Organizing oSC13 - 13 days before(A morning inside my head)

Less than two weeks left. OMG it's getting closer.

Here in Thessaloniki it almost started. As in 3 days from now we will be at the conference testing the network, start setting up the rooms and getting the whole venue ready to accept the 350 to 500 guests and the 50+ volunteers. Not much things are left in their fate those last days. So far we were on a marathon, now we are going on a sprint... After the marathon...

Of course have in mind just in case you decide to organize a conference that luck is not on your side amazing things can go wrong and affect your work. Like, let's see... Having a network upgrade in your neighbor and have no internet for the next 5 days...Without a previous warning from your provider... What are the chances for that?  Luckily I have a great girlfriend who lets me stay at her place and use her internet.

Waiting for the conference to start made me think how I got here. I mean it is interesting how I got into this. No I am not gong to tell you that story, at least not tonight, you will be bored to death, or not :D

The last couple of days I am on to checklists. Me along with Stella and Henne are checking again and again what was done,what was not done and what is left behind and needs a boosting. The thing is that things are going better than even I originally have calculated. Having people like Carlos, Juergen and Jos onto doing things is simply a miracle producing machine. Let's hope that by the end of the Conference they will still want to talk to me :P

Today I remembered that I have a presentation about oSC13 in oSC13. I would like to find some time and prepare that at some point but my guess is that this will be done just a few hours before the talk. Don't get me wrong, I love making presentations, I just hate preparing them. The good thing with that particular presentation is that I know the talk, I just need the slides for it,mmmm

In a while I have a meeting, with 13 days to go I calculate than I have less than 10 meetings to go before the conference, yeaaaaaaah.

Organizing oSC13 - 16 days before

So here we are 2 days and 2 weeks before the conference starts. One part of myself is finding it hard to believe that we are close to the end of preparation and so close to the start of the conference. Those days I find myself singing "Nothing else matters" from Metallica every few minutes. I mean really the first turn seem to me it is written for the state I am on those days :

So close, no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters

It is those last days before the conference that let you know what you are made of. New people comming, some people canceling, suddently companies and organizations woke up and want to be a part of it but there is no way to make this work, finalizing everything is a do or die situation... Not a walk in the park I would say. 

The good thing is that I see task on trello moving from doing to done really fast and that calms me down. I am a bit angry because I wanted to be at this years aKademy but again I cannot due to the conference, I promised myself(again) that next year I will be there, lets see. 

Deadlines are over one by one fast, but for some reason this is relieving since it means fewer things to be done. I hope that next week will be the calmer of all in that almost 9 month period that we work for the conference, my other half of the organization team, Stella things that I am wrong but we will know that in a few days. It is not that I could use a calm week, it's been so long since I started working for 16/24 7/7 for the conference that I am not sure I know what to do with that 'Free' time. Ok I honestly hope my girlfriend doesn't read that particular post :D

In the end of all one thing is for sure, this is the most crucial week of the period, if something goes wrong this week the changes to make it right are very few, but it won't, I planned the whole damn thing this way, lol...

Organizing oSC13 - 22 days before

"It is in the nature of things that every time you try to avoid one danger you run into another"
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli


I am so happy that I read some books when I was younger since now I can understand things better in order to accept various sittuations that happen. You see I have that thing that I cannot accept situations that I cannot understand.

We are 22 days before and although we have made a great progress there are things that need to be done. One thing I see clearly the last few weeks is that no matter how important or minor are the tasks left, they get bigger and bigger every day. This happens because when you plan a conference and add tasks you see in your mind the whole picture when ALL those tasks will be done. Of course you reject some in the course of making the conference but now, just 22 days before you want everything to be done. The alternatives we talked before all worked so far but problems keep comming every single day and you just stand in the front line and face them, lossing a task is not an option, not 22 days before. It is a do or die situation.
 Of course we seem to be in good shape since so far we are doing great but honnestly I have the fear of the failing. On the other hand failing is not an option so...
The thing is that the situation kind of looks like Lernean Hydra where when you cut one head two other pop up. 

