Oct 10, 2019 - 6 ' read

Story from openSUSE.Asia Summit 2019 Full Stack Conference Organizer

Pre-Summit #

The openSUSE.Asia Summit 2019 call for host was announced on July 6th, 2018. On July 31st, 2018, me, on behalf of openSUSE Indonesia Community submitted the call for host. We started writing the proposal on August 19, 2018. Then the final proposal was submitted on September 10th, 2018. On the openSUSE.Asia Summit 2018 (that also co-host with COSCUP and GNOME.Asia Summit 2018), I presented the proposal on the BoF session on day 1.

I presented CFH for openSUSE.Asia Summit 2019 at openSUSE.Asia Summit 2018 in Taipei, Taiwan. (Photo by Yan Arief)

We did survey the university for the venue in September and October 2018. The final survey was in August 2019. Actually, we did a venue survey on two universities in Bali for the venue, but we decided to choose Udayana University for some reason. Luckily, we contacted Pak Putu, who also a Linux user and lecturer at the university. With his help, we can co-host with the university for the venue.

Later, we prepared sponsorship prospectus, listed the potential sponsorship and sent the prospectus to them from October 2018 to around January/February 2019. There were obstacles to finding sponsors at that time. Surprisingly, we got a platinum sponsor rather than SUSE. Thank you Attila and Simplify 8 Inc.

With support from the local community; among them KLAS (Kelompok Linux Arek Suroboyo), GLiB (GNU/Linux Bogor), KLiM (Kelompok GNU/Linux Malang), Gimpscape, and LIbreOffice-ID; we did an openSUSE.Asia Summit 2019 roadshow from January 2019 through June 2019 on the various city such as Malang (January 5-6 and May 26), Surabaya (January 12-13, April 13, April 27, and May 26), Pasuruan (January 19-20), Solo (26-27 January and June 22), Yogyakarta (February 16 and April 10), Jember (February 23-24), and Bogor (February 24 and June 1).

Based on the roadmap, then we prepared a call for papers, call for logo design, call for volunteers, etc. For this summit, we have 91 submissions for a call for papers, 5 submissions for a lightning talk, 182 local participants, 10 foreigner participants and 40 volunteers (based on our record including OSEM).

Summit #

Before day 0, I landed in Bali along with Rifki as a local team on October 2, 2019. We were the pioneer, what we did was pick up some goodies, check the venue (conference, guest lecture, and dinner venue), brainstorming with the volunteer, and final meeting with university. The next day, Dhenandi and Rania, also the local team, came to help up prepared the conference along with the volunteers.

Day 0 #

Day 0 (Friday, October 4, 2019) started with a guest lecture from Douglas DeMaio, Sunny, and Max Lin at Udayana University titled “openSUSE Community Based Linux Distribution Development Model”, there was live streaming from openSUSE-ID YouTube.

In the afternoon, we continued with a community meeting at Go-Work, Park 23. You can see the meeting notes here.

Gerald, I, Axel, Douglas, Simon (Photo by Takeyama-San)

In the evening, we had welcome dinner with the speakers and sponsors on the beautiful Kedonganan beach, while enjoying the sunset.

After that, I and Estu had to go back to the university to help the other local team and volunteers, just make sure the preparation before the next day.

Day 1 #

Gerald Pfeifer on keynote (Photo by Edwin Zakaria)

Day 1 (Saturday, October 5, 2019) started with opening by Udayana University represented by the vice-dean of faculty of engineering, then followed by the first keynote by openSUSE Board (Axel Braun, Simon Lees, and Gerald Pfeifer). The second keynote was from Simplify 8 Inc. After the first break, I attend Sakana talk about “openSUSE Kubic - The easy and fast way to deploy Kubernetes with openSUSE”. After lunch, the openSUSE Asia Community had a workshop “We are openSUSE Asia Community How to promote openSUSE in Asia”. Me along with Sunny, Edwin, Sakana, Takeyama-san, Hillwood, and Shobha, discuss the journey of openSUSE.Asia Summit and how to get involved with openSUSE Community. It was a very fun workshop. Next, I attended Edwin Zakaria’s “openSUSE Indonesia Community Status - What Next?”. The actual number of all attendees on day 1 was 252. There was another dinner with all the speakers, sponsors, and volunteers. It was fun too.

