If you are close, check out this two-days workshop Free and Open Source Software in South-Eastern Europe from March 24-25 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Some time ago, Lukas asked for an overview of Open Source events and compiled one himself.

The tOSSad EU project also got a list of events online. eZ systems is a consortium partner in tOSSad, thus I recently passed some of the events to Görkem (a tOSSad fellow) which eZ systems had internally. He just added them.

If you’d like to have an event added to the tOSSad list, please leave a comment here.

BTW: tOSSad is an abbreviation of “towards Open Source Software adoption and dissemination”. Take a look at
www.tossad.org for more information.

Here are some more collections:

• All PHP Usergroup events
• OpenConf calendar of events
• Various scientific conferences
• Zak’s collection of events
• Gesellschaft für Informatik Veranstaltungskalender

I am going to present a talk and a workshop at the Free Software & Open Source Days 2006 in Istanbul/Turkey. Currently, the program is only available in Turkish, so I’ll tell you a bit more about my presentations here in English. BTW: They will also be presented in English, because I speak no Turkish:

Talk: eZ publish, the Open Source Enterprise CMS

Feb 25, Saturday, 14:00-15:00

eZ publish is an Open Source Enterprise Content Management System based on PHP. It is being used by thousands of customers around the world, installed over 150.000 and with 1,5 million downloads. This talk provides an overview of the eZ publish functionality. You will also get first-hand information on new features and the roadmap ahead.

Workshop: Technical Introduction to eZ publish

Feb 25, Saturday, 15:00-19:00

In this tutorial you will learn how to use the Open Source Enterprise Content Management System eZ publish to set-up a typical small business site where you need to customize the CMS system for the customer. This site will include e-commerce functionality, PDF exports, a customized content structure, RSS feeds to publish news and a WebDAV interface for simpler document management.

The LinuxTag 2006 will have three focus topics, one of them is “Information Web”, which comprises CMSs, Wikis, Weblogs, etc.

If you got something important to say about this topic in English or German: the Call for Papers will end this Sunday, January 15th - only 3 more days!

After organising last year’s OscomTag subconference at LinuxTag 2005 together with Markus Nix, the LinuxTag organizers asked me whether I would like to lead the team preparing the Information Web track this year. After contacting some of the OscomTag 2005 speakers, we got together a great group of 10 people:

• Markus Beckedahl (newthinking communications)
• Sandro Groganz (eZ publish, OSCOM)
• Ansgar Hein (Anatom5, Barrierekompass)
• Daniel Hinderink (Typo3)
• Alex Kempkens (Joomla!)
• Boris Kraft (Magnolia)
• Markus Nix (docuverse, OSCOM)
• Christian Theune (Zope, Plone)
• Michael Wechner (Apache Lenya, OSCOM)
• Oliver Zschau (contentmanager.de)

I am very much looking forward to enjoying this event from May 3-6!

The Call for Papers of eZ publish Conference 2006 will end in a week, Monday, Jan 16.

Hence, you can still submit your proposals in time.

Seems like the lots.ch domain got kidnapped. LOTS, that was a nice Open Source event in Switzerland, now its domain points to a Swiss company that does not even provide Open Source software. Poor LOTS got misused!

What happened? Well, LOTS does not exist anymore, the organisation behind the event ceased to exist. I don’t understand why they did not keep the Website as an archive? So many other sites link there, like mine, because I did presentations at both events in 2005 and 2004.

Chregu’s asking, whether the company tries to get some link-love? Andreas mentions that there were some problems between the LOTS organisers.

Anyway, I urge the company to make the lots.ch Web site available again or let the domain point to nowhere - but not to the company Web site - this is very bad style! And it harms the good intentions that LOTS had …

The call for papers for next year’s eZ publish Conference is out.

eZ is accepting proposals on the following topics:

• eZ publish
• Enterprise CMS
• Enterprise PHP

The submission deadline for all proposals is January 16, 2006.

eZ publish Conference 2006 will take place in Skien/Norway from June 20-23, 2006.

Of course, the eZ Enterprise Components [1] will be a hot topic there, as well as the forthcoming eZ publish 4.0.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

[1]
Components from SVN Tutorial

My German slides for ContentmanagerDays 2005 are now available for download in the talks area. I explained how eZ publish is being used for Enterprise Application Integration in a common project of eZ systems and Siemens Business Services. The eZ publish implementation allows to track the usage of paletts using RFID chips. Does not sound like a CMS-thing at all when you first hear of it, but nicely demonstrates the power of eZ publish.

During LOTS , I came up with an innovation: I was looking for a solution to safely transport a delicious nuts croissant in my notebook bag. Thus, I grabbed two paper cups and a napkin:

Brian named this revolutionary new product the “Keep-it-fresh Cups” and made the above picture. Now, we only need to apply for a patent …

Soon, there will be LOTS of workshops and talks on Open Source in Switzerland. For the second time, this event takes place in Bern/Switzerland, from Feb 17-19.

This is my first time representing eZ systems at an Open Source event and I am looking forward to that.

I am going to do several presentation on the eZ publish CMS: a workshop, a talk, and a demo. You can grab the first eZ publish Live-CDs there, I am going to bring them with me. They are bootable CDs, based on Mandrake Move and having a ready-made eZ publish pre-installed.

At the end of LOTS, I will moderate a panel discussion on Open Events - The Open Source Bazaar. Basically, we will try to identify differences and similarities between Open Source and typical business events, the way how knowledge is shared at “Bazaars” like LOTS, etc.