Category: foss-north

Five days left

I use to joke that the last week before foss-north is the worst – everything is done, all that is left is the stress.

This year, we have the broadest program yet. 25 speakers talking about everything from community policies, GPU isolation, blockchain, historical KDE software, retro computers, IoT, Android, SailfishOS, bug triaging, crowd funding, software updates, yocto, home automation, design to sub-atomic particles.

You can still get a ticket (and make sure to bring a friend) at foss-north . Welcome!

foss-north approaching

TL;DR; Tickets including food are sold until April 9 – get yours now!

Organizing a conference means going through multiple stages. The first parts are the most difficult – signing up for a venue, looking for the initial speakers, finding the initial sponsors. Basically, building something out of nothing. This becomes easier over the years, and this, the third year, it has been quite fun. However, since the aim is to grow the event, we always need more sponsors, more speakers and a bigger venue.

The good thing about this year is that foss-north has passed a point where we can finally afford a venue that we can grow in: Chalmers Conference Centre. This is ideally located in central Gothenburg at the Chalmers campus where we find a lot of engineering students.

From a speaker stand-point, the call for papers also passed some sort of pivoting point, and the contents was almost tripple of what we got last year. This triggered us to move to a multi-day event, opening up half the Sunday (April 22) as well as filling the Monday (April 23) – the schedule looks great. I have a tip to other organizers – don’t go multi-day on a hunch after the event has been announced. It means dedicating a couple of weeks to puzzling. Finding a way to affort the extended venue, having to do ask all speakers which day they can attend, and generally complicating things.

Also, I was in kodsnack – a local podcast – which meant that I got approached by Chalmers Robotförening who wants to do a workshop. Of course we will do a workshop! Meaning more planning.

One of the things that is causing more concern when organizing conferences is the catering. Catering is great because everyone can eat together and we get a great mingle opportunity and so on. However, catering needs to be preordered and one thing I’ve learned is that people like ordering tickets late. Like, the hours before the event late. I’ve been up at 5 in the morning printing visitors badges as people like ordering tickets late.

That means that either I have to jepardize the budget by preordering food for more guests that we have sold tickets to, or risking being short on food. However, this is where the new venue is great, because there are three restaurants in the same building. Thus, the tickets sold this week (until April 9) includes catering, but the tickets after do not. This means missing out on the breakfast, mingle lunch and coffee break – but it means that no-one will starve during the event.

So, if you want to take part in *all* the fun, make sure to get your ticket this week. If you can’t make your mind up – there is a solution all the way until midnight before the event.

foss-north – the count down

This is the last day left of the Call for Papers for foss-north 2018. With the help of our great sponsors we have the opportunity to transport you to our conference if you are selected to speak. Make sure to make your submission before March 11 and you are in the race.

Why should you talk at foss-north?

  • You get to tell the world about something you are passionate about!
  • You get to visit Gothenburg, Sweden – we can even pay for your trip!
  • You get to speak to the best audience we can get!
  • You get to meet loads of nice people!
  • You get to attend the speaker’s dinner, meeting many interesting people!
  • I really want you to!

Don’t spend time pondering on why you should not talk at foss-north – instead – submit your talk proposal today!

foss-north – the count down

Every year we try to seed the foss-north event with a set of key speakers. This year, one of our seed speakers is Steven Goldfarb from the ATLAS project at CERN. He will take us on a journey from the vastness of the universe, to the tiniest particles we can observe – all possible through collaboration.

“On 4 July 2017, one billion people – a large portion of our planet’s population – took time out of their day to watch a one-and-a-half-hour scientific seminar featuring plots, graphs, Greek letters, and comic sans. Why? A deep-rooted survival instinct told these people that the discovery by CERN scientists of a fundamental component of our universe was something worth paying attention to. Or they were just news junkies. But, they were right.

Today, at CERN, and other physics laboratories around the world, we are seeking answers to the most fundamental questions of humankind: What are we made of? Where did we come from? Where are we going? What are the rules behind all this? Although we might never find the answers, the pursuit of them provides us with the knowledge and skills our children need to survive. I discuss current puzzles in particle physics and cosmology, then challenge us to keep opening our research (data, source, results) to take advantage of our culturally rich, diverse population.”

