Beijing, China
Proposal for OOoCon 2008
Key Question
In 400 words or less, answer this question: Why is your location and the date you propose the best for OOoCon 2008?
Redflag 2000, representing the Beijing OpenOffice.org community, is pleased to propose Beijing as the first OpenOffice.org Conference outside of Europe.
Since Redflag 2000 and IBM officially joined OpenOffice.org in 2007, Beijing has become the second hot-spot for the development of OpenOffice.org and several derived products. The contributions to OOo from China are steadily growing. As the capital of China, Beijing will also be one of the main future markets for OpenOffice.org to significantly grow. Having this year's OOoCon in Beijing would provide a strong impulse to the OpenOffice.org community in East Asia and significantly strengthen OpenOffice.org's position in the East Asian office suite markets.
Beijing is a cosmopolitan city with a rich history. People coming to Beijing right after the Olympic games will experience a city that has re-invented itself. The infrastructure will be better than ever before, concrete spots have turned into flower beds, the city night life is amazing and, last but not least, the main historic sites have been renovated. The food in Beijing is among the best in the world. Several new subway lines will give easy and inexpensive access to discover this unique city.
Beijing is well positioned to host events of the size of OOoCon and above. Every year a huge number of conferences are held in Beijing, among them numerous FOSS and Open Standards events. Beijing Software Freedom Day 2007, for example, was considered to be one of the three best events worldwide.
Under the patronage of the main applicant Redflag 2000, the organizers will bring East and West, Community and Business together. OpenOffice.org's local corporate members; e.g. Sun Microsystems, IBM and Redflag 2000 will join with the Beijing FOSS community to host OOo contributors from all over the world to celebrate our globalized, free and open product OpenOffice.org.
To overcome Beijing's location long distance from Europe, the organizers will offer a travel sponsorship program for long term OOo contributors, accepted speakers and others with cases of hardship, enabling them to join the community in Beijing. These persons will also be offered a free hotel room.
Give OpenOffice.org the chance to experience the ancient and modern wonders of China. Vote for Beijing and let's jointly celebrate a great OOoCon 2008!
Mandatory Information
Location (country, city, conference center/university)
Beijing, People's Republic of China
The Beijing Asia Hotel has a big conference hall for up to 550 attendees. Additionally, there are numerous mid-size and small meeting rooms, that can be used according to the requirements of the OOoCon agenda, see: http://www.bj-asiahotel.com.cn/meetingA_en-us.php http://www.bj-asiahotel.com.cn/meetingB_en-us.php. The most important reason to select Beijing Asia Hotel is its perfect location on the east side of the Beijing city center. The hotel is situated in an area know for a vast number of good restaurants. The most famous spots of Beijing night life, like Sanlitun Bar Street are near and easy to reach. The Beijing Asia Hotel is also located close to a subway station. Most tourist spots can be reached easily and inexpensive.Proposed Date(s)
Main conference, October 15 – 17, 2008
Council, ESC, NLC, MarCons, October 14
In case of enough interest, we also like to offer a thread of presentations about FOSS in China, apart from OOo, on October 14
Free Tourist trip (Great Wall, Forbidden city etc.) October 18 and 19
Team Lead (main contact person)
Chen Hongjuan (chenhongjuan (at) redflag2000.cn)
Peter Junge (peterjunge (at) redflag2000.cn)
Team Members
Chen Hongjuan, Redflag 2000
Peter Junge, Redflag 2000
Xing Li, IBM
Don Harbison, IBM
Emily Chen, Sun – Beijing OpenSolaris User Group
Joey Gao, Sun – Beijing OpenSolaris User Group
Song Kewei, China OSS Promotion Union
Pockey Lam, Beijing Linux User Group
Fred Muller, Beijing Linux User Group
Song Jingjing, ChangFeng Open Standards Platform Software Alliance
Yang Chunyan, Co-Create Software League
Cheng Yong, Huihoo.com
Shao Wei, Leadership Of Open Source University Promotion Alliance
Local events that are taking place in parallel (or right before/after)
Beijing Linux User Group monthly meeting (We hope to see a ton of OOoCon attendees from there) Date: Oct. 14th
The 2008 Beijing International Marathon Date: Oct. 19th
The 1st World Mind Sports Games Dates: Oct. 3rd – Oct. 18th
2008 FORMULA 1™ Sinopec Chinese Grand Prix (Shanghai) Date: Oct. 19th
Special visa or entry requirements, e.g. vaccinations
Applying for a Visa is mandatory. Regulations vary from country to country. Please contact the Chinese Embassy of Consulate responsible from your country.
