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Formatting
The basics:
- Each conference event is a YAML file.
- Conference YAML files are grouped by each year into directories.
- General conference information is at the top of each file, and (optional) talks are below the conference information.
- Descriptions for both the conference and for each talk are blocks of basic github-flavored Markdown text.
- When writing URLs in Markdown for descriptions, be sure to either
specify them in the Markdown style with
[title here](http://so-on.and/so-forth/)or by enclosing a URL in<and>
We use two empty lines to give a bit of breathing room between big blocks of data (such as talks). Although it's not necessary, the extra space makes it easier for people reading the files, so please respect others when formatting and add in a bit of extra space. Thanks!
Each conference is in its own file and the file is contained in a year directory.
In other words, the directory structure looks something like this:
2013/
Akademy.yml LatinoWare.yml PHPColumbus911.yml
AllThingsOpen.yml LibrePlanet.yml POSSCON.yml
2014/
Devconfcz.yml FOSDEM.yml LibreGraphicsMeeting.yml LinuxConfAU.yml
Inside of each file, you'll find the conference data in YAML, which looks like:
name: Libre Graphics Meeting
location: Leipzig, Germany
start: 2014-04-02
end: 2014-04-05
description: |
Libre Graphics Meeting is the annual conference and workshop for users
and makers of free software creative applications. The event is open to
anyone with an interest in open source graphics, design, and creative
culture. Software developers and artists alike are invited to attend,
and will be welcome to submit topics for presentations, hands-on
workshops, and birds-of-a-feather sessions.
More information is available at
<http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/>Filenames should represent the conference name, to make it more obvious
for people editing files. The actual name: is part of the data in the
file, however.
If you need to use punctuation or other special characters, please wrap
the name in quotes (either " or '). Otherwise, you're free to just type
normal alphanumeric characters (in UTF-8) after the name: field.
Note: A conference name should not include years in either the filename or the title.
The conference date is optional, but recommended. (If omitted, then it will be assumed that the first and last talks are the starting and stopping dates of the conference... but it's better to be explicit.)
It is possible to specify only a start but no end. If this occurs,
then it is assumed that it is a one day event.
Dates are formatted with a four-digit year, a month, and a day, with
hyphens in between each number. Example: 2013-01-23.
This format is friendly for humans and computers alike and is completely unambiguous, unlike the month/day/year and day/month/year formats.
Conferences do not have support for time, only date.
Descriptions are formatted in Markdown, which is like plain text with a few special features (like bullet and link support, for exmaple).
A description can be a single line, like so:
description: This is a simple description....or it may be a block, which may contain multiple lines:
description: |
This is a longer description.
See how there's a pipe symbol above? That "|" character says "there's
more to this comment than just one line". Also, note how the line
wraps around with 2 spaces at the beginning for indentation?
Note: You can have the line extend off the side and not hard-wrap... The formatting is not too picky.A "series" helps group different talks together, regardless of location (virtual or real-world).
For example, you may have several on-line talks that are taking place in a video chat or in IRC. Or there may be actual in-person talks that are part of a traveling roadshow.
You can enable this special type by adding type: series to the
conference information.
A series will show up differently in calendars, as it will skip the main grouping and only show the individual events. This also happens for the website, as both the calendar widget "current" upcoming events will treat series talks at a top-level, similar to conferences.
Talks are optional.
For a conference to support talks, it must have a talks: field with
a list of talks below.
Each talk starts with a - mark.
- title: Your talk title here
speaker: Tux the Penguin
start: 2013-11-19 18:00 PDT
end: 2013-11-19 20:00 PDT
description: |
This is a description, written in Markdown.
* Bullet point
1. Number bullets
2. Another numbered bullet
Check out the [Red Hat Communty](http://community.redhat.com/)
website!We may just have a presence at a conference (such as sponsoring it) and not have anyone speaking. Or, perhaps, there isn't enough information yet to list talks.
However, if there are talks, please include all the relevant information.
All of the details are optional, except for the title. (This means that a talk that is intended to happen and there aren't many details, you can fill in what you know and add more later.)
While dates and times are optional for both conferences and talks, it's important to include them when you can. (As mentioned above: the conference start and end times will be guessed by talk times, if there are talks on the start and end days, both with times.)
Please note, however: If dates and times are left out, then the conference and/or talk will not show up in the calendar — both the website's widget as well as the .ics file people subscribe to in their calendering software — so make sure to try to have a date and time.
Times can be either 12 or 24 hour format. 24 hour format is preferred, as that's much of what the world outside the USA uses. However, the system is able to parse 12 hour times with am/pm designation.
