Opportunity Open Source 4.0 - Call for Locations
The Opportunity Open Source conferences which take place every year in a university/college/IIT/… in India are for showcasing free and open source software (FOSS) and for motivating students, professors, and researchers to participate in its development, by contributing code, design, documentation, … With talks and hands-on workshops a wide range of FOSS topics is covered, and often also a hackathon (coding competition) day is added. In the last year we got around 300 attendees, and many of them showed interest and started to get involved.
And so after 3 successful editions of the Opportunity Open Source conferences in India (1.0 in Mandi, 2.0 in Kanpur, 3.0 in Kanpur) we want to celebrate the fourth one. For that we need a place to do so. It should be somewhere in India and to give people all over India this opportunity of experiencing open source, we want to run each edition at a different place and therefore we are looking for a new location for this year’s edition.
If you are interested, we want to hear from you. First just tell us that you are interested and then we will ask you, and also guide you, for your detailed bid. We will close the call for locations on
March 15, 2026, 23:59 IST
The content for the conference days, talks, workshops, and booths will be supplied by the global organizers of the Opportunity Open Source. Once we have selected the location we will publish a Call for Proposals (CfP) so that people who want to contribute content can propose their talk, workshop, or booth. We will select an appropriate amount of the most interesting proposals to fill the given rooms during the given amount of conference days then.
Requirements
City
The city (must be in India) where the event will take place should be easily reachable from all over India, by plane or by train, so that speakers and non-local attendees can participate without problems.
We also prefer cities where not just your university/college/IIT is located but also others (also in nearby cities), as people from there will also attend the Opportunity Open Source.
Venue
We like to run the conference at universities, colleges, IIT, … places where one can study computer science as here we expect a large audience. Naturally students, professors, and researchers from other areas and people from other institutes nearby can also attend.
For the conference days we will need three rooms for the sessions: A plenary room and a breakout room for the talks, plus a room for the workshops. The 2 rooms for the talks can be lecture halls, the workshop room is ideally a classroom with tables and where one could provide power outlets or power strips for the attendee’s laptops. We expect typically around 300 attendees, so the plenary room should fit this amount of people.
There should also be some area for the “hallway track” where people hang out and chat. There should also be located any exhibition booths, from sponsors and/or from open-source projects. Also tea, coffee, and snacks for the tea breaks could be provided here.
Ideally the 3 rooms are directly connected to this area, but they should at least be nearby.
For a hackathon day we need one big hall (like a gym hall) where tables for each participating team can be placed. The tables need to get supplied with power strips for the participant’s laptops.
Date
The conference should take place on a weekend between mid-August and end-September, or in November. Before mid-August it is too close to the summer holidays and so the local team has not enough time on campus for preparing the event. October is the festive season in India.
Also exam weeks need to be avoided. Not only that the students are preparing themselves for their exams and not attending but also rooms reserved for the conference can get suddenly taken for exams, even on Sundays. Also exam weeks of nearby institutes should be taken into account.
Also to be avoided are the dates of other important conferences, especially the UbuCon Asia which takes place on August 8-9 in Taipei, Taiwan and the India FOSS by FOSS United (date and location TBD).
Local organization team
The most important part of a successful conference is the on-location organization team, a group of volunteers, in our case usually students, but could also be some local open source organization, who do everything needed at the conference location.
This is especially talking with the institute’s administration to reserve conference rooms, guest rooms in the on-campus guest house and in student hostels for speakers and non-local attendees, arranging lunch on the conference and hackathon days, organizing the conference dinner/closing party, finding (local) sponsors to cover the costs, assuring the needed technical setup of the rooms: Internet (wired for streaming, wireless for attendees), A/V, booth space, power strips, …, lining up a team of volunteers, including crews for the rooms, local marketing of the event in social media … A lot of things which have to be done on-site …
Here is an example of the organization team of last year.
A/V Requirements
In each of the 3 conference rooms we do not only want to make the slides of the talks being visible for everybody and the speakers being heard by everybody, but we want to, as it is done on practically all conferences nowadays, stream the sessions live, record them, and also allow remote speaking.