Organizing oSC13 - 66 days before

This is the first monday since I started writing about the upcomming openSUSE conference. Also I must warn you that I am in a good mood and I don't feel like being modest today, if you get uppset with arrogant people please stop reading this here.
 I will take advantage of every humans hate for that day to write about things I and you might hate but when when you cannot avoid them maybe you should try to take advantage of them.
People who met me at least once might not believe the following but people who really know me know the truth. I don't really like to talk to people, when I was a little I had that problem and this was a big deal when I realize I like girls but in order to flirt you have to do some talking(at least most of the times). As time past by I had too so I started talking, I did that great ( I told you I am not feeling modest today...). In fact I did so great that most of the times I do talk now is because I like what it's happenning when I talk, than because I like talking. Where I am getting with this is that while organizing a conference one thing is for sure, you will do things that you don't really like and in some occasions you might even hate it. Doing those things have in mind that this does not mean that you are doing them wrong. It is very important to be concentrated to it no matter how you despise it so that you will do this thing right, since you have to do it then do it right. This is important also because if you are concentrated you will have to do it once. Also because you don't like on doing something that does not mean that you are not a natural talent. I mean look at me, I am a firefighter and I do not really like to organize conferenses, but I am doing it and trust me it will be one hell of a conference.
One question not answered clearly here is how you can take advantage of it? Well doing anything for the conference you organize, especially when you have to.
Now it is Monday so I am really bored in writting more for today

Organizing oSC13 - 68 days before

Cron Job in Google Blogger failed to publish the post I wrote yesterday morning in yesterday afternoon, so many of you saw it comming out some hours ago. I hope I did not confused anyone with that and I will take advantage of this 'failure' of Google Blogger (or with what I did wrong in there and missed it) and write today about situations like that, that can happen while organizing a conference.

So yesterday I wrote about alternatives and the importance of those while working on making a conference come to life. Today I will write some things about things that go wrong and you cannot or at the moment don't have the ability to think or predict. 

I will start with a Murphy's law "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong" that usually happens through the procedure, no matter how hard you try and how many alternatives you have. Good news is that this can be predicted to some point, the bad thing is that this prediction is not always easy and some times you just have to do a lot of double checking in order not to avoid it but to fix it before someone notices it. The quicker you accept that things can and will go wrong the faster you will be relaxed and concentrated enough to fix it quick(again: before someone notices it :D ). Let's start by how you can predict things from going wrong, although as said before that does not come with a 100% guarantee that won't happen but still...

The easiest way to do it is to find someone who is actually a professional in the task you need to be done and that is why selecting and sometimes rejecting some volunteers from doing something is equally important. What I mean by all that? Ok so let's say that you have a task that need to be done and that task is about writing a press article until the X deadline. Now what you need is someone who is actually qualified in finishing the task, in our case writing article, so if you have a professional journalist that is volunteering then you are a happy person and this gives you the best safety that this task will be successfully and on time. The thing is that if you are doing this like we do, meaning voluntarily there is a great possibility not to be able to find as I mention in my example a journalist or even if you do, he/she may not have the time to do this in the time you want. This gives you two actual choices both of which I will write at some point later. Either you adapt the time of your article either you select another volunteer based on some facts. Now let's say that you have the right guy for the right work, if you do this is how you can prevent that things will go the right way and nothing will go wrong. It sounds really simple but it is very common for people to give tasks to the first who asked it and don't look to the abilities of each person just because we want to get rid off one of the 10.000 tasks that we have in our head. I knew that from before but I still did that a couple of times on the heat of the moment and that exactly where the "prediction is not always easy and some times" is hidden. 

Now you have the right person for the task and this person is doing his/her job perfectly, unfortunatelly this is not the complete task. The task is completed when this task once it is finished it is out there for all to see, meaning in this example the press release to reach the press you want to. No matter how perfectly the task is done it must reach its goal, otherwise it is a task not done. So you have to double check everything just to be sure. Recently I fell into something like just because for some reason the person did a task thought wrongly that he had finished. This of course was communication error but still the task was not completed and if you ever thing that you will start organizing a conference without communication errors happening then my opinion and my so far experience says that you are dreaming.

Last but not least for today is that if you use a tool like Trello that we use have the person that took the task assign himself/herself to it so that other people will know it.It will save your volunteers and yourself a lot of time and nerves. 

