Outline

Hey, free libre opensource communities meeting regularly: move to Indico!

because:

mature software
written in python and actively maintained by CERN
if it can manage an scientific conference it can manage an OSS meeting too
lot's of features, plugins, APIs
and because many opensource communities are migrating to Indico we can reuse the same product and share enhancements

My goal

If you are part of teams/communities organizing events I want you to move to Indico!

Disclaimer: I'm not related in any way with CERN or Indico team. I'm just suffered the pain of not having a good conference management software available 😸

My background

I have been involved in conference organization for a while:

HispaLinux 1998, HispaLinux 1999, HispaLinux 2000, HispaLinux 2001, PyConES 2016, Akademy 2017, Geocamp 2017, SuperSEC 2018, GUADEC 2018 and LibreOffice Conference 2019.

I learned a thing or two about this.

So I have been interested in ways of organizing an event

Specially opensource alternatives (because... you know):

Pentabarf, FRAB, COD, CFP-Devoxx, OSEM, Canonical/DebConf Summit, Wafer, OCS, symposion, OpenConferenceWare, regcfp, Open Event, Unconference Toolbox, Indico, pretalx, pretix,

I keep an alternatives informal list: An improvised list of opensource conference management software.

And tried some of them, including the «doing everything by hand».

My conclusions

After organizing several events:

organizing a conference is very laborious, not very difficult but work intensive;
the most featured your conference is the complex the work (pretty obvious);
tools are supposed to help. Sometimes they can't;
all alternatives I've used had lots of drawbacks.

Some of the more tedious jobs

management of the call for papers process:

authors registration;
proposals and documents submission;
review and approval process (better with blind review feature);
self management collection articles/slides to publish at website.

conference scheduling:

manage and publish the conference program;
export the program in some standard recognized formats (BARF, calendars, etc);
some mobile user application able to show and manage the program calendar.

Some of the more tedious jobs

management of the call for papers process:

authors registration;
proposals and documents submission;
review and approval process (better with blind review feature);
self management collection articles/slides to publish at website.

conference scheduling:

manage and publish the conference program;
export the program in some standard recognized formats (BARF, calendars, etc);
some mobile user application able to show and manage the program calendar.

Some of the more tedious jobs

payments, because some times you need to ask for money:

to cover some particular cost;
to sell merchandising;
to accept donations.

attendance registration:

(self managed) user registration;
mailing to participants;
on site registration mobile application.

My conclusions (2)

Despite the efforts conference software management tools still are a pain in the ass:

:_(

Good news: we have Indico!

seems to be useful for lots of event types, from minor ones to full academic conferences
it’s backed by CERN a very well funded and respected organization,
has been used in hundreds of thousands events.
it’s MIT licensed,
it’s in active development and has a public development roadmap,
written in python;
an active support community,
and many other features.