Wednesday: Release Party in Berlin!

On wednesday is our Nextcloud meetup and - Nextcloud 11 will be released, so let's make it a release party! Bring some snacks if you like, let's drink a beer or two, get our servers upgraded perhaps.

See and RSVP here:

https://www.meetup.com/nextcloud-berlin/events/235596178/

When: Wednesday, December 14, 2016 7:00 PM

Where: C-Base, Rungestraße 20, 10179 Berlin

We're in the main room. C-Base is at the river, all the way to the end from the street. You're there if you get geeky tingles from the murals :D

I look forward to seeing you there, everyone's invited! That includes KDE friends, by the way, would be fun to see the bunch of you! You can RSVP in the comments here or on meetup.com...

CU there!

BBQ and forking

Last night we had our first Nextcloud BBQ! Despite some rain it's a good start of something that should be a tradition. ;-)

It was great to have conversations with the contributors who visited us as well as some downtime with the team. It's been a busy time since we announced our new endeavor. And it continues to be awesome to get so many supportive comments and feedback on what we're up to! People are excited about our open strategy and appreciate the fact that there is a solid company behind it. The flood of incoming requests for information and support from customers presents a good problem. So let me point out, again, that we're hiring!

Nextcloud hackweek and open BBQ!

Yesterday we kicked off a meeting in Stuttgart to discuss Nextcloud and get work done. A first result is the establishment of the new Server repository on Github (and more repositories!) and we'll share other things on the forums and in Github issues the coming days. The real important news however is that we decided to organize a BBQ!

If you're in the area, we'd love to see you show up Wednesday at Egilolfstraße 31, Plieningen/Hohenheim close to Stuttgart Airport. Nearest public transport would be either U3 Plieningen or S2/3 Flughafen/Messe. Join us starting 6PM for the good times!


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We'll have some alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, meat, fruits, veggie stuff and of course a BBQ. Give us a shout if you're coming on the forums!

FOSDEM 2016 and ownCloud, Kolab, KDE and more

Devices at our booth

After rocking SCALE, FOSDEM was next and a great event. Killing, too - two days with about 8000 people, it was insane. Lots of positive people again, loads of stuff we handed out so we ran out on Sunday morning - and cool devices at the ownCloud booth.

Team

When we still had stickers and Jan still liked me

We had quite a team at the booth, with Frank Karlitschek, Philippe Hemmel, Jan-C Borghardt, Lukas Reschke and myself. Lukas visited his first FOSDEM and even though he started to complain a bit on Sunday about having had to many social interactions, he enjoyed it. Philippe was at his first ownCloud booth but has helped out at booths before so that went entirely smooth and Jan - well, he's so popular, people were nice to me a few times thinking I was Jan. I had to disappoint them, Jan was often to be found in the Design devroom where he gave a talk about how we do design at ownCloud (see also our earlier blog about 6 ownCloud User Interaction Design Principles).

Lukas and cameras don't go together well

My experience was the usual FOSDEM rush with so many people already there at 9:30 on Saturday (even though it is supposed to start at 10:00) that you barely have time to think, eat & drink or walk around and talk to old friends. I already had a long day on Friday as I went to a community statistics workshop by Bitergia but I'd even be tired after FOSDEM if I had a week to sleep in before...

Stuff

Frank pushes press away ;-)

We had lots of stuff at the booth. Our usual stickers, flyers and some posters as well as my laptop where people could see ownCloud and sign up to our newsletter (80 new readers, yay). We also had some very cool devices, 2 prototypes from our friends at Western Digital and a spreed.me box, stay tuned as we have some cool news coming from there soon ;-)

Unfortunately, I hadn't brought enough stickers and flyers, we ran out in the morning of Sunday already, as Jan couldn't help but tell me over and over again. Yes, I brought over twice as much as last year but I guess I didn't factor in the growth in popularity of ownCloud... I'll double up again next year. Maybe triple.

It was great to talk to people about ownCloud, the devices, give them stickers and, in rare cases, explain what ownCloud is. Most people who walked by the booth already used ownCloud (yeah, techie crowd!) or are planning to, just one out of 10 has not heard of it. In general, my biggest regret at FOSDEM is that there are still people walking by whom we didn't manage to talk to. Perhaps more of those don't know the awesome that is ownCloud and are put off by the busyness at our booth - at many times, there was a row of 3-4 people thick in front of the booth and three of us were each talking to several people at once. Did I mention it was insanely busy?