Organizing oSC13 - 70 days before

For more than a year I am living in the heat of organizing the next openSUSE Conference, first it was oSC12  and about a year ago it became oSC13. At some point it even became organizing no oSC at all for what it counts but we manage to prove ourselves again and we finally got oSC 2013. I knew from the first moment and maybe even some moments before that, that this would be a hell of a work. I even knew that I will regret it many times for some moments when everything will seem to go to hell and I will stand there asking myself 'What the Fuck did you do dude?' , but as usual I went against common sense and I followed my instinct, it worked when I started with Stathis the Greek community, it also worked some times before.

Disappointment is what I felt most of the times and other than the love for FOSS I really don't see another reason to do such a thing as organizing a conference, at least no other that acts as a countermeasure to disappointment when that comes. Beside that, it is a great life experience and it gets you closer to what you are made of which is great if you are into that kind of inner research.

Disappointment comes from anywhere and especially from people that told you that they will be there to help. I was lucky at that since there was always Stella who 70 days before and a year after is still standing and Henne who is just doing things, even when I got burned and could not work at all for some time those guys where there. It is great to have a co-pilots, if someone out there is looking on doing something like organizing a Conference that big he/she should find someone like them or just contact them :D

Now there is a bright side of course to all that but after 13 hours in front of 2 screens I find it dificult to describe it, maybe in Day 69 since my purpose is to blog every day up to the conference day.

For today all I can say is that I am hugely happy with myself since I finished more than double the tasks I planned for today and I just realize I still were my work uniform, I have a meeting in Skype now and after that I will have a bath and sleep. Nice thing that people cannot actually smell you through Skype :D

openSUSE Conference 2012 – Invitation to Lightning Talks and Speedy Geeko

The openSUSE Conference in Prague is about to happen and we know that all of you are really excited about it. One more year with great talks and workshops and the warmth of the openSUSE Community around. Being there is really awesome and being a part of it is really great. Since having fun has no limits for us we feel the need to ask you the following:

• Did you wanted to submit a talk and you were late?
• Do you feel like talking about something that has to do with openSUSE?
• Do you feel like talking about something that has nothing to do with the openSUSE?
• Do you feel the need to have an on-stage group-hug with Izabel and Kostas?
• Can you do all that in 2 to max 5 minutes?

If yes is the answer to at least the last and one other of those questions, here is your chance to make it happen.

This year, on oSC we bring one more time the openSUSE lightning talks and the Speedy Geeko and we encourage everyone to come and be a part of it.

Lightning Talks

After many people submitted talks a bit late to fit on the regular conference Schedule or weren’t sure if they wanted to submit a whole talk in order to present something related to openSUSE, we recognised the need to organise something for all of you. After all there should be place for everyone in the openSUSE Conference.

We invite all people that want to make a short talk or talk short about their work inside openSUSE to join us in Lightning talks. Send your requests, info below.

How it works?

• Each Presenter gets 10 minutes to present their topic (depending on the number of submissions…)
• The topic should be related to openSUSE
• You must send a description of your talk until the 10th of october and have the slides ready to send before the beginning of this years oSC
• Your talk has no slide limit

Time is crucial so after the time limit you will have your microphone taken no matter what…

Speedy Geeko

After last year’s huge success and fun we dare to do it one more time. This year we promise to entertain you showing you the other stuff that openSUSE people do. Last year we had bacon, bees, countries, global personalities plus other cool stuff, this year we hope to be at least that interesting and exciting.

How it works?

• Each Presenter gets 4 minutes to present their topic
• Each Presenter will present with 20 slides
• The slides progress every 15 seconds whether the Presenter is ready or not
• The topic can NOT be related to openSUSE

Time is crucial here too so after the 5 minutes we will find ways to remove the microphone from you. Please don’t make us run for it and be aware that we will carry some sort of weapons.

Instructions

If you feel like participating all you have to do is to follow the instructions below:

• For submitting a lightning talk click here with subject title: Lightning talks
• For submitting a Speedy Geeko talk email click here with subject title: Speedy Geeko

The deadline for sending your talks is 10th of october and we will release both schedules at the 15th.

After we release the schedules all you have to do is to be sure that you will have your presentations given to us at some point before this year’s openSUSE conference.

Of course in an open format, preferably ODF or PDF!

