FOSS4G 2009 Abstract Submission Software

OCS isn't suitable for a non-scientific conference like the FOSS4G. It has all the features we don't need but not the features we need. Therefore the website team decided to code a custom solution based on Django. It's develped by User:Vmische.

• Repository: http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/2009/django/
• Instance for FOSS4G2009: http://dev.extranet.lisasoft.com/foss4g/
• License: It'll be licensed under MIT.

Features

• User accounts (with password reset, changing etc)
• Abstract submissions with tags support for easier voting (incl. editing of already submitted Abstracts)
• Nice admin interface (thank Django, not me)
• Nice ajaxy interface to vote on Abstracts (that also works without JavaScript)
• Pagination
• Abstracts are presented to the user in random order, but the order is specific to the user

Missing Features

• You can't sort the Abstracts as you like (e.g. by author).
• You can't search the Abstracts

Notes

• The current system is inflexible. It was coded to do the things that were needed, not for all cases that might occur. Though User:Vmische thinks that it should be used as a basis for future FOSS4G conferences. The amount of work that would be needed to add functionality like workshop/tutorial submissions is less than the amount to configure OCS.

For next year

• Make it possible to have more than one person per submission.
• Store date when the Abstract was submitted