It is just 1 more days left of the Call for Papers. With the help of our great sponsors we have the opportunity to transport you to our conference if you are selected to speak. Make sure to make your submission before March 11 and you are in the race.

foss-north – the count down

Some people likes to talk at conferences, other dread it. At foss-north, we welcome both new and experienced speakers and work hard to make the experience pleasant to all. We are looking for contents on a wide variety of subjects. Here are some topic ideas to encourage you to submit a talk proposal:

  • Teach us your favorite tool.
  • Talk about your pet project.
  • Talk about your favourite programming language.
  • Talk about the friends you’ve made through FOSS.
  • Talk about a piece of software that you are missing.
  • Talk about how you organize your work around FOSS.
  • Talk about why FOSS helps you create your product or delivery your service.
  • Talk about software licenses.
  • Talk about software patents.
  • Talk about how you use FOSS at your school.
  • Talk about your own FOSS conference.
  • Talk about anything that you want!

Of course we want your talk to be about free and open source – that is what foss in foss-north stands for.

foss-north strives to gather the best speakers, the best audience at the best location (Gothenburg) for one day each year. This year the event takes place on April 23 – get your tickets here!

It is just 2 more days left of the Call for Papers. With the help of our great sponsors we have the opportunity to transport you to our conference if you are selected to speak. Make sure to make your submission before March 11 and you are in the race.

foss-north – the count down

Flashback time! At last year’s foss-north we had a great talk by Jeff Campbell from Scrum Beers and Brewing Agile. He spoke about actionable agile tools – i.e. how to improve the way your agile team works. You can see the recording right here (you might have to click the link if your aggregator hides YouTube contents).

foss-north strives to gather the best speakers, the best audience at the best location (Gothenburg) for one day each year. This year the event takes place on April 23 – get your tickets here!

It is just 3 more days left of the Call for Papers. With the help of our great sponsors we have the opportunity to transport you to our conference if you are selected to speak. Make sure to make your submission before March 11 and you are in the race.

foss-north – the count down

Flashback time! At last year’s foss-north we had a great talk by the Zifra team. They spoke about their encryption solution, enabling journalists and other people having to handle sensitive data to make their digital information inaccessible while in an exposed location. You can see the recording right here (you might have to click the link if your aggregator hides YouTube contents).

foss-north strives to gather the best speakers, the best audience at the best location (Gothenburg) for one day each year. This year the event takes place on April 23 – get your tickets here!

It is just 4 more days left of the Call for Papers. With the help of our great sponsors we have the opportunity to transport you to our conference if you are selected to speak. Make sure to make your submission before March 11 and you are in the race.

foss-north – the count down

Every year we try to seed the foss-north event with a set of key speakers. This year, one of our seed speakers is Patricia Aas from the Vivaldi Browser. She will be speaking about isolating GPU access in its own process.

“Chromium’s process architecture has graphics access restricted to a separate GPU-process. There are several reasons why this could make sense, three common ones are: Security, Robustness and Dependency Separation.

GPU access restricted to a single process requires an efficient framework for communication over IPC from the other processes, and most likely a framework for composition of surfaces. This talk describes both the possible motivations for this kind of architecture and Chromium’s solution for the IPC framework. We will demonstrate how a multiprocess program can compose into a single window on Linux.”

It is just 5 more days left of the Call for Papers. With the help of our great sponsors we have the opportunity to transport you to our conference if you are selected to speak. Make sure to make your submission before March 11 and you are in the race.

foss-north – the count down

Every year we try to seed the foss-north event with a set of key speakers. This year, one of our seed speakers is Carsten Munk known from Jolla, libhybris, Meego, Maemo and more. This year he will speak about his new endevour Zipper – bringing blockchain technology to mobile devices.

“Zipper is an Ethereum based mobile platform which brings blockchain based services to our smartphones in one seamless and user-controlled experience.

At first, Zipper provides everyday smartphone users an easy and safe way to manage their identity and private keys. This makes it possible for anyone to access blockchain based services out-of-the-box in an easy and intuitive way – just like Apple’s services on iOS today – while being in full control of their identity, transactions and data. Zipper works in an isolated compartment in Android and Sailfish OS smartphones, making Zipper and its wallet secure while still easily accessible.”

It is just 6 more days left of the Call for Papers. With the help of our great sponsors we have the opportunity to transport you to our conference if you are selected to speak. Make sure to make your submission before March 11 and you are in the race.

foss-north – the count down

Flashback time! At last year’s foss-north we had a great talk by Chris Lamb about reproducible builds. You can see the recording right here (you might have to click the link if your aggregator hides YouTube contents)

foss-north strives to gather the best speakers, the best audience at the best location (Gothenburg) for one day each year. This year the event takes place on April 23 – get your tickets here!

It is just 7 more days left of the Call for Papers. With the help of our great sponsors we have the opportunity to transport you to our conference if you are selected to speak. Make sure to make your submission before March 11 and you are in the race.