Your hosts
Izabel Valverde and Kostas Koudaras

Desktop summit 2011: A reason to dislike some of my friends

 Being a firefighter is a work I love. Some of the things I learned to live without are summer vacations, camping, fishing and sailing. I gave up those pleasures of life due to my love and commitment to my work. This of course doesn't make me less jealous when some of my friends are doing things I REALLY love  to do too.

 My friends Stathis, Stella and Theo are going to  Desktop Summit, an event I would really love to go. Also this Summer DS is in Berlin, a city that I always wanted to go and actually planned a trip there for more than 2 times and always on the last minute something happened and the trip was canceled. They are going there and they will be with Jos Poortvliet and Izabele Valverde from openSUSE whom I missed a lot since the marketing Hackfest, also they will meet Andreas Jaeger before me and yes I dislike them for that too. They will also do a lot of things I wanted to do, see a lot of interesting events, participate in workshops and be on those DS party that I heard are amazing.

I just hope that they will bring me back a lot of presents in order to gain my sympathy  again ;-)

Go there and have a great time people as I am sure you will, maybe next year will go together...

Πρόγραμμα 1ου openSUSE Collaboration Weekend Camp

Πρόγραμμα 1ου openSUSE Collaboration Weekend Camp

Παρασκευή
17:30 - 17:45  Καλωσόρισμα
17:45 - 18:30  Μεταφράζοντας την διανομή openSUSE - Χρήση του Lokalize και του Gtranslator (Eυστάθιος Ιωσηφίδης - Κώστας Κουδάρας)
18:45 - 19:30  Μεταφράζοντας το weekly news και το wiki - Πως, τι και γιατί
19:30 - 20:30  Βραδινό
20:45 - 22:15 Wiki Hackfest - Διαγωνισμός με δώρο ένα :
22:15 - … Συζήτηση: openSUSE people - From us to us - Διομήδης Αναδιώτης "Καινούργιος στην κοινότητα"

Σάββατο
08:00 - 10:00 Πρωινό
10:15 - 11:00 Χρήση του Yast - Διαχείριση συστήματος εύκολα, γρήγορα και με πολλές δυνατότητες(Ευστάθιος Αγραπίδης-Κώστας Κουδάρας)
11:00 - 12:00 def python_django(tutorial): (Θοδωρής Χατζημίχος)
12:15 - 13:15 "Security and arduino:Multifactor authentication system(voice recognition and rfid technologies)" - Μέρος 1ο (the-hackerspace)
13:30 - 14:30 "Security and arduino:Multifactor authentication system(voice recognition and rfid technologies)" - Μέρος 2ο (the-hackerspace)
14:30 - 17:30 Μπάνιο/ρακετες/Beach Volle/φαϊ/μπύρες
17:30 - 18:15 Qt Signals And Slots (Αντώνης Τσαπαλιώκας)
18:30 - 19:30 "Security and arduino:Wireless devices remote control (client - server control center)"(the-hackerspace)
19:30 - 20:30 Βραδυνό
20:30 - 21:30 Vim introduction (Γιάννης Χατζημίχος)
21:30 - … Συζήτηση: Δουλεύοντας μέσα σε μια κοινότητα Ε.Λ/Λ.Α.Κ

ΚΥΡΙΑΚΗ
08:00 - 10:00 Πρωινό
10:00 - 10:45 Επιβίωση με Gnome 3 στον κόσμο του KDE (Ευστάθιος Ιωσηφίδης)
10:45 - 11:00 OBSάρω, OBSάρεις; (Ευστάθιος Αγραπίδης)
11:45 - 12:30 KDE Frameworks (Γιώργος Τσαπαλιώκας)
12:30 - 13:15 openSUSE Medical project - openEMR (Αθανάσιος-Ηλίας Ρουσινόπουλος)
13:30 ΤΕΛΟΣ ΕΚΔΗΛΩΣΗΣ

Προς τον Π**στη που με καταραστηκε

Αγαπητέ Π**στη (που με καταράστηκες)
θέλω να ξέρεις ότι οι κατάρες σου έπιασαν τόπο και ότι μετά από 3 χρονάκια σήμερα κάποιος πήγε να με σκοτώσει ενώ πήγαινα κανονικά με το μηχανάκι μου, μιας και το θεώρησε πρέπον να περάσει από πάνω μου για να παρκάρει.Την γλύτωσα με ένα σπασμένο δάχτυλο του ποδιού και κάτι γρατσουνιές. Σε παρακαλώ τώρα που είναι καλοκαίρι σταμάτα τις καταρες γιατί θα ήθελα να κάνω και κάνα μπανάκι μέχρι να τελειώσει το καλοκαίρι.