For this, each of the 3 rooms will need:
- A projector (to project image from laptop, usually built into the room)
- Speakers (to output audio from laptop, usually built into the room)
- Microphones (wireless clip-on, headset, hand microphones, which can send audio to a laptop, usually provided by the room)
- 1 or 2 cameras (which can send video to a laptop)
- A powerful laptop which can do video streaming
- Wired internet connection (or phone or travel router which provides unlimited 5G cell data)
- A second laptop for the projection
- A third laptop for checking for questions of remote attendees via chat
Note that the A/V setup should be centered by the A/V laptop to assure that the audio in the room and for the remote attendees and remote speakers is the same, without in-person speakers having to use 2 microphones.
We will provide a (remote) server with Nextcloud and VDO.Ninja (planned for now, subject to change).
Each room needs the following crew of volunteers (changing in half-day shifts):
- MC: They introduce into the talk, show “15 min left”, …, manage Q\&A
- A/V director: They take care of streaming, remote speaking, and recording, via the A/V laptop
- Mic runner: They bring the hand mic to people to ask questions, can also show “15 min left”, … during the talk.
- Camera operator: Takes care that speaker is in the frame
- Remote chat manager: Checks whether remote attendees have questions
Accommodation for speakers and non-local attendees
The accommodation should be ideally on-campus so that there is no long commute needed, and especially not one which is partially outside and partially inside the campus to avoid that taxis or auto-rickshaws from outside have to go through the security of the campus. It gets much easier if one can walk to the conference rooms or use a campus-internal auto-rickshaw.
For speakers and non-local organizers there should be single rooms in a guest house (where usually international guest professors and researchers stay). The guest house should have 24-hour service to quickly respond if there are any problems with the room.
Non-local attendees can get accommodated in student’s hostels.
Meals
There needs to be breakfast available for those who are in the accommodations and lunch for all participants on the conference and hackathon days.
Conference dinner/closing party
After the second conference day we want to do a closing event, at least a conference dinner of all the organizers and speakers, but ideally a closing party for all participants. For this we need a suitable restaurant in case of a dinner or a suitable location/venue and catering for a party.
Hackathon (optional)
In addition to the actual conference consisting of talks and workshops we also want to do (but it is not required) a hackathon, a programming competition. We as global organizers of the Opportunity Open Source will not organize the hackathon. The content/subject matter has to be organized locally. In the last 2 years sponsors were providing this.
All the above usually cannot get supplied free of charge. So the costs of each item need to be estimated and an estimate of the total cost of the conference be made.
To cover the costs sponsors are needed, principally local ones as the event is principally intended for local attendees. National or international sponsors are welcome.
To make it easier for sponsors to contribute, sponsorship tiers (platinum, gold, silver, …) should be offered. Each tier requires to pay a given amount and the sponsor gets perks as compensation, like more or less prominently placed logos, on the web site, on posters at the venue, … mentions in the opening and closing plenaries, a booth of a certain size, …
Dedicated sponsoring, like for the closing party, the hackathon, … should be also accepted.
Participation fees
In the previous years we have taken fees from the participants for meals and for accommodation, the latter only if needed. Also the accommodation for attendees was a student hostel, so it was not very expensive.
As most participants are students, we should try to cover as much as possible of the costs of the event by sponsors and keep the participation fees as low as possible.
How to place your bid?
If you like to have the Opportunity Open Source 4.0 take place at your institute and you are able to provide the above-mentioned items, you should contact us with a first e-mail/message before end of February, but the earlier, the better, as we need your complete bid until March 15, 23:59 IST.
Your complete bid should go through the above items and tell what you have available at your place and who will be the local organizer team, which organization, community and who will be responsible for which part.
Please provide photos of the city and venue, floor plans, and other supporting images.
If your organization/community already has experience with organizing events, especially conferences, perhaps even in the area of open source, please tell.
Please also list estimates for all the costs and the total budget for the event.
If you already have sponsors please tell who they are and how much they want to contribute.
Your first message and your complete bid please send to the global organizers of the Opportunity Open Source, Till Kamppeter and Aveek Basu.
Till Kamppeter
Aveek Basu
Opportunity Open Source on LinkedIn
@OpportunityOpenSource
And as usual: Stay updated on Mastodon: #OpenPrinting and @till@ubuntu.social and on LinkedIn: @OpenPrinting.
Or discuss on our mailing lists:
- Development: printing-architecture AT lists DOT linux DOT dev (Archive)
- Users: printing-users AT lists DOT linux DOT dev (Archive)
Subscribing/Unsubscribing instructions
]]>
