OOoCon 2007 Call for Papers

The 2007 OpenOffice.org International Conference will be
held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain on 19th-21st September.
See the Conference website:
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007

The OpenOffice.org Community invites potential speakers to
submit proposals for papers. Whether you are a seasoned
presenter, or have never stood up in public before, if you
have something interesting to share about OpenOffice.org -
we want to hear from you.

Your proposal should be submitted before 1 June 2007 in
order to guarantee that it will be considered for inclusion
in the Conference.

We are soliciting papers from the broad OpenOffice.org
community on topics ranging from developing OpenOffice.org
to marketing it; from the global politics of the free and
open-source software (FOSS) movement to the technical
challenges of localization. This conference is meant to be
a forum for technical as well as general examinations of
OpenOffice.org's place in the expanding world of FOSS.

Covered topics

The conference will be organized into the following
streams:

General
* OpenOffice.org 3.0
* Commercializing, integrating, and supporting
OpenOffice.org
* Migration methodology
* Marketing
* Branding and artwork
* Funding the project, defining the product, and extending
it
* Attracting people (programmers, documentation writers,
linguists, support, marketing...)
* The OpenOffice.org Community: Past, Present and Future

Native-Languages
* More than translation: building local language
communities
* Tools and techniques for localisations
* The OpenOffice.org Release Process

Public Administration
* Case studies of OpenOffice.org in Government, Local,
National, supra-national...
* Government support of OpenOffice.org (and FOSS in general)
* Collaboration of PA in developing, deploying and using
OpenOffice.org

Enterprises
* Case studies of OpenOffice.org in private sector
(SME - Small to Medium-sized Enterprise)
* Building a successful business around OpenOffice.org
(training, migration, support, development of extensions,
technical authors...)
* System integration with OpenOffice.org (ODF, UNO, API,
extensions)

Development
* The source and how to work with it
* The Roadmap
* Tools for development
* Integration and localization
* UNO and what it can do
* QA, user interface, and development processes
* Macros and installers
* Extensions
* Filters and other topics....

XML & OASIS OpenDocument Format
* OASIS OpenDocument XML format
* Introduction to XML
* Examples of XML technology
* XML: bridge between OpenOffice.org and other tools

How to submit a Proposal

Note. As the OpenOffice.org community consists of members
from countries all over the world the talk must be in
English.

Please limit your presentation to 50 minutes, including
questions.

Submissions must be made via the link on the Conference
website. The link will be available on Monday 2nd April
and your proposal (abstract) must be submitted before 1st
June in order to be considered for inclusion in the
Conference.

Types of Session

A presentation is a general discussion of some topic,
including (but not limited to) the software, the
community, relationships with other software or
communities, and political or philosophical issues.

A case study is a specific type of presentation that
tells what you did to achieve some result; this is
usually a success story, but could include a discussion
of what mistakes you made and how you overcame them.

A workshop is a "how-to" session, in which the presenter
gives step-by-step instructions for doing some task such
as writing macros, setting up a database, or developing a
complex spreadsheet. Workshops usually include some
audience activities.

A BoF (Birds of a Feather meeting) is an informal
gathering of people in a particular group, or interested
in a specific topic. Examples include the members of a
native-language group, the marketing project,
documentation writers, or Macintosh coders.

A panel discussion involves a group of people (usually 3
or 4) led by a moderator. The participants make opening
and closing statements on the topic, may discuss the
topic among themselves, and may answer questions from
the audience (usually submitted in advance).

A lightning talk is a brief presentation on any topic
relevant to the conference. It could be an interesting
format to give many people the chance to make their point
in a series of exactly 5 minute slots.

Travel Subsidy

The template for paper submission includes a section for
requesting a travel subsidy. At this point we are not in a
position to offer funding for all speakers, and those
speakers who do get a subsidy are unlikely to have their
full expenses covered. Each request will be considered on
the basis of both merit and need, so if you are requesting
a subsidy, please give as much information as possible to
help us evaluate your request. Please note that someone
presenting only a lightning talk is unlikely to receive
assistance.

Presentation Materials

An OpenOffice.org Impress template recommended for use for
the conference presentations will be published around 1
June 2007. All speakers are required to file a copy of
their presentations with the Conference organisers. These
presentations will be filed on the Conference website.

Please note that your session may be streamed as a live
broadcast and may be recorded and made available for
download from the Conference website.

... and keep a watch on
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/
for more information ...

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

Meeting in Barcelona this Thursday

If you live near Barcelona and you are interested in making the OOoCon2007 the best OOoCon ever, we are holding a community meeting to talk about the organization of the conference this Thursday, 22th March at 19:30h.

So if you want to collaborate somehow, sponsor the event, or just meet the people who are behind the organization, we are waiting for you :)

Meeting: 22th March, 19:30 h (local time)
Place: The Shamrock (Barcelona, Carrer Tallers, 72)
Click here to see the map

OOoCon in the news

DesktopLinux has published an article about the OpenOffice.org Conference in Barcelona:

"Organizers of OpenOffice.org's annual conference, "OOoCon," have voted to stage this year's event in Barcelona, Spain, in September. Exact dates are expected to be announced soon. Barcelona won out with 297 votes over Dehradun, India (224), and Beijing, China (82)."

Read the article

Do you want to help us?

Barcelona, Gran Via Street at night. Near the University of Barcelona.

The organization of such a big event as an OpenOffice.org Conference isn't an easy task. We need as many hands as possible, but keep in mind that all these hands need to be coordinated too so they work in the same direction. Please try to avoid to contact the organizers directly and use the OOoCon2007 mailing list to share your projects and ideas with everyone involved in the organization.

If you want to help us, you can do it in many different ways:

• People in the area of Barcelona can help as voluntaries in the proposed dates. Please, write your name in the Team Members section in the wiki page with your e-mail address. You can also a short description of your skills and the kind of help that you could provide.


• Large local OpenOffice.org deployments are very important for user keynotes and success stories. Please, add your name to Proposals for talks or keynotes section in the wiki page and wait for the Call For Papers announcement.


• Local OpenOffice.org developers. If you are an individual, organization or company doing a development based on Openoffice.org add yourself to the Names of local OpenOffice.org developers section in the wiki page. We are very interested in hearing from you! (Note: If you are a student consider also the Summer of Code)


• Local OpenOffice.org companies or institutions can help OpenOffice.org becoming potential sponsors. Are you a company or institution and you want to help sponsoring the conference, please, subscribe to the ooocon2007_discuss list (see the contact section for details) and explain what your company or institution does and how it can contribute to the conference.