Ευχαριστώ εκ των προταίρων
Κώστας

Payback is a bitch

Setting priorities is really important to our existence. One of the mistakes many people do, myself among them, is to set stuff above our-self's and personal health. Most times we suppose that our mind and body forgets and forgives but this is just a shitty illusion. Payback is a bitch and this week I got it all in my face.

Hard Rock and Free Software: part one

Some days ago I was reading again a book about Terminal command line and at some point I felt like listening to music and especially some good old 80's Rock so I picked one of my favorite play-lists and BANG, Skid Row Poetry right in to my face...

Since I was born they couldn't hold me down
Another misfit kid, another burned-out town

Never played by the rules I never really cared
My nasty reputation takes me everywhere

I look and see it's not only me
So many others have stood where I stand
We are the young so raise your hands

They call us problem child
We spend our lives on trial
We walk an endless mile
We are the youth gone wild
We stand and we won't fall
We're the one and one for all
The writing's on the wall
We are the youth gone wild

So listening to those lyrics of 'Youth Gone Wild'  I started thinking what are the similarities when I was starting my life as a Rocker and my life as a Free Software supporter. I found many similarities that I hadn't noticed until that day. I was shocked to be honest, so I thought why not blog about it? And here we are, as always continue reading at your own risk ;-)


1) Family affairs 

Well when I was a young boy and started to listen to rock my father wanted to send me to an exorcist because he thought I was possessed, to be honest I felt possessed my self with all that energy that music had that I never experienced before.

When I grew up (?!?) and discovered Free Software, my father though I was possessed for a second time in my life since he suddenly saw me standing in front of a screen reading for hours, standing still, I also felt a bit strange since the power of knowledge of that new stuff filled me with energy once again.

2)Surrounding Community

Back then, when I started listening to Rock and I went to my friends with a tape filled with Aerosmith, Twisted Sister, Deep purple and Scorpions they thought I was becoming something else that they don't like so we split and I was alone until I found some other Rockers and started crush in to places where we spent all of our time listening to Rock, some of us tried to learn to play guitar and drums. We were part of a community.

When I started using Free Software and I tried to talk to my friends about it and shared them some live Cd's I had made for them, they said that I was loosing my mind, so I was alone until I found others like me and a LUG where we crushed all of our free time and running various Linux distro's, some of us tried to learn Python, Java and Pearl. We were part of a community.

3)Freedom of doing whatever you want, freedom to fail.

As Rockers we started playing guitars and drums and we didn't have to be good, we didn't wanted to be professionals, we just cared to play. We organized gigs and we were drinking beers. Many times we were having gigs with just our friends, some times even without them, we are talking about epic fails but we didn't actually care because we did what we wanted just because we liked the whole situation, we didn't want to make money out of it, we did it for ourselves and that is why we had great fun with it.( Although we all dreamed at least once to become RockStars)

As Free Software users we started writing code(not me :-p ) testing various distributions and also building custom distributions based on other distributions or playing with various GUI's, we don't care if what we are making actually works most of the times and we enjoy failing, since we liked the road better than the actual destination. We tried to convince people test what we do. Sometimes some of our friends did that,sometimes not even our friends accepted to try it. We didn't actually get bothered by it(at least for a long time). We didn't care about making money out of it, we had our jobs. We did it(and still do it) for ourselves and that is why we have great fun with it.(Although we all dreamed ourselves at least once as the next Linus Torvalds).

That's it for now. Part one ends here.

Do what you Love
Love what you do
and
Love thy guitar as you Love thy desktop
Because those will guide you to the path of ...

Kostas Koudaras

Hangover Philosophy: Life and the two versions of her

Some after Hangover Philosophy for the people.

Read-hear-watch at your on responsibility ;-)

First Joke of the year: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines

A friend of mine just send me an old Linux that I would like to share...

If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines

UNIX Airways

Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are supposed to be building.

Air DOS

Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again. Then they push again, jump on again, and so on ...

Mac Airlines

All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don't need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.

Windows Air

The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.

Windows NT Air

Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.

Linux Air

Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the Seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?"