A Vaccination is not required to our knowledge, but to be on the safe side, you should also contact the Chinese Embassy in your country.
Some selected links: Germany, France, Austria, Italy, USA, UK, Brasil, India, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Cambodia.
Optional Information
Large local OpenOffice.org deployments (for user keynotes and success stories)
The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) was established on December 13, 2001, and currently consists of 26 departments -- responsible for numerous Games functions ranging from venue planning to environmental management.
Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission (BMSTC) is a division of Beijing Municipal Government, responsible for building the capital-wide innovation architecture to improving Beijing's economic competitiveness and promoting a coordinated economic and social development.
Zhongguancun Science Park and Haidian Park are widely known as China’s Silicon Valley. They are the leading incubator of China's high-tech businesses.
Fentai District Government is one of eight urban districts of Beijing located in southern part. It covers an area of 306 square kilometers with a population of 1.36 million.
Pinggu District Government is also a Beijing district, covering about 1075 square kilometers with a population of 400.000 in the south-east outskirts of Beijing.
Erdos Group is a leading enterprise engaged in cashmere, coal, electricity, metallurgy and chemistry.
Anhui Quanchai Ltd. is a large state owned company including education, scientific research, production, management and trade with the capital more than 1.6 billion yuan.
Nanning Government is the capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Chinese manufacturer Lenovo ships Desktops and Notebooks with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop including OpenOffice.org (Novell Edition)
Names of local OpenOffice.org developers (for developer sessions)
Core Project Developer Cheng Xiuzhi（user name: xzcheng）, Liu Tao（user name: liutao), Wu Yan（user name: wuy), Du YunFen（user name: dyf）, Li Jian（user name: lijian）, Liu Yu（user name: ch2000liuy）, Mao YongGang（user name: maoyg）, Gao ZeMin（user name: gaozm）, Liang WeiKe（user name: liangweike）, Zhang XiaoFei（user name: zhangxiaofei）, Shi ZhouBo（user name: robertzhou）, Liu JianLi（user name: liujl）, Lv Yue（user name: lvyue）, Yun JingTao（user name: yun_jt）, Liu YuHua（user name: liuyuhua）, Zhang JiRong（user name: jirong）, Xing Li (user name: lixxing), Ming Fei Jia (user name: ibmssfilter), Zi Jie Jia (user name: jiazijie).
Quality Assurance Cheng Hua（user name: chenghua）, Zhang Hong（user name: zhanghonglala）, Kuang Yong（user name: kuangyong）, Zhu Lihua（user name: redflagzhulihua）, Wei Xuqiang（user name: weixq）, Liu Shibo（user name: liushibo_redflag）, Peter Junge (user name: pj)
Language team Cheng Lin（user name: chenglin）, Aijin Kim (username: blueice7), Joy Zhang (username: joyzhang), Wei Zhao（user name: weiz）
Education project Huai Jinyang aka Michael (user name: jyhuai)
Names of local OpenOffice.org vendors/partners (potential sponsors)
Corporate Sponsors: Sun Microsystems, Redflag 2000, IBM, Google, Intel, Ubuntu, Red Hat
Don Harbison, IBM: IBM stands by the RF2000 proposal to host the OpenOffice.org Conference 2008. Beijing is the home of our Lotus Symphony development team working directly with OpenOffice Technology, so we are excited and eager to work with RF2000 to make the 2008 conference an outstanding experience and success.
Associations: China OSS Promotion Union, ChangFeng Open Standards Platform Software Alliance, Co-Create Software League
Travel costs
Price reference by recent samples: Europe 600 € – 1000 €, US/Canada East coast 1000 € - 1300 €, US/Canada West coast 800 € - 1200 €, Cape Town 800 € - 1400 €, Tokyo 400 € - 600 €, Sydney 1000 € - 1400 €.
The organizers will offer a travel sponsorship for people who would not be able to join the OOoCon in Beijing by their own means. Our plan is to invite 40 long standing OOo contributors and/or accepted speakers, and 20 cases of other hardship, at 500 € each. The hardship cases could be for example Contributors who are handicapped or from developing countries. These 60 people will also be offered a free hotel room. The persons must be selected by the OOo Community Council or a special OOo committee.
The organizers will also do their best to organize discounted group flights from Europe.
