The openSUSE Boosters team is preparing for their presence at FrOSCon, which will be held on 21st and 22nd of August 2010 in Sankt Augustin near Bonn, Germany.

This time we will not be in charge of the openSUSE booth (which will be organized by the community), but we’ll be driving an openSUSE Connect hacking session or “Hackmeck” if you want. I prepared a short Q&A to give you more info about it.

• Q: What is openSUSE Connect?
• A: Connect aims to be a central point of openSUSE project, it will handle users, group memberships, elections, events, etc. In short, it will replace users.opensuse.org and introduce social aspects to the application. Other parts of the infrastructure can query Connect for information via API, so it will become the umbrella of the project.

• Q: What is it based on?
• A: It uses Elgg – an open-source social networking platform.

• Q: I remember a site running on connect.opensuse.org. What has happened to it?
• A: Yes, that was our proof of concept application running on Tog platform. Unfortunately it turned out that upstream developers have other projects on their plate leaving Tog development inactive. Also there were lots of important features missing which we found already done in Elgg. URL connect.opensuse.org now redirects to the Connect wiki page.

• Q: What is the Connect wiki page URL?
• A:http://wiki.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Connect

• Q: How can I join the hacking session?
• A: Fill in this form so we can plan the event better. Then come to FrOSCon and find us!

• Q: What do I need to know?
• A: Elgg is written in PHP and uses MySQL database. Knowledge of these technologies is very good, but not essential. If you want to be really prepared, read the Elgg documentation and/or install Elgg on your own machine to see how it works, what is the usage of the plugins and so on. You can also try some of the plugins mentioned in the wiki or from the Elgg plugin directory.

• Q: What do I have to bring?
• A: We will bring our own server and network infrastructure for development but you need to bring your own laptop to participate.

We are looking forward to seeing you there! If there are any questions that are left unanswered just drop me an email or ask in comments …