Vote on the LibreOffice Conference 2025 location

Hello,

The Document Foundation (TDF) has received two different proposals for the organisation of the LibreOffice Conference 2025:

TDF Members will soon receive an email asking them to cast a vote and decide which will be the final venue. So please keep an eye on your inbox, and thanks in advance for your vote!

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What’s the deal with the vote? I don’t remember this from previous years. Nor a repeat of the same venue. Did the BoD try to agree on one option but couldn’t? If a new venue is suggested, what is the motivation for the Luxembourg proponents for a repeat, the next year? Also, I remember a lot of the work fell on to Paolo last year, and there are very few or no other TDF members in Luxembourg.

I feel some more context is in order to make an informed choice.

(PS and off-topic - I know I have a back-log of mailing list discussions and posts to read and maybe reply to, sorry about that.)

We have always had a vote when there was more than one proposal to host the LibreOffice Conference. This has never happened since 2019, when we choose between Germany and Turkey for 2020 (but then we had to cancel the conference because of the pandemic), but was frequent in the past until 2012 (for 2013, with the first conference in Milan). The vote has nothing to do with a BoD decision, as the conference location has always been decided by members when there were two or more proposals.

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Hi Eyal, others members were in Luxembourg but did you talk to them?
:grin:
RĂ©gis

What does seem unique here though is one of the proposals is administered by TDF and the other by the community - I don’t recall seeing that before.

Doesn’t seem to be unique - that’s what we did for last year’s conference as well actually, and we also had something similar for, IIRC, at least one previous conference.

Hi Eyal,

I did explain why I believe Luxembourg would be the optimal location in the full proposal: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Luxembourg_2025_Conference_Candidacy.pdf

In my opinion the best location would have been to do it in the hemicycle of the European Parliament in Brussels so that we, and other Open Source projects, get properly noticed by EU lawmakers.
The second best is Luxembourg as it hosts many EU institutions and is also a common destination for those that also work in institutions located in Brussels.

Due to the geopolitical situation we need to be noticed by those that finally understood that it’s time to look for options that allow a greater control on the technologies used by governments, companies and individuals to improve resilience and protect our data.

What we did last year was, as state by most people, a very successful test, this year we should work to get even more representatives of various institutions and governments so that we can show that the LibreOffice community, together with other communities and projects, are indeed ready to take on the challenge and help with upgrading to Open Source software.

Today there is also a hearing at the European Court of Justice that might (should) lead to the invalidation of Safe Harbor 3 (US-EU Data Privacy Framework) so that’s another reason why we should be present where the institutions are to show that there are viable Open Source options that protect our privacy.

While it would have been great to receive applications to organise LibOCon 2025 in other continents, as Europe is the only option this year we should make the most out of it and invite institutional delegations from all over the world to participate and meet with their European counterparts.

Yes it was a lot of work as I’ve been asked to organise it very late and with zero preparation on how to organise a large conference in a country where I moved a few years ago so I had no connections and experience with local logistics.

For this year things are a lot easier as we have a venue, an hotel where we can fit most/probably all the participants within the campus, catering and visa processes sorted.
That leaves more time and resources to focus on extending the invitation for participation to decision makers that need to hear from us and the other organisation that have or are in the process of upgrading to Open Source infrastructures which generally also include LibreOffice.

I hope I’ve provided you with what you need to take an informed decision.

Paolo

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Yes, you have, and thank you. I was worried this might have something to do with more internal strife and with @italovignoli and your clarification it seems that is not the case.

No internal strife or any other issues, just a proposal to make our community more visible and extend our links with other communities and institutions.

It would be great to have also delegations from ELTE University as well as other universities where we had LibOCon previously to join forces with Radboud University and other Dutch universities which are calling for digital autonomy in the education sector:

https://www.cs.ru.nl/~jhh/open-letter-big-tech.html

Paolo

What was unique was the fact that all directors had access to the budget spreadsheet for the conference where we listed the various services and relative costs, as well as sponsorships, so that the board was very well aware of the situation while things progressed.

Yes, that was a very transparent way of handling this indeed! It’s something we IMHO should have also for future conferences.