Other booths

I did have some time to walk around and meet people at other booths, like the KDE, openSUSE and Kolab booths close by, as well as the FSFE stand. And I will promise myself, again, that I'll walk past all booths next year. Next year... Looking forward to it already!

FSFE let you send postcards to your favorite projects! A really nice initiative.

KDE showing their 'convergence'. The had Plasma Desktop running on an oDroid C1, quite smooth, and a mobile phone running Plasma Mobile! And very nice name stickers, too.

Happy Kolab team

Selfie with Markus Feilner - now at openSUSE. Their booth was close to ours, good to see so many old friends there again, including a strong Greek delegation!

Give me a shout if you want to help out at the ownCloud booth at FOSDEM or other events as we can always use more helping hands...

ownCloud, openSUSE and KDE in Brazil?

Hi ownCloud, KDE and openSUSE peeps!

We will soon be traveling to Brasil to visit family in various places (from Amazonia to Rio Grande do Sul). We'll land in Sao Paulo and stay there between February 9 and 11 - if you're a KDE, ownCloud or openSUSE contributor in that area and want me to try and bring some swag like flyers, stickers and posters for events, we could meet! Perhaps there's time for a lunch or dinner at some point.

Ping me, either here below in the comments or by sending me an email.

Videos from our last trips to Brasil:

I'll be at SCALE and FOSDEM, how about you?

Next week, the Fourteenth Annual Southern California Linux Expo kicks off in Pasadena, LA. A week later it's FOSDEM time, in Brussels, Belgium. Both events have a ownCloud booth and a KDE booth, and both can use some help! More importantly, I have to tell you why you should bother.

  

Helping at a Booth

You might read this (and other blogs asking for help at a booth) thinking

"why the heck would I bother"

or

"why me, I've never done this before"

It seems, perhaps, a crazy tiring and difficult thing to do, standing at a booth and talking to people all day. Coding beats it any time, you'd think. Well, believe me: reality could surprise you!

Let me ask first:

Have you ever visited a geek conference like FOSDEM, SCALE, or something smaller, locally?

If not, let me tell you - it is a blast. Interesting technology but more importantly - interesting people. Often, you can talk to the people who "do the work" and believe me, they have things to say.

"Conferences are like rock concerts: the back stage experience is THE BEST"

But let me tell you a secret. Conferences are like rock concerts: the back stage experience is THE BEST. Seriously, being part of the booth team adds a whole extra dimension to the experience. First, because you get to talk far more intensely with the rest of the team - you'll be there setting up the booth, having breakfast in the morning and beers together at night, plain awesome. But don't discount the visitors. Many have interesting questions and stories to tell and the conversations can be fascinating.

The Good Stuff

Now you might say:

"but it is hard work, right, with hard questions to answer? And all I get is a free entree ticket..."

Yeah, true on the ticket. And you might not be a huge fan of people and talking in the first place, perhaps, I get that, too.

But you're still wrong about it. You see, these conversations aren't like a typical birthday party chit-chat where you have to explain (again) what you do, be nice and social to your aunts you don't like and all that. Nor is it like the pressure of a business meeting, or a networking session. It is nothing like that!

It is hard to explain, but let me try. It is more like trying to help that colleague who recently joined and just doesn't know the product very well. See, people are almost always nice, interested and just as geeky as you. You might not know the but it isn't about that: they don't really talk to "you" but to "KDE" or "ownCloud". Even if you're not naturally a speaker or enthusiastic, the conversations are very easy. As a matter of fact, after having had five, you'll notice four of those went almost exactly the same and you'll develop a kind of elevator pitch, not the fancy ones, but the ones you just naturally assume. Believe me, before you know it, you'll be approaching people who haven't asked a question yet and ask if you can help them.

"Some visitors can be best described with words usually bleeped out on TV."

The difficult people

Of course I won't claim it is all, always easy. Sometimes, visitors can be described with words usually bleeped out on television. I won't lie to you. But even this isn't too hard to handle. First, because you don't write all of the code in your project, or even none in many cases (like mine). You don't have to take it personally. Plus, realize that, in most cases, those being difficult do it because they care: they wish the project was more, better than it is - that happens to be a wish you share with them. Often it just isn't meant half as bad as it might have sounded and a quick conversation shows the common ground. Moreover, you are not alone. You have your team mates to back you up (or complain to after the visitor left) and hey, that's just bonding, right there!

