Sadly, openSUSE conference 2014 is finally over

openSUSE conference 2014 (oSC14) in Dubrovnik is over and there are new memories to keep. At times, being the one to push the organization on the road to oSC14 was rough and it took a lot of energy to achieve what was done. But after all that happened, I can say I am left with only positive feelings of a great achievement. Of course, I feel relieved that it is over and that everything that we planned went smoothly. Hanging out for five days with the awesome openSUSE community and awesome lectures made all the casual organization hiccups, stress and problems worth it. Actually, I didn’t get to see most of the lectures because organizing took all of my time, so watching the recordings is one of the first things on my checklist. Also, on-site feedback from other traveling Geekos has been very positive which gives me at least some reason to believe that my impression of the conference is not too subjective.

The Geeko party

Sadly, oSC14 is over and the feeling of achievement is only surpassed by the feeling of eagerly awaiting what Hans prepares for us at oSC15 in The Hague. Hopefully, I will also be able to help in some way.

In the end, to all the unsung heroes – everyone who helped make the conference happen – volunteers, University of Dubrovnik, lecturers, core team, video team, sponsors… thank you so much and continue having a lot of fun!

openSUSE conference time of the year is here!

After months of planning, pushing the organization of the openSUSE conference 2014 at the University of Dubrovnik, and having more loads of work then ever before, it is almost time. Somehow I survived, and somehow my daily work survived too. I used most of this Easter weekend to sleep. That wasn’t the plan, but a few days that pushed me to relax exposed how much I actually exhausted myself in the last few weeks.

The conference work isn’t over yet, but the hardest and most critical things (preparations) have been taken care of. The execution of the conference and having fun part of it is yet to come. Although I know how hectic conference days can be, I feel that this will be a relaxing part. Geekos are coming, and we’ll have a great time!

So, in 3 days, April 24th, we will kick it off – the openSUSE conference will start with a day of venue preparations that ends with a welcome party in the Sesame tavern, at 6pm. The street address is Branitelja Dubrovnika 23, or Dante Alighieria b.b., more contact info is available at the tavern’s site – http://sesame.hr/contact.html. We prepared some food and drinks, so I encourage all weary travelling Geekos to join us and and prepare for the conference.

Also, if you are new to the openSUSE conference, entry is completely free, and so is the welcome party, so everyone is welcome to drop by and have fun with the Geekos! Topics are not something only openSUSE users will appreciate, there are interesting things for anyone interested in bleeding edge technology, open source, free software and Linux to hear. Take a look a the conference schedule, make your traveling arrangements and have a lot of fun! See you there! 🙂

A trip to the ITI 2011 conference

Two weeks ago, with a couple of colleagues, I made a trip to Cavtat, a small town near Dubrovnik, where the ITI 2011 conference was held. The conference was nice and my talk for the paper “Nested componentization for advanced Web portal solutions” went fine. Most notable occurrences were the keynote by Richard D. De Veaux titled “The Seven Deadly Sins of Data Mining – and How to Avoid Them” and a workshop on presentation skills by George S. Nezlek. And of course my own appearance, which was the reason, no doubt, the conference room got filled to the last seat. Nezlek’s workshop didn’t introduce nothing really out of the ordinary or more than common sense would drive someone to try at the presentation (or not to try), but it was a set of really good and structured advice on how to perform and create presentations that no one else before him gave. Also, the man was an example of what’s a good presentation performance.

But, of course, more interesting than the conference were a few days before and after it, which we used to explore the Dubrovnik surrounding area. Read on…