[Foss4g2010] Abstract Submission/Voting/Survey System

[Volker Mische]

Hi All,

I wanted to write this mail for a long time, but haven't had the time
to. As you might know I was responsible for the 2009 Abstract/Workshop
submission/voting system [1]. First we thought we would use OCS which
was used in 2008, but it was hard to configure and not flexible at all.
It's made for academic conferences and not for FOSS4G like conferences.

So I decided to write my own system. I learned Django and was really
happy with the result. The code base is relatively small for this amount
of functionality. To come to the point of this mail: I won't have the
time to do the same job for the 2010 conference.

Here are the problems and solutions:
- A decision must be made whether it will be used this year or not. I'd
vote for yes (at least parts, see below :), as it was working, though it
can be improved to do things in a smoother/more automated way (like
opening/closing voting on a specific date). An alternative would be the
system which was coded for the PyCon [2]. It uses Django as well (and
I've used the survey part of it). It's always better to join forces, and
I think if someone is willing to put some time into it, our system
should be built upon the PyCon one (and just plug into the parts I've
coded for the FOSS4G).
- It was hosted at LISAsoft, it should be moved to the OSGeo
infrastructure. I can help with the technical details (it should run as
mod_wsgi, so a normal user can kill it if changed where made).
- As I said I won't have much time for it, but I'll definitely support
anyone who wants to step in (the code base is really small). You don't
need to know anything about Django, it's really easy to learn if you
know a bit of Python.

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2009_Abstract_Submission_Software
[2] https://pycon.coderanger.net/

Cheers,
  Volker