I think that without the few bad conversations, the really good ones wouldn't stand out as much. Yes, there are really nice, energizing conversations. From people who just come by the booth to tell you how much your project (and by extension you) rock to people who tell you, sometimes to the point of really getting emotional, how your community has provided them with something amazing. At those moments, you just soak in the love. Be sure to record or note down any concrete compliments so you can share this later with the community online, in a blog or just a mail to the development mailing list!

If you want to learn more, I've been writing a how-to on organizing a booth and collected some practical tips for conversations with the visitors on this page. More tips welcome!

Now, how can you help?

KDE

The KDE booth at SCALE is actually a bit in trouble. We have some folks who have been helping out the last few years but, perhaps in part due to the early dates, just couldn't make it this year. If you're a KDE user, contributor or just fan, think about helping out! If you use KDE software, especially Plasma of course, and occasionally follow the blogs, you'll have what it takes to help out. Most questions are basic and there are always others around who can help out a bit here or there - including myself, I'll check in a few times for sure. And the openSUSE booth next door, which helps organize the KDE and GNOME presence at SCALE, has plenty of experts in all areas as well. You won't be without backup, not at all!

KDE at FOSDEM already has six volunteers (see the wiki page) and we unfortunately only have one table this year. While help is always welcome, this ain't super urgent. It IS fun, though, so if you're up for it, give it a try!

ownCloud

Matt McGraw and myself will staff the ownCloud booth at SCALE, ready to answer any questions you might have. We're just with two people, so we'd sure welcome a third person! If you're interested, just shoot me an email or comment here. It isn't difficult - I'd even say that if you've been using ownCloud for a few months you can already provide a lot of help at the booth, and Matt and myself are always there.

At FOSDEM, we have a few more volunteers but I also know, from last year, that the booth will be flooded with visitors so if you're up for helping out, even if it's just a few hours, please let me know!

I hope to see you at one or both of these events and that I've motivated you to help run a booth ;-)

Meetup and a release party in B'lin?

Today at 7 it is ownCloud meetup time in C-Base again (and also in Munich, by the way!). As ownCloud Server 8.1 is scheduled for the beginning of next month, I hope to grab a daily ownCloud snapshot, put it on a Banana Pi and run the cool Smashbox testing tool against it to see how it fares.

Even more interesting, I hope to see if I can install older ownCloud releases on other Pi's and compare the performance changes between 7, 8 and 8.1 for example. Performance is one of the big improvements that should be coming in 8.1, with 4x speed up of things like file syncing. I'd like to see if I can measure that!

I have several Pi's and (after having given workshops on how to install ownCloud on them) plenty experience in getting them running, but no experience with Smashbox whatsoever. So - I can use some help. If you're interested in joining the fun, be there tonight!

On a different note, ownCloud comes out in the beginning of next month - that means that the NEXT meetup is essentially a release party at C-Base. Sir, yes, sir - release party time! See you there?

There'll be a meetup on the 6th of July in Nuremberg, I guess that's a pre-release party as the release is set for the 7th. Munich also has a meetup on July 15, like Berlin.

Open Tech Summit Berlin, openSUSE Conference and more

This is a fun month. Not only are we moving forward with the ownCloud Contributor Conference (some cool interviews coming out soon), but there's a sudden avalanche of events this month. The ownCloud.org blog already wrote about it - we have had FOSDEM, SCALE, Chemnitz and may others I didn't attend myself. Find out about the openSUSE conf from last week and the upcoming OTS in Berlin!

Bunch'o'geekos

Last weekend I was at the openSUSE Conference which was a great event. I gave a workshop on how to install ownCloud on embedded devices (like Raspberry Pi and Banana Pi) with about 20 participants and while it wasn't as easy as I had hoped, everybody had fun.



There were two great BBQ evenings as well, with beer and time to talk to many, many old and young geeko friends.

I absolutely had a great time - thanks, everybody, for working on the conference and being there! I look forward to next years' event.

Upcoming

This Friday I'll give a workshop at Happy Hacking Day 2015 in Helsinki and later this month I will keynote at the DORS/CLUC conference in Zagreb, Croatia.