Accomodation costs (youth hostel, hotel)
Rooms will be available from 20 € per night in 3-star hotel, double room up to 120 € per night in 5-star hotel, single room. The organizers will take care of the hotel bookings. Dramatically discounted prices are ensured that way. As a positive side effect, large groups of attendees will stay together and ease social activities.
Lunch will be provided free during the conference days. On the first day, the organizers would like to invite all attendees to a welcome dinner.
Selected hotels
Traveler Inn HuaQiao Beijing, Ping An Fu Hotel, Beijing Oriental Culture Hotel, China Garment Commercial Hotel, Swissotel Beijing, Asia Hotel.Supplementary Information
The Call for Location states: user feedback from previous conferences suggest that the ideal location will:
- have a strong local OpenOffice.org community
- attract strong sponsor support
- have a low-cost/free conference centre with conference venues close together
- have facilities where people can pass the time, socialise, and mingle with other conference delegates close to the conference building(s)
- have a range of low-cost accomodation with easy/cheap transport to the conference location
- attract the largest number of community contributers
- facilitate the attendance of a large number of Sun's OpenOffice.org developers (who are in Hamburg, Germany)
- be accessible by cheap flight and train tickets
- be aligned with a large IT event (e.g. CeBIT, Systems, Comdex)
- provide low-cost broadband Internet access (e.g. wireless LAN in the rooms)
- allow for video and audio streaming (e.g. via the support of a company)
Have a strong local OpenOffice.org community
Redflag 2000, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Intel and Novell have together more than 150 engineers in Beijing working on OpenOffice.org and their derived products. Several members of the Beijing Linux User Group and the Beijing OpenSolaris User Group and other local FOSS communities have already offered to volunteer in the organization of the OOoCon 2008 in Beijing.
Other local companies and organizations promoting OpenOffice.org
Ubuntu, Red Hat, China OSS Promotion Union, Co-Create Software League, The Open Enterprise Foundation (Huihoo.org) and LUPA (Leadership Of Open Source University Promotion Alliance)
Have facilities where people can pass the time, socialise, and mingle with other conference delegates close to the conference building
Beijing offers a unique density of restaurants and several bar quarters. The venue itself is located in a quarter known for it's good and versatile restaurants. Sanlitun Bar Street, one of Beijing's most famous night life quarters is only 1.5 kilometers away. Another hot-spot of Beijing night life is the Houhai bar area, which is 3.5 kilometers away and nicely located at one of the famous lakes near Beijing's Forbidden City.
Very(!) good lunch/dinner starts at 2€ per person. Beer starts at 0.3€ for 0.5 liter. (Above mentioned bar streets are more expensive, but still not too bad from an European point of view.)
We expect also a easier communication with the service personal in bars and restaurants, as a lot of them will have basic English knowledge after the Olympics.
Temperatures should be moderate at the proposed dates. We expect 15 – 20 degrees Celsius at day time and 9 – 14 degrees at night. October is normally one of the month with a relatively small smog problem, as there's often a fresh breeze from the West Mountains.
Have a range of low-cost accommodation with easy/cheap transport to the conference location
Hotels will be selected and contingents will be reserved by the organizers. Lowest room rates will be about 20 € per person and night. Travel to the venue will be guaranteed by shuttle buses. However, none of the hotels selected by the organizers is more than 30 minutes (2.5 kilometers) by foot away from the venue. Despite the gigantic size of Beijing, the whole OOo community will stay very close together.
Taxis in Beijing cost 1€ for the first five kilometers. Every additional kilometer is 0.2€. Beijing subway costs 0.2€ for each destination. The subway network will be significantly enhanced for the Olympic Games. Prices for Beijing buses start at 0.1€.
Attract the largest number of community contributers
Beijing is perfectly located to attract a large number of attendees from the East and South-East Asian communities, especially Japan, Vietnam and Korea.
Facilitate the attendance of a large number of Sun's OpenOffice.org developers (who are in Hamburg, Germany)
The organizers contacted Sun Microsystems' OOo engineering team in Hamburg. We are sure to get a considerable number of their staff to Beijing.
Provide low-cost broadband Internet access (e.g. wireless LAN in the rooms)
The conference venue will provide WLAN and a sufficient number of sockets to supply and recharge notebooks. The hotel rooms will have either free wireless or wired LAN.
Allow for video and audio streaming (e.g. via the support of a company)
Both video recording and streaming will be provided in professional quality.