Budapest, Hungary
Proposal for OOoCon
Section 1 – Mandatory Information
Proposed Date(s)
Early September of 2009
Location (country, city)
Budapest, Hungary
Special visa or entry requirements (e.g. vaccinations)
EU citizens are not required to obtain a visa.
Non-EU citizens require a visa to enter Hungary unless a special agreement exists between your home country and Hungary. These countries are:
The United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, New Zealand.
If you are one of these nationalities, you may enter Hungary without a visa for stays of up to 90 days in any six-month period.
A visa is required for citizens of the following countries:
Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, China, Columbia, Cuba, Ecuador, Georgia, India, Iran, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malta, Morocco, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Peru, Republic of Macedonia, Republic of the Philippines, Russia, Seychelles, Serbia, South-Africa, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam
Obtaining a visa
If you require a visa to visit Hungary, please visit the following page:
http://www.traveldocs.com/hu/vr.htm.
If you are still unsure whether you require a visa, please check the website of the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
N.B. No vaccinations are required to enter Hungary.
Conference venue(s) (e.g. university campus, municipal buildings)
The site of the conference is the Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE), which has 3,500 students in its IT faculty at the “Innovation and Technology Park” of Budapest (which employs 7,500 people in the IT, telecoms and software industries).
As the conference centre building offers a combination of smaller and larger rooms for both workshops and larger sessions, and has hosted several global events in recent years (of the size of OOoCon and above), it would facilitate more speeches, workshops, presentations and roundtable discussions than at previous OpenOffice.org conferences.
Conference facilities (e.g. WiFi, video streaming/recording)
The building is equipped with advanced facilities such as a high-tech presentation hall capable of holding 600 people, along with several different size auditorium with PCs and a WIFI network all in the same building. Accommodation and Budapest's city center are also easily accessible from the event site with public transport.
Our experiences proved that the infrastructure (high-quality sound system, conference hall, Wifi, special IT rooms with PCs) makes the venue an ideal setting for this kind of conference.
An attractive web page will be built to ensure delivery of up-to-date information to guests as well as detailed materials for the press. We will broadcast the presentations of the keynote speakers in realtime on the dedicated website. To ease social networking we will publish a personal page with a photo and short description of each speaker and registered member that choose this option.
We would like to allow numerous creatives, technologists, scientists and programmers the chance to share their interesting ideas at the conference. For that reason, one of the days of this conference will be set up as a BarCamp, at which a huge number of spokespeople can propose a presentation and attendees will themselves decide on which conference topics and activities will take place on that day. Every registered guest can vote online on the official web page of the conference.
Accommodation (especially any low cost hostels etc)
September is the favourite period of tourists for city breaks, so the organizers are ready to make block reservations for the participants. The organizers will also give support (tel., email) to help you to make the reservation in the recommended accommodation. All hotels recommended are standard European quality and price.
External transport links (nearest airport(s))
Hungary is located in the centre of Europe, therefore all the major worldwide airlines (such as British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France, Alitalia, SAS, Aeroflot, etc) fly to Ferihegy Airport. The Hungarian national airline – MALEV also offers daily connections to all the European capitals.
An average return flight ticket from any European country to Budapest may cost between EUR 150 and EUR 450, although flying by low-cost airlines can make big savings.
Budapest Airport: http://www.bud.hu/english
Internal transport links (within city)
We will provide a three-day ticket for all means of public transport in Budapest to all registered guests.
Check the link of “Budapest Transport”: http://www.bkv.hu/english/home/index.html
Team Lead (main contact person)
Peter SZAKAL Open SKM Agency Ltd.)
Team Members
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Gabor SZENTIVANYI Phd., LIPSZ (Linux Industrial Association), Hungary
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Daniel DARABOS, MultiRáció Ltd., Hungary
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Zsolt BAGOLY Phd, Eötvös University, Hungary
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Rudolf FERENC Phd., University of Szeged, Hungary
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Attila SUHAJDA, IBM Hungary, Hungary
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Tamas POLNER, SUN Microsystems Hungary
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Kazmer KOLESZAR, MultiRáció Ltd., Hungary
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Andras TIMAR, FSF.hu, project owner of the Hungarian Native-Lang project
Local events that are taking place in parallel (or immediately before/after)
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International Half Marathon – 6 September 2009
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SzeptEmber Feszt, Gastronomy, Culture and Entertainment – 4-6 September 2009
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Budapest International Fair – date: 10-14 September 2008
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Budapest International Wine Festival 2009 – date: 9-13. September 2009
Section 2 – Proposal
In 400 words or less, answer this question:
Why should the Community award OOoCon 2009/2010 to your team?
We are proud to propose Budapest as a location for the 2009 OpenOffice.org Conference.
Hungary has a large and enthusiastic community of OpenOffice.org localizers and developers who have managed numerous OpenOffice.org related developments: extensions (OxygenOffice, EuroOffice), quality assurance of OpenOffice.org code, the Hungarian spell check library (HunSpell) and several value-added localized OpenOffice.org code-based products (StarOffice, EuroOffice). A consortium of local companies and universities won a EUR 2.1 million tender in 2008. The aim of this three-year project is to develop a software quality assurance service-package for open document format applications and thereby increase the level of inter-interoperability of OpenOffice.org. This will significantly strengthen its position on the worldwide corporate market.
The OOoCon 2009 event in Budapest is already attracting a large number of potential supporters and sponsors, including the government and universities, as well as multinational and local vendors, as our preliminary negotiations with them have clearly demonstrated.
All the recommended accommodation offers easy access to the location of the conference (InfoPark) and also to the city center. We will also provide a three-day ticket for all means of public transport in Budapest to all registered guests.
To avoid any problems we will ensure a printed information package (city map, emergency card, conference map, schedule, important telephone numbers, recommended bars and restaurants, etc) and will send the same files by email to all our registered guests. We also guarantee a contact person, who will be on hand in the event of any problems, from co-ordination to visa issues.
The organizers of OOoCon 2009 are offering a sponsorship program for long-term OpenOffice.org contributors - who will all be offered a hotel room free of charge.
We offer the following entertaining facilities for our guests free of charge:
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Banquet in the Salon of Bath Szechenyi
Aperitif and wine tasting, Experience the celebrated Szechenyi Bath -
Excursion to the historic royal city of Visegrad
Visit to the famous fortress of King Mathias, Dinner at a medieval renaissance-style restaurant, “Knights' Tournaments” - special medieval surprise for the guests