Open Tech Summit Berlin

Next week, May 14, is a home game, as I'll give a workshop at the Open Tech Summit at the Kalkscheune in Berlin.

I will spend a few more words on this as the event has been announced rather late, yet it looks like the place to be for Berliners next week!

The event will feature talks, workshops and panels with topics ranging from open hardware to design, graphics, software, start ups and digital policies. In a barcamp style track there is space for adhoc meetings, lightning talks and breakout sessions. There will also be dedicated workshops for kids and maker enthusiasts, where you can make your own gadgets (TV-B-Gone, upgrade knitting machines, your own traffic lights) and Fashiontec wearables. In the evening it will have an “OpenTech-Himmelfahrt” lounge and the Linux Professional Institute offers Linux certification at a discounted rate.

Speakers will include a bunch of interesting people from Freifunk, Mozilla, VLC, 3D printers and many other cool projects, discussing everything from software to hardware hacking.

Workshop and discounted access to OTS

And of course, Blizz and myself will run a workshop on how to install ownCloud on cool devices. We have some with us, but it's recommended you bring your Raspberry Pi, power, a SD card, a laptop and a network cable. You can bring your server, desktop or laptop for installation of ownCloud too, of course. You can register for the workshop here and if you haven't yet registered or gotten tickets for the event - here's a nice discount.

ownCloud Meetup to test devices in Berlin

Coming Wednesday, it's time for the monthly Berlin ownCloud meetup again. Last month, we wanted to play with some little development boards, install ownCloud on them and see what they could do. But we had over a dozen new participants join, turning the meetup mostly in a 'how to get an ownCloud development environment up and running' session.

That was great fun and I'd love to see everybody again - but the devices are also in the office, looking at us like they want attention. So, if you're interested in playing with Banana Pi, Raspberry Pi, cubietruck and similar stuff, come and join our meetup. Wednesday, starting at 7 at c-base Berlin in the main room, we'll grab some tables and bring devices, power cords and chargers and get going.

We'll see how far we can get, but goals include getting some decent performance statistics of the differences between the various devices and ownCloud releases as well as finding some ways of optimizing the ownCloud performance on these boards.

Note that ANYBODY, seriously, ANYBODY is welcome. We'd be more than happy to help you get started with any type of ownCloud hacking, so if you don't care about Raspberry Pi's but rather hack on 2048 CPU clusters - fine with me. Feel free to bring one and we'd be happy to turn it into a fun toy ;-)

Oh and if you tend to get hungry in the evening, bring something to eat. We'll probably grab some pizza.

You can RSVP here but you're welcome in any case!

5 steps to organizing a meetup

For both beginners and pros a meetup around a subject can be a great resource. It's a wonderful opportunity to ask questions, share ideas, practice or work on things together and and of course meet new and interesting people.

Most people think organizing a meetup is a big deal, that you need to know a lot about the subject at hand and so on. This is most certainly not the case, and to illustrate that, let me simply share 5 simple steps to go through to organize a meetup.

1. Have a goal or subject

Of course, you have some idea of what the meetup should be about. Make it a bit more concrete: come up with some questions you'd like to get answers to, some things you find difficult, strange or simply interesting. This will form the basis under your meetup! Especially for a first meetup, a concrete thing-to-discuss helps both attract people and makes it easy on the spot to have a satisfying conversation.

A speaker isn't mandatory but it can be helpful if you find somebody who can introduce the subject, or do a little demo of the product/technology you are here for. Of course, you can easily do this yourself. It is no problem if you don't know the subject through and through, the others in the audience will certainly point out what else there is. You're certain to learn something new, and so will the others!

2. Pick a date, time and location

The practical things, then:

• find a venue!
  
  Small is OK, you don't have to start big. A meeting room at the company you work forspace, universities and schools often have space and a café or restaurant isn't a bad option either.
• pick a time after work. 7-9PM works usually fine.
  
  Friday nights are great for a release party or such but for regular meetups, a weekday is often better.
• Make sure you have coffee, tea and perhaps cake.
  
  Don't bother with anything more complicated - you can always ask if people want to order food and arrange that on the spot. You can even ask people to bring something to drink or snack!

3. Find participants

The key to your meetup is simple: interest in something. For sure, there are others who feel the same and you just have to find them! Certainly you already know some people, and by looking for more you can grow a little address book of people to invite. Ask the people you already know to look for others! Other tricks include looking on social media, searching for similar groups and inviting people there.

