OpenOffice.org Conference (OOoCon 2003) - Call for Papers

[Erwin Tenhumberg <erwin.tenhumberg@sun.com>]

What: First OpenOffice.org Conference (OOoCon 2003)
When: March 20th - March 21st 2003
Where: University of Hamburg, Germany
URL: http://marketing.openoffice.org/conference/

Meet the community, users, and OpenOffice.org sponsors at the first
OpenOffice.org Conference. The conference will convene immediately
after CeBIT, which ends on 19th of March. Hamburg is only 100 miles
(160 Kilometers) from Hannover. The conference will attract some
high-profile keynote speakers from the developer community, European
politics, the open-source movement, and our main sponsor, Sun
Microsystems, Inc. Confirmed keynote speakers are amongst others
the Open Source Advocate Bruce Perens as well as the VP of
Engineering of the Desktop Solutions Group at Sun Microsystems
Curtis Sasaki. The conference will include some limited exhibition
space.

Miguel de Icaza and Bruce Perens both say that OpenOffice.org
is THE most important Open Source project because people can try
it without switching from Windows and if they do they'll discover
that Open Source can work for them. They no longer have to pay big
bucks for office productivity.

"I've seen the OpenOffice.org community evolve over the last two years
into a place where Sun and the community really do work together towards
the common goal of making office productivity available at low or no
cost to everyone. Their work is driving a lot of the interest in Open
Source that we're seeing now in emerging markets like India and China.
It is my sincere hope that more developers will show up to work on the
OpenOffice.org project so the community can really make it their own",
says Danese Cooper, Sun's Open Source Diva.

The conference will be the perfect place to exchange ideas with other
contributors or to meet face-to-face with people you have only known
from email.

There will be two tracks of sessions targeted at both users and
developers. The general sessions will talk about lessons learned
during migration and deployment, the OpenOffice.org roadmap,
standardization efforts through OASIS and Open Source philosophy.
Topics for developers cover the overall process, QA, porting and
localization as well as the new Software Development Kit.

OpenOffice.org users, contributors and developers are invited
to submit papers for the conference. For details on how to submit
an abstract please have a look at
http://marketing.openoffice.org/conference/cfp.html
Proposals must be received by February 21 in order to be considered
for inclusion in the Conference.

For registering as an attendee please go to
http://marketing.openoffice.org/conference/registration.html
The admission fee will be EUR 20 and will be collected at the
event.

Companies that are interested in participating in the conference
as an exhibitor or sponsor can find registration details at
http://marketing.openoffice.org/conference/sponsors.html

Since not all key contributors of the OpenOffice.org project can
afford to travel to Hamburg, we also provide help for individuals
to find a sponsor for their trip. Contributors who want to get
sponsorship and companies who would like to support individuals
will find more information at
http://marketing.openoffice.org/conference/contribsponsors.html


The OpenOffice.org Conference Team