[FOSDEM] Call for Participation: Sovereign Cloud DevRoom at FOSDEM 2023

Felix Kronlage-Dammers fkr at osb-alliance.com
Fri Nov 18 19:15:03 UTC 2022


# FOSDEM 2023 In Person – Sovereign Cloud DevRoom Call for 
Participation!

The twenty-third edition of FOSDEM takes place Saturday 4th and Sunday 
5th
February 2023 in Brussels, Belgium.
For the first time there will be a DevRoom that focuses on the subject 
of Sovereign Cloud
and its  practical aspect for digital sovereignty.

## Key dates tl;dr:

    - Conference dates 4-5 February, 2023 In person
    - Sovereign Cloud DevRoom date: Saturday 4th February
    - Submission deadline: Friday December 9th, 2022 - 23:59 UTC.
    - Announcement of selected talks: Thursday 15th December
    - You must be available in person to present your talk

## About the Sovereign Cloud DevRoom

### Overview

The Sovereign Cloud DevRoom is for discussing topics and issues of user 
privacy and
sovereignty and the intersection with the needs of infrastructure 
providers in the cloud
computing era.

A few topic examples to illustrate (a longer list is below):

- Can all operations be open, or may there be a need for a two+ tier 
openess (country specific laws or company secrets)?
- How can privacy relevant data be anonymized instead of being deleted, 
without losing the useful information?
- Open Operations is more than just sharing runbooks, how is knowledge 
shared and fostered best across organizations?
- Navigating our personal data lakes -- we're going to need better tools 
that are easier to use by more people for managing and curating 
encrypted data lakes
- The role of machine learning in conducting data science on anonymized 
information
- Countering the risks of integrated platforms

These are just a few example suggestions, we welcome proposals on any 
aspects around these topic.

More topic ideas and details on how to submit proposals is below.

### Discussing the Sovereign Cloud

The recent EU focus on digital sovereignity has brought fresh attention 
and innovation to a problem
area many of us have been interested in and working on for a long time. 
This DevRoom focuses on
a practical aspect of digital sovereignty:  how it affects user-oriented 
and
potentially privacy-containing infrastructure in the cloud computing 
era.

This aspect is the _sovereign cloud_, the intersection of digital 
sovereignty and a modern cloud-centric
way to create and sustain infrastructure, operations, and development to 
address the needs of
users (which may be other cloud services or actual, real people.)

With the rise of the Confidential Computing Consortium 
(https://confidentialcomputing.io/), some
people feel we  are beginning to achieve "sovereign enough" where it 
comes to the balance of the
needs of the individual and the needs of tech companies et al. But there 
are just as many other voices
calling attention to potential problems and unfulfillable needs of 
staying on that path.

Looking at the entire landscape of the problem, it's clear that 
Confidential Computing also aligns with
usage on a sovereign cloud. It is a tool to ensure the least amount of 
provider trust, and it is still a good
idea until we've moved new processor architectures into the mainstream 
that are less impacted by
predictive execution vulnerabilities. So while it is not perfect, making 
it harder for an attacker is always
a good idea where feasible.

In looking for other paths to fill more needs, we naturally come to the 
intersection of Free/Open where
interests from different backgrounds pursuing different goals suddenly 
find themselves working together
in a common direction. Two of those groups are part of the organizing 
committee for this devroom:

As a way of addressing the holistic needs and supporting a truly 
balanced digital sovereignty, organizations
such as the  overeign Cloud Stack (https://scs.community/) have come 
together to provide a complete
technology solution, standards as well as reference implementations, 
that can be proven and recognized
by everyone as a truly sovereign cloud.

In this area where the requirements of a sovereign cloud are being met 
is another intersection from the
ecosytem of Free and Open Source software development. The idea of Open 
Operations is essential to
projects such as Operate First that provide a developer-friendly 
post-CI/CD platform for running, testing,
and proving Open Source services.

Longer list of topic ideas - this is not an exclusive list, feel free to 
submit further ideas:

- Can all operations be open, or may there be a need for a two+ tier 
openess (country specific laws or company secrets)?
- How can privacy relevant data be anonymized instead of being deleted, 
without losing the useful information?
- Discussion: How open can software be called, if it relies on closed 
operations and closed infrastructure?
- Do we need to refine the definition of upstream in the idea of Open 
Operations?
- Is hybrid accelerating Open Operations or can it be a slow-downer/ 
separator? Or the solution to possible privacy issues?
- Interoperability, transparency, and independence are the go to goals, 
what can be accepted on our way until we are there?
- Open Operations is more than just sharing runbooks, how is knowledge 
shared and fostered best across organizations?
- Share experiences and stories on creating environments of 
psychological safety so that failures indeed make us experts
- Building communities of practice across organizations
- Navigating our personal data lakes -- we're going to need better tools 
that are easier to use by more people for managing and curating 
encrypted data lakes
- The role of machine learning in conducting data science on anonymized 
information
- Countering the risks of integrated platforms


Again, these are just suggestions. We welcome proposals on any aspects 
around these topic.


Format and lengths of submissions:

     - Long (40 minutes, including Q&A)
     - Short (20 minutes, including Q&A)
     - Lightning (5 minutes, no Q&A)

Aside from Presentation also Meetings/Discussions are welcome for topics 
where a BoF-style (Birds of Feather) session
is appropriate.

HOW TO SUBMIT A TALK

    - Head to the FOSDEM 2023 Pentabarf
    <https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM23> website.


    - If you already have a Pentabarf account, please don’t create a 
new one.
    - If you forgot your password, reset it.
    - Otherwise, follow the instructions to create an account.
    - Once logged in, select “New Event” and click on “Show All” 
in the top right corner to display the full form.

    Your submission must include the following information:


    - First and last name / Nickname (optional)/ Image
    - Email address
    - Mobile phone number (this is a very hard requirement as there will 
be no other reliable form of emergency communication on the day)
    - Title and subtitle of your talk (please be descriptive, as titles 
will be listed with ~500 from other projects)
    - Track: Select “Sovereign Cloud DevRoom” as the track
    - Event type:
        - Lightning Talk OR
        - Meeting or Discussion OR
        - Presentation

    - Persons: Add yourself as the speaker with your bio
    - Description: Abstract (required)/ Full Description (optional)
    - Links to related websites / blogs etc.
    - Beyond giving us the above, let us know if there’s anything else 
you’d like to share as part of your submission – Twitter handle, 
GitHub activity
    history – whatever works for you. We especially welcome videos of 
you speaking elsewhere, or even just a list of talks you have done 
previously.
    First time speakers are, of course, welcome!
    - For issues with Pentabarf, please contact
    cloud-devroom-manager at fosdem.org. Feel free to send a notification 
of
    your submission to that email.


If you need to get in touch with the organisers or program committee of 
the
Sovereign Cloud DevRoom, email us at cloud-devroom-manager at fosdem.org


FOSDEM website <https://fosdem.org/2023/> / FOSDEM code of conduct
<https://fosdem.org/2023/practical/conduct/>
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