Set up a facebook and/or google event page, maybe a blog and/or mailing list (google groups!). If you organize a KDE, ownCloud or openSUSE event - each of these projects have informational pages, mailing lists and other communication channels that can help you promote your event. Just click the links!

Don't set the bar too high - a meetup with handful of participants already makes for a fine first meetup! But if suddenly 50 people RSVP, don't worry - it just means they will keep each other plenty busy and you don't have to worry about content.

4. Have the meetup!

When people come in, welcome them and get to know them a little. If you're like me, you'll forget names at once but it might help to let everybody introduce themselves and why they joined.

Then do the introduction of the subject and ask if people have something to say on it, or other things they would like to bring up. Now you might feel there is a risk nothing happens, but believe me: this just won't happen. Bringing people with a similar interest together is all that is needed for an interesting conversation! Once the evening starts rolling, you'll feel you have over-planned and over-worried for sure.

5. Keep it going

After the first meetup, you need a line of communication to keep it up and running. There are different options - meetup.com is one, another way is handling it by hand with a wiki, blog, mailing list or google groups. In all cases, it is smart to put ask visitors at the meetup to write down their mail addresses so you can inform them about future meetups!

Getting one or more people to help you out is a good idea, too. They bring in their own network of contacts and interests. But at this point, you're up and running! I've blogged earlier about building a local community with more tips and ideas and you can find some other tips on the ownCloud meetup pages as well.

Have a lot of fun!

ownCloud 7 Release Party August 8, Berlin

In a little over a week, on the 8th of August, you're all invited to join Danimo, Blizz and myself at a release party to celebrate the awesomeness that is ownCloud 7 in Berlin!

When and where

We will gather at 7pm at the Wikimedia office in Berlin:

Tempelhofer Ufer 23/24

10963 Berlin

Germany

It is awesome that we can use their office, a big thank you to our fellow data lovers!!

So we start to gather at 7 and round 7:30 we'll have a demo of/talk about ownCloud 7. We will order some pizza to eat. After that: party time!

ownCloud Conf coming... And REWE offers a cheap way to get there!

ownCloud is organizing an ownCloud conference/hackathon at the Technische Universität Berlin this August. And as Steffen Lindner shared on twitter, the German REWE supermarket is offering cheap tickets to go to Berlin from all over Germany during the event!

Getting and staying there

The REWE supermarket has a "Ganz Deutschland, ein Preis" action where you can get a retour ticket from anywhere in Germany to Berlin, including seat reservations, AND a €10 discount on a future trip for BahnCard holders - for €79. Not a bad deal (depending on where you live of course), but you'll have to grab it this week! The ticket is valid until the 31st of August, which fits perfectly as that is the last day of the ownCloud Contributor Conference!

I have also just put up some hotel options on our website. I'd recommend to try to book the three star Novum hotel Gates, for just €34 per night it is a nice deal. If you prefer something a little more up, try the four-star Novotel am tiergarten, for about €75/night.

So, that means: you can now book travel and hotel. Don't forget to register on this page. Note that you have to first create an account and then actually register for the event!

About oCC

The goal of the ownCloud Contributor Conference is to Get Stuff Done™, but we also want to offer people interested in coding on onwCloud a chance to learn a thing or two. So, while we simply have a doors-open hackathon from 26-31 of August, on Saturday the 30th we feature techtalks and workshops where people can learn to write ownCloud apps, using the ownCloud share and syncing API in their application and more.

PS there's a nice article over at Linux.com about why Frank started ownCloud. And we have also released the first Alpha of ownCloud 7!

ownCloud meetup in Berlin!

Wednesday this week (May 21), we'll have the first ownCloud Hacktisch meetup at C-base in Berlin. It is planned to meet every third Wednesday of the month to spend time on improving ownCloud: hacking, translating, finding bugs and so on.

The meeting is open for everybody and of course you should bring your laptop! It starts at 19:00 at C-Base, Rungestraße 20 in Berlin. You can RSVP at meetup.com/owncloud-berlin.

Besides a laptop, I suggest you bring a good mood and a few euro's to buy a bottle of club Mate.

See you there!

