Organizing oSC13 - 69 days before

I read yesterdays post and I found it very 'dark', not far from the truth but if you plan to make a conference reading that post will discourage you. One other truth is that I yelp a lot, if you met me more than once you know that for sure, it's not because I am a bad person or one of those people that see it all black, it is the perfectionist inside me that believes we live in a perfect world and reacts.

It is impossible to organize such a thing and wait for everything to be perfect. It is too complicated and there are many things that nobody can actually predict and even if you done that before, most of the things you need to handle probably changed since the last time you did it. What I keep telling myself is to expect perfectness but be pleased if something is above very good. With that you are a bit more relaxed and as the years passed by I learned that the only actual way to reach perfectness in complicated situations it to be (relatively) relaxed so that you have eyes around and predict things that can make a situation go bad. Also being relatively relaxed gives you the ability to think for alternatives. A good advice I was given once upon a time after a failure of organizing a gig was "ALWAYS have alternatives". What I mean by that is that when you organize something you start making tasks, it is impossible for some of those tasks not to go wrong for many reasons. At certain situations it (depending on the affection of the task in what you organize) it is better to leave outside a good idea were there is no viable alternative than trying to do something Great and because of this you will deliver something less than good. Another thing to have always in mind is that 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and no matter how hard you try people will see the result in the end, not the effort you did for that result. Another thing is that in the end there always be someone that will not like what you did and probably will tell you that the worst way and at the worst time. Value feedback from all because it is priceless but learn to separate good from bad feedback.

I think this is enough for today. I am at my actual work today so I will spend less than the time I want to the oSC13 and this is not a bad thing actually, I will tell you why at some other point. 

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

How it's made - OBS

As all human beings I am curious by nature, I always liked to see how things are made and listening to stories of what lead people in doing interesting stuff. When I was in Nuremberg for the Marketing hackathon, Jos (Poortvliet) told us that there would be that meeting with the OBS guys and have a talk about everything around it so that we could wright a series of articles in order to promote it. After a few sentences I understood that we would start from the day that OBS was conceived until the present day. For me this was a conversation I had to be part of.

The day after Jos told us about the meeting we were gathered in a room with the guys that created the OBS magic. Some of you might say that I become excessive putting the word magic next to OBS but be patient to read the upcoming OBS series of articles and judge me then.

We gathered in the room and we started recording with our laptops and our mobiles so that we would be sure that we will not lose any part of this conversation for the articles we will prepare. 

We started by asking typical stuff like 'How it started?' and 'What created the need for a tool like that?' but the answers, along with the flame on the eyes of people answering was something that it is very difficult to describe in written language, filled the room with energy. 

What originally started as an interview so that we would gather information to write some articles became a six people group telling a story that was closer to the atmosphere of a fairy-tale than anything else. Soon there was that flow that questions were unnecessary and everything was coming out naturally.

Listening to those peoples stories and seeing the passion in their eyes made me envy them for not being a part of it. Yes OBS is a great project and there are a lot of interesting stuff you can do with it but at that one hour that I was in that room this was the last thing that I cared about and the last think on my mind. It was all about passionate people who love Free Software, who love giving stuff back to the community and who love every little step while doing it. It makes you realize that what most people see as letters and numbers and variables in a part of code other people see a part of themselves and a way to individual freedom. Someone once told me that the basic difference between a free software programmer and a proprietory software programmer is that the guys in free software most of the time see their code more as a child and less than some lines of code. I could understand this but I had never really felt it. This hour I spent in the 'Rome' room at SUSE offices in Nuremberg with those guys taught me more things about Free Software Programming than all the conferences and all the talks I had been part so far. Feel Free to suppose that I am making this thing bigger that it really was, for me it was just an experience I had to share with those who will get it.

A letter to my mom

Hi mother
 I am writing you from Nuremberg. Of course you know by now from the pictures I sent you that I am not here to be a part of satanic cult or anything and as you can see my Geek friends I was telling you about are not aliens from a strange planet but actual people. I understand that some of the times it was hard to believe listening to me calling them as tux93 and tigerfoot, but here they are, you can see them on the photos.

 Now mother please forgive me but the truth is that I actually had 'some' alcohol but there is some law here that force to drink 'some' beer, at least that is what they told me and I did not wanted to have any problems with the law.

 To answer your question, what I liked and not in the 12.3 Marketing hackathon...
Dear mother I had so much fun that it should be illegal. I also learn a lot about doing things but there were some times that I had no idea what I was doing. Now I was among old openSUSE friends from previous hackathons and in a few new ones. Once again the new guys were pretty cool and we had a great bonding as a team. We also had a KDE release party, ok I know that there were a lot of KDE parties around but we were the only ones that had The KDE e.V. president making the presentation, so... Jos (you know that long hair Dutch fellow who it a lot of cheese) also made a presentation there but who cares about him anyway...One of tthe important things I have to tell you about this party mother is that Augustin exposed us as 'The Greek Mafia' so send someone here to take care of him.

 I really liked Hacking for a whole week, learning new things and actually contributing with a more immediate way. We had some meetings with really interesting things. We even had a meeting with Roland Haidl and he heard what we wanted to tell him . What I did not like was that some people did not manage to come and the weather. I mean mother really the last time i was here it was like 25 degrees and this time it was all snow and rain.
So Mother I will soon be back home and I miss you
Just in case I am not, look for me in Brazil
Hugs and kisses
Your son
Kostas