Duffy: Run an open source-powered virtual conference!

[Posted April 14, 2023 by jake]

On her blog, Máirín Duffy writes about using open-source software to run a virtual conference. The Fedora design team recently ran the first Creative Freedom Summit as a virtual conference for FOSS creative tools. The team could have used the same non-open-source platform that is used by the Flock Fedora conference, but took a different path:

Using Matrix's Element client, we embedded the live stream video and an Etherpad into a public Matrix room for the conference. We used attendance in the channel to monitor overall conference attendance. We had live chat going throughout the conference and took questions from audience members both from the chat and the embedded Q&A Etherpad.

Back in 2020, the Linux Plumbers Conference also put together a virtual conference using free software, as did LibrePlanet and likely others.

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Duffy: Run an open source-powered virtual conference!

Posted Apr 15, 2023 15:21 UTC (Sat) by dsmith (subscriber, #162071) [Link] (1 responses)

I wish this had covered things before the conference proper. In particular, I’m in the planning stages of an event and we’re trying to find a good OSS tool for managing our call for speakers. OpenCFP would work, but seems to be in maintenance mode only, and I’m having trouble finding alternatives. (We’ve used OpenCFP before and it works well enough, so I have a fallback, but it’s always nice to be aware of options.)

Duffy: Run an open source-powered virtual conference!

Posted Apr 15, 2023 22:08 UTC (Sat) by ppisa (subscriber, #67307) [Link]

I know more enthusiasts conferences using selfhosted

https://pretalx.com/p/about/

Conference examples

https://installfest.cz/

https://www.linuxdays.cz/

The pretalx presentation/lecture formatting look like this when published or shared with reviewers

https://pretalx.installfest.cz/installfest-2022/talk/KNPUAQ/

Best wishes,

Pavel Pisa

For DebConf, we also have quite a bit of experience...

Posted Apr 17, 2023 6:37 UTC (Mon) by gwolf (subscriber, #14632) [Link] (1 responses)

DebConf (the Debian Project annual conference) has provided live videos and catered for remote participation at least partially since 2005, and fully (this is, live-streaming from all official venues -- modulo some changes here and there) since 2007. We have always had participation from the audience using IRC; it might not seem so much compared with a full videoconferencing solution, but that is what our community has asked (and kept happy with).
We didn't welcome remote participation as a presenter before, mainly because nobody thought about it... but we have had remote talks at least since 2016.
Of course, 2020 happened. Shortly before the pandemic, Jonathan Carter (now the DPL; I think he was not yet elected) announced the Debian Social project -- a set of social-oriented systems based 100% on free software, meant to work together with Debian. It included Peertube and Jitsi instances, plus many more services people on the fediverse will be more likely to identify than myself.
DebConf has used many conference management systems through its life -- When I became involved in the organization, we used Comas (a system based in mod_perl I wrote) for two years (2005 and 2006). We switched to Pentabarf, written in Ruby (not exactly Rails), and stayed with it until 2014. In 2014 we used Canonical's Summit. Since 2015, wehave been using CTLUG's Wafer.

For DebConf, we also have quite a bit of experience...

Posted Apr 20, 2023 11:14 UTC (Thu) by anton (subscriber, #25547) [Link]

EuroForth has been held several times with BigBlueButton for video conferencing and Mattermost for persistent chatting; BigBlueButton has a chat in each room, but the contents vanish when the session ends.

More (virtual) open source-powered (un)conferences, December 2022 – March 2023

Posted Apr 25, 2023 12:47 UTC (Tue) by cel (guest, #164780) [Link]

also using free-libre/open-source software (FLOSS):
DecentSocial (OpenCollective, BigBlueButton, CryptPad, Matrix/IRC, and Jekyll)
Matrix Community Meetup (matrix-barcamp)
FOSDEM (Matrix)
Dezentrale Jahresendveranstaltungen (Matrix, pretix, pretalkx, c3voc)
FOSSY (Django) [July 2023]
in part:
FediForum (Jitsi Meet, Etherpad)
CyborgCamp and Internet Identity Workshop (markers and sticky notes)

More info: https://celehner.com/2023/04/24/conf.html