LinuxTag 2014 Fun

Thursday, Friday and Saturday last week, LinuxTag took place in Berlin. A few months ago, in a moment of temporary insanity, I had proposed to three projects to organize their booths: KDE, openSUSE and ownCloud. As that wasn't challenge enough, I wanted to experiment with doing workshops at the booth, specifically aimed at attracting and training potential new contributors.

How it came to be

Music outside!

I proceeded to register a booth, promising the LinuxTag exhibition manager (Elke Moritz), the KDE e.V. board, the openSUSE Board and my brand new boss at ownCloud that we would set up a great show. As I wouldn't be able to separate ownCloud (PHP) or KDE (C++, QML) code from text in a openSUSE .spec file nor can staff three booths at once, you can imagine I promised more than I could ever deliver on my own. But that's where friends come in, right?

And they came through - the result was great.

Re:Publica area

The new LinuxTag

First, a short introduction. LinuxTag is one of the oldest European Linux events, operating under the credo: "bringing .org and .com together". That is, they feature both commercial and community booths and a big selection of talks.

LinuxTag has been taking place at the Messe in Berlin in the last years, and this has not been a hugely successful location. But this year, there was change: a co-location with the immensely popular Re:Publica event as well as collaboration with DroidCon was meant to bring a lot of new energy. The new location, Station Berlin, gives a more fitting Linux feeling: much more raw. If you ask me, it worked out, LinuxTag was a much better event than it has ever been in the Messe.

What did we do

openSUSE, ownCloud and KDE

As I noted, our plan was two-fold. We, that is KDE, openSUSE and ownCloud, would have a combined booth. We would use the combined space not for a traditional table+swag, instead set up an area for workshops. In short, 1 hour slots, visitors would learn the basics of working within each of the three communities. For example:

• writing ownCloud apps
• developing KDE applications
• packaging for openSUSE.

We wouldn't plan for a big audience: the workshops would go deep and be personal.

Daniel giving a workshop

So, we got together speakers and defined a program (see my blog). I received the ownCloud and openSUSE booth materials home and the day before LinuxTag, drove it all to the venue, picking up KDE stuff from Lydia Pintscher at the wikimedia office later in the evening. Due to some snafu's with the booth area preparations we had to set up the booth in the morning - which happened even before Danimo and myself arrived with some more materials (thanks booth team!).

The booths

Our booth area (all the way to the left!)

We planned for little space (essentially one combined booth) but the LT team had given us so much space, we had to set up three big booths! openSUSE got the big table, ownCloud took two round ones and a third round table was covered in the KDE tablecloth, with a huge KDE flag hung up next to it. Behind it all 12 chairs and a table with a projector. All this was quite a bit more than we planned, so the initial idea (we'd only need 1-2 people at a time to do 'booth duty' for the 3-in-1 booth) didn't work out very well: all three booths had to be staffed most of the time. We did have some overlap at quiet times, but full house during especially the breaks.

I had printed posters with the schedule, one for each day as we had slight schedule changes every day. We hung them up all over the place, after which we put down openSUSE, ownCloud and KDE flyers wherever there was space. The openSUSE Beer coasters did particularly well - we had put them on the tables in the eating/drinking area and we had to 'refill' several times a day.

Us vs them?

The posters and most of the flyers I had created for ownCloud pointed people to the booth (I stole the concept of the 'consume vs create' poster from the openSUSE Conference in Dubrovnik, btw!). We should have asked people how they found out about the workshops, from posters, blog, workshop or being told at our booth. I have no idea how effective each of those is...

Let me now point to this blog by Danimo about the owncloud presence, the KDE blog by Sebastian is out too. And I expect the openSUSE team to publish their blog(s) very soon.

Booth fun

Give some balloons to Frank, and...

For me, there was some fun synergy: meeting KDE-on-openSUSE users interested in installing ownCloud. Or, after starting a conversation with somebody about one of these projects, continuing the conversation about one of the others. Several times, I got users interested in all three at once: Server Linux (openSUSE/ownCloud) and Desktop Linux (openSUSE/KDE).

I also noticed that many visitors already knew ownCloud, or had at least heard of it. At some point, I was talking to a visitor, explaining ownCloud, while a second visitor joined the conversation. He already knew about ownCloud and took over, while I talked to a third visitor, answering some questions. Then a fourth showed up, who begun answering their questions while I turned to a fifth, explaining ownCloud... Great to get in conversations like that!

