Have you been to an event recently involving free software or a related topic? How did you find it? Are you organizing an event and don’t want to fall into the trap of using Facebook or Meetup or other services that compete for a share of your community’s attention?

Are you keen to find events in foreign destinations related to your interest areas to coincide with other travel intentions?

Have you been concerned when your GSoC or Outreachy interns lost a week of their project going through the bureaucracy to get a visa for your community’s event? Would you like to make it easier for them to find the best events in the countries that welcome and respect visitors?

In many recent discussions about free software activism, people have struggled to break out of the illusion that social media is the way to cultivate new contacts. Wouldn’t it be great to make more meaningful contacts by attending more a more diverse range of events rather than losing time on social media?

Making it happen

There are already a number of tools (for example, Drupal plugins and WordPress plugins) for promoting your events on the web and in iCalendar format. There are also a number of sites like Agenda du Libre and GriCal who aggregate events from multiple communities where people can browse them.

How can we take these concepts further and make a convenient, compelling and global solution?

Can we harvest event data from a wide range of sources and compile it into a large database using something like PostgreSQL or a NoSQL solution or even a distributed solution like OpenDHT?

Can we use big data techniques to mine these datasources and help match people to events without compromising on privacy?

Why not build an automated iCalendar “to-do” list of deadlines for events you want to be reminded about, so you never miss the deadlines for travel sponsorship or submitting a talk proposal?

I’ve started documenting an architecture for this on the Debian wiki and proposed it as an Outreachy project. It will also be offered as part of GSoC in 2018.

Ways to get involved

If you would like to help this project, please consider introducing yourself on the debian-outreach mailing list and helping to mentor or refer interns for the project. You can also help contribute ideas for the specification through the mailing list or wiki.

Mini DebConf Prishtina 2017

This weekend I’ve been at the MiniDebConf in Prishtina, Kosovo. It has been hosted by the amazing Prishtina hackerspace community.

Watch out for future events in Prishtina, the pizzas are huge, but that didn’t stop them disappearing before we finished the photos: