Organizing oSC13 - 38 days before(a conference without history is a tree without roots)

Today I feel like talking about history. The history of all the openSUSE confernces in the past. If I made my research right the first openSUSE Conference was in 20-23 of October in 2010.

Here are some graphics that was used at that time. I really find them interesting since I like history and I believe that a lot of lessons can be tought by history. I don't really know much about oSC10 since I was really new to the openSUSE project at that time and I hessitated on going there at that time. Looking back now I think I made a mistake not going there. Of course I found this out when joined the second conference in 2011 which also took place in Nuremberg from 11 to 14 of September in 2011. This was a lifetime experience. If you ever joined an openSUSE conference I am sure you all remember your first time there. It was amazing since I was a volunteer and I went to Nuremberg one day before the conference and there I had Allan Clark making pins, Juergen Weigert making the lights and a bunch of other top coders carring arround stuff in order to set up the venue. No Rock stars there, just people who are devoted in openSUSE and in making the conference work, for all.

 Then it was oSC 2012. This was different for me. The Greeks were so close at taking oSC2012 but when Prague also claimed it we took a step back since we understood and we knew that we were not 100% ready for it. We needed more people for the Greek community to get practically involved with it so that next year we would have even more experience and feedback. You see sometimes stepping back is better.

We joinned oSC12 more active than oSC11 and we tried to do the most we could and we learned a lot there. The idea though was the same, people hanging around and talk to each other. There was no need to know someone from before or to be friends from before. Afterall the meaning of the conference is also to have people meet and talk F2F. I have to say here that I made actuall friends in all oSC's, people that I am happy to hear their news beyond openSUSE matters. People from all over the planet and this is something you can't do sitting in front of a keyboard.

 Then we finally got the oSC13 to Greece. Not many things stayed as originally planned but this is only a good thing. We are prepairing a conference that for the first time is organized exclusively by the community and it is planned to be friendly to everybody and to produce a lot of work for the project. If you have any hessitations on comming to the conference because you don't know people or you fear that you will be a stranger among strangers forget it. Just track someone you really like from irc or from wherever and go say a hello, there is a big posbility a long time friendship to start with that hello. Any problem you might have will be solved. Ask anyone that ever joined an oSC. Come to share thoughts and learn from people. Come as you are and don't hessitate to deploy your personallity. There is enough place for everyone here.
Hope to see you all there.