During a quiet moment, a visitor came to me, complaining he had been 'in line' to talk to me several times, but it was so busy, he didn't get a chance before! Indeed, we had busy times, especially Thursday. But that's awesome, right?

I also gave two talks - one at the evening program of LinuxTag about where the Linux Desktop is going (it didn't go very well, I'm afraid) and one about Community Governance at the first European Community Leadership Summit, that did go quite well. Shame I couldn't stay too long for the CLS as we had friends over and I had to go home...

All in all, for me, it was a great event.

Re:Publica Hippies

The team

Let me also not forget to introduce the team at LinuxTag to you:

• Daniel Molkentin (ownCloud)
• Arthur Schiwon (ownCloud)
• Georg Ehrke (ownCloud)
• Frank Karlitschek (ownCloud)
• Sebastian Gottfried (KDE)
• Christian Boltz (openSUSE & PostfixAdmin)
• Bernhard Wiedemann (openSUSE)
• Marcel Külhorn (openSUSE)

We had several people come by and help out a bit, as well as three others giving booth workshops:

• Maik Aussendorf (Bareos)
• Gratien D'haese (REAR)
• Jörg Schilling (fraunhofer, cdrecord)

Sebastian's KDE workshop

The workshops

During the booth work, we had the workshops going on. It had a bit of a slow start on Thursday morning, but quickly, the workshops started to attract some more people. At one point did I see Sebastian surrounded by six visitors interested in KDE development... I think, on average, the workshops attracted about 3-6 visitors each. Which is quite good, considering they were primarily aimed at introducing people to contributing to our projects.

Despite the amount of work preparing the booth workshops, I'd do it again. Imagine if only a third of the visitors decides to join the respective communities!

openSUSE booth team in action

Feedback

If you visited one of these booth workshops or our booth at LinuxTag, I'd love your feedback! Knowing how we did, if we were friendly, fun, interesting, or what was missing and what you'd like to see next time - it all helps us improve in the future!

In any case, everybody who contributed to the booths and presentations as well as everybody who visited us: thank you very much!

Of course very special hugs to the booth- and presentation team.

oSC14 and LinuxTag coming!

It's becoming conference season again... Tomorrow morning I'll fly to Dubrovnik for the openSUSE Conference. I give no less than 5 talks and one workshop. Don't worry, I'm not DDOSing the event, the talks are restricted to 30 minutes (even though I have about 1 hour of content for each, let's see how that goes). My sessions:

• Social skills for geeks
• Presenting awesome (workshop about giving presentations)
• How to run a booth and present your project
• Where KDE is and where it is going
• Cloudy experiences at home (about ownCloud!)
• Community building in 10 steps

That's quite a bunch, I know, but it'll be fun! I look forward to Dubrovnik, although I see it will be rainy and not that warm. Ah, sad...

LinuxTag 2014 - all change

A much bigger deal, for me, is LinuxTag. This year, it is considerably different from the previous few years: no more in the Messe! Instead, the team is collaborating with DroidCon and Re:Publica. That, combined with the location (Station in Berlin), could potentially be awesome! Here I give one talk about the future of KDE. I'll also be speaking at the Community Leadership Summit Europe about Open Governance.

But more importantly, I'll be organizing the LT booth for three projects: ownCloud, KDE and openSUSE. Yeah, ambitious again! Not only that, we're not going for the traditional booth. Instead, I've proposed to do something different: have a track of technical mini-workshops at the booth. 45 minute talks, small, hands-on, about the technology of these projects. So, think about building packages with the Open Build Service, writing an ownCloud App or developing a QML based Plasma widget.

Needing some help

The idea seems generally liked but I haven't found anybody for any of the three above potential talks - so if you can and want to do that or something like it, please let me know! We won't have too much traditional booth space, just enough for a bit of stuff and one or two ppl answering questions. The talks will repeat every day so as volunteer, you give your talk 3 times, once every day. Otherwise you are free to enjoy the talks as well as the Re:Publica booth area. As the tickets are not cheap (Eur 149!) this is a nice way to get into LinuxTag for free (I have only 2 tickets per booth, though). You'll get hugs and Club Mate as much as you want. And there's travel support available for all these projects!

Help me out, please! And if you can't - at least, be sure to visit the booth at LinuxTag or come say hi at the openSUSE Conference!