Day 2 #

Day 2 (Sunday, October 5, 2019) started with opening by the local team. I represented the local team to open day 2. I showed the day 1 highlight video, talked statistics of call for paper, call for lightning talks, speakers, participants, volunteers, and logo competition submissions. I also invited Hervy (Hervy Qurrotul) as the winner of openSUSE.Asia Summit 2019 Logo Competition to the stage. Sunny gave the special prize for him. I also said thank you to the co-host, community, and sponsors who supported us.

I and Max Huang, handover openSUSE.Asia Summit Map

Next, there were keynote speakers from openSUSE by Simon Lees and from GNOME by Neil McGovern. After that, I attend “Geeko Magazine: A Technical Magazine on openSUSE, edited on openSUSE” by Takeyama-san. After lunch break, I attend “So You Wanna Be a Packager” by Kristýna Streitová, “Scaling ACME CA on openSUSE Kubic” by Arga Dhahana Pramudianto, “RLE - Why Emergency Response & Contacts Are Important for Event Organizers” by Douglas DeMaio, and “How to use eBPF for application statistics in Linux” by Kento-san.

The lightning talk session was surprising, although one speaker canceled (actually only Herpiko and Ish Sookun were ready), suddenly there were two new lightning talks by Ariez Vachha and Sunny. Then the session ended with Shobha Tyagi talked about openSUSE.Asia Summit 2020 in India. The actual number of all attendees on day 2 was 230.

Day 3 #

Day 3 (Monday, October 6, 2019) was a one day tour. First, we went to Ubud. Visited rice terrace and monkey forest. Then we went to Uluwatu for Uluwatu Temple and watched Kecak Dance while enjoying the sunset.

Geeko visit terrace

Geeko watch Kecak Dance

Recap video from Btech

Post-Summit #

After the summit, until this post was written, we still have some homework like writing a report and send it to the committee and sponsors, preparing to send goodies to the sponsors, collecting speaker slides, selecting some photos and videos and edit it, etc, etc, etc. :))

You can see more pictures on Flickr and Google Photos.

The Indonesian community still has some conference after openSUSE.Asia Summit 2019. One week after that is GNOME.Asia Summit 2019 in Gresik and Indonesia Open Infrastructure Day 2019 in Surabaya on November 2019, with almost the same person, committee, volunteer, and the sponsors. “You again, you again”. See my next post.

Full Stack Conference Organizer (Photo by Samsul Maarif). Be careful, being a full stack conference organizer can cause headaches.

Thank You #

openSUSE #

Thank you to openSUSE for sponsoring my travel to openSUSE.Asia Summit 2019. Also thank you to people at openSUSE and the openSUSE board (Douglas DeMaio, Gerald Pfeifer, Axel Braun, Simon Lees).

openSUSE.Asia Committee #

Thank you to openSUSE.Asia Committee (Sunny, Sakana, Takeyama-san, etc) who helped us a lot.

openSUSE-ID #

Thank you to openSUSE Indonesia community, especially the Local Team (Edwin Zakaria, Estu Fardani, Saputro Aryulianto, Yan Arief, M. Dhenandi Putra, Darian RIzaludin, Rania Amina, Rifki Affandi, and Joko Susilo). Thank you to the artwork team from Gimpscape (Hervy Qurrotul Ainur, Nugroho Dwi Hartawan, Arif Satria). Thank you to Udayana University, I Putu Agus Eka Pratama and Oka Widiantara, for venue support. Thank you also to all volunteers that I can’t mention one by one.

Speakers #

Thank you to all speakers for coming and giving a speech to this summit.

Sponsors #

Thank you to all sponsors who supported this event, openSUSE & SUSE, Simplify 8 Inc., Radiant Utama Interinsco TBK, MyCOOP (PT SKK), Btech, Linksys, Excellent, Bogor Web Host, and Sepatu FANS. Also thanks to Coly Li for personal sponsors for this event.