You must use a timezone abbreviation (such as EST, EDT, CET, CEST, GMT, UTC, etc.) on all date + times. Full times are listed on the community website, but having timezones specified can help calendars do the conversion magic needed to display correct local time for everyone.
Don't worry too much about daylight savings time. You should try to use the correct one — but if you don't, the system will correct it for you based on the date.
Timezones can also be specified as a separate field in both
conferences and talks. If this optional timezone field is included,
then it will override whatever timezone abbreviation is included in
a timestring. This helps to eliminate any ambiguous timezones. Please
note that the software already prioritizes US timezones and tries hard
to figure out what IST means (Irish or India) based on a conference or
talk location, so you probably can ignore the timezone field and
things should "just work".
If you must use an override, the string you use must be one of those specified by the Ruby timezone mapping
These examples are based on actual events in the past. However, some of the information has been truncated for brevity.
This is a very short blurb about a conference.
This is enough information when any of the following is true:
- There will be Red Hat representation (or this is a Red Hat sponsored event), but there are no Red Hat employees giving talks.
- No talk information is known at the time.
If there are talks which will be given at the conference, but no time is known, please add the talk and omit the time. (Later, when the conference schedule is made available, please re-edit the conference data and add the time.)
name: FOSDEM
location: Brussels, Belgium
start: 2014-02-01
end: 2014-02-02
description: |
The Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM)
is a two-day event organized by volunteers to promote the widespread use
of Free and Open Source software. For more information on FOSDEM, visit
the web site at <http://fosdem.org/2014/>I've omitted the start and end times of the conference information. As the talks that are included below range from the days of 2013-02-02 to 2013-02-03, it will automatically figure out the conference dates from those.
If the talks were all in 2013-02-02 and the conferece was longer in either direction, then the assumption won't work. In that case, you would have to provide the precise start and end times for the conference.
name: FOSDEM
location: Brussels, Belgium
description: |
The Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM)
is a two-day event organized by volunteers to promote the widespread use
of Free and Open Source software. For more information on FOSDEM, [visit
the conference website](http://fosdem.org/).
talks:
- title: QEMU USB status report 2012
speaker: Hans de Goede
start: 2013-02-02 11:00 CET
end: 2013-02-02 11:30 CET
description: |
This talk gives an overview on the state of the QEMU USB subsystem. What
happened last year? What are the plans for the future? Where do we stand
in terms of USB 3.0 support?
- title: Using Personas to Target Users
speaker: Dave Neary
start: 2013-02-02 12:15 CET
end: 2013-02-02 12:40 CET
description: |
Personas were made famous by Alan Moore in "The Inmates are Running the
Asylum", a seminal book on user interface design for computer
programmers. They have been used for decades in the marketing industry
to help target specific market segments with ads and products. Personas
help you frame feature discussions while developing your software, guide
your communication and conference strategy, and ultimately help you to
have a more popular, better project.
This presentation will cover the basics of:
* What is a persona?
* How do I come up with one (or several) for my project?
* What can I do with them?
- title: The Keeper of Secrets
speaker: Leslie Hawthorn
start: 2013-02-03 17:00 CET
end: 2013-02-03 17:50 CET
description: |
Whilst the mantra of free and open source software communities focus on
transparency and collaboration, community leaders will often find that
the most significant conversations are those they have 1/1 and "behind
closed doors." As a community leader, one is called upon to be both
trusted confidant and change agent, and being effective in both roles
simultaneously can be a quite difficult -- and deeply humorous -- dance.
Join Leslie Hawthorn as she explores the nuances of public and private
discourse in FOSS projects, using real world examples from her
experience interacting with more than 200 communities over the past six
years.A "series" helps group different talks together, regardless of location (virtual or real-world). Please see above for more information.
name: OpenStack Hands-On Labs
type: series
description: |
Bring your laptops and Join us as Dan Radez, from Red Hat shows us how
to install and configure OpenStack. This presentation includes a demo of
RDO and the opportunity for our meetup participants to install OpenStack
on their laptops.
talks:
- title: OpenStack Philly Lab
speaker: Dan Radez
location: Philadelphia, PA
timezone: Eastern Time (US & Canada)
start: 2013-11-19 18:00 EST
end: 2013-11-19 20:00 EST
description: |
OpenStack Philly Meetup. More details at
<http://www.meetup.com/Philly-OpenStack-Meetup-Group/events/144907072/>
- title: OpenStack Connecticut Lab
speaker: Dan Radez
location: Rocky Hill, CT
timezone: Eastern Time (US & Canada)
start: 2013-11-20 18:00 EST
end: 2013-11-20 20:00 EST
description: |
OpenStack Connecticut Meetup. More details at
<http://www.meetup.com/Openstack-Connecticut/events/143713952/>