You may have noticed that the Linux Foundation has announced moving OSS+ELC from Dublin to Seattle, WA due to survey results and vaccination rates in Europe. Since we agreed to co-locate with OSS+ELC this year, we’ve been debating following suit or going virtual. Unfortunately, the safety protocols imposed by event venues in the US require masks and social distancing, making it impossible to hold the interactive part of Plumbers (the Microconferences). Since Microconferences are a differentiating feature of plumbers, we felt that rather than lose such an essential element we’d move the entire conference on-line and hope to be back in-person next year.

As with last year, we’ll be using BigBlueButton for the main video interactions, but, following the example of FOSDEM, we’ll be using Matrix for the chat portion (and following feedback, we’ll be trying to integrate the matrix chat into the BBB chat window).

OSS+ELC in Seattle is now across our original dates, so we’ll try to find new ones to not clash with existing events, stay tuned for an update.