesome 'Old Toad' beer was as popular as ever - it is indeed a great beer and a good way to keep the fun alive. The Greek(o)s really drove this part as they must've drunk at least half our supply ;-)

Oh and after being pressed Frank promised that he'll ensure ownCloud has a good booth next year. So, ownCloudies (can't think of a better name atm) - you guys & girls really have to take that dive in 2013!!! Don't let Frank pull it alone. Not that His Baldiness can't do that, it's just that he'd look lonely. We can't have that.

And at night the usual great dinners - Thai food one night, Japanese Tepan Yaki or something (fiery, dang) another. Finishing it off properly with a few beers.

By the way, I've set up the LinuxTag wiki page for the openSUSE gang, sign up!

hugs,
Jos