
Frab – free and open conference management system - weinzierl
https://frab.github.io/frab/
======
xvilka
There is also Pretalx[1][2].

[1] [https://pretalx.org](https://pretalx.org)

[2] [https://github.com/pretalx](https://github.com/pretalx)

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sdan
Not sure if it's just me:

Anytime you show a product at least include some screenshots of how it looks
like somewhere. In my brief search, I couldn't find anything.

~~~
ziari
I found some in the GitHub wiki (last edited in 2013, though).

[https://github.com/frab/frab/wiki/Screenshots](https://github.com/frab/frab/wiki/Screenshots)

~~~
tylermenezes
Look mostly accurate from my last experience with frab in 2018!

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jedimastert
Is this more geared towards educational/business conferences (where the
primary motivation is speakers disseminating information to large groups of
people) can it do more entertainment conferences or fan cons with booths and a
show floor and the like?

Edit: I just realized that I meant to say "conventions" for the second part,
and also that there's a lot more crossover than I would have originally
thought.

~~~
artemist
I believe it is more focused on educational conferences. the CCC uses this for
all its conferences, including Congress and Camp.

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jph
Thank you for writing and sharing - I especially like the feature for a call
for papers.

I'm adding Frab to a list of Meetup alternatives and related meeting software:

[https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan/b...](https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan/blob/master/docs/ideas/alternatives/meetup.md)

~~~
Quanttek
Pretalx was also mentioned in the comments

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davidroetzel
It is so nice to see this on here. I started frab way back for FrOSCon, a
german free and open source software conference (which you should totally
attend if you can make it!).

I stopped contributing when I stopped organizing FrOSCon, but thankfully
Mario, the current maintainer, has picked it up and he does a tremendous job
ever since. Also a big thank you to all contributors.

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dbrgn
This system is regularly used by the German CCC to organize their conferences.

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hirundo
From Frab's schema.rb:

    
    
      create_table "people", force: :cascade do |t|
        # ...
        t.string "first_name", limit: 255, default: ""
        t.string "last_name", limit: 255, default: ""
        t.string "gender", limit: 255
        # ...
      end
    

Our schema has a similar table, but with "prefix" instead of "gender", where
on the front end a list pops down with Mr., Ms., etc. We just use the prefix
to form the full name.

I wonder where the need to track gender comes from in such an app. We manage
events and conferences too, but gender hasn't come up beyond the salutation.
Since they do care about gender maybe they will soon also want _pronoun_ and
_possessive_pronoun_ columns.

~~~
vharuck
The "first name, last name" fields are worse, IMO.

\- It doesn't apply for many cultures.

\- The only justification to collect them separately is to link with third-
party data.

\- They should stop playing around and just ask me what they want to know,
"How would you like to be addressed?"

~~~
donw
> It doesn't apply for many cultures.

I'm struggling to come up with a list of those.

Middle names are definitely not universal, sure, but I can't seem to find a
list of cultures that can't map down to "first name, last name".

Iceland, Indonesia, Turkey, Ethiopia, everything I've come across seems to
have adopted some superset of "first name, last name" in the last hundred
years.

> The only justification to collect them separately is to link with third-
> party data.

In Japan, many organizations are required to collect this for legal
compliance.

> They should stop playing around and just ask me what they want to know, "How
> would you like to be addressed?"

That is a good thing to ask -- and certainly suitable for generating nametags!
-- but I can still see many cases for needing to have a legal name. Generating
receipts, etc.

~~~
JimDabell
> I can't seem to find a list of cultures that can't map down to "first name,
> last name".

It's the meaning of them that's mainly the problem. In western cultures, the
first name is your given name and the last name is your family name. In
eastern cultures the first name is your family name and the last name is your
personal name.

So without more information, you don't know whether to call them "Mr [first
name]" or "Mr [last name]". If you don't know what to call them after they've
filled in the name fields in your form, that's a pretty fundamental failure.

> I can still see many cases for needing to have a legal name.

Sure, but first name / last name is not a good way to do it.

~~~
oefrha
> In eastern cultures the first name is your family name and the last name is
> your personal name.

First name and last name are bad proxies for given name and family name.
Anyone from an Eastern culture filling in an English form knows or should know
that. If they don't, it's mostly their fault.

> So without more information, you don't know whether to call them "Mr [first
> name]" or "Mr [last name]".

You call them "Mr [last name]".

This is mostly an imagined problem, and it goes away if you ask for "first
name/given name" and "last name/surname", which removes any ambiguity.

(I happen to have an Eastern name, so I did not call it an imagined problem
because I knew nothing about it.)

~~~
JimDabell
> First name and last name are bad proxies for given name and family name.

It sounds like you are agreeing with me here.

> Anyone from an Eastern culture filling in an English form knows or should
> know that. If they don't, it's mostly their fault.

A bad form design collects bad data and it's the fault of the person filling
it in? How about we just use better form fields?

> This is mostly an imagined problem, and it goes away if you ask for "first
> name/given name" and "last name/surname", which removes any ambiguity.

If you acknowledge that this ambiguity can be resolved by changing what you
are asking, why are you arguing this point? Just use better form fields.

> (I happen to have an Eastern name, so I did not call it an imagined problem
> because I knew nothing about it.)

I have a western name and my name is backwards on all sorts of documents and
I've been called "Mr Jim" a huge number of times because of this issue. It's
not mostly imagined, it's extremely common in my experience.

If you want to know their legal name, ask for their legal name. If you want to
know what you should call them, ask what you should call them. First name /
last name are not good fields for this and the solutions are simple.

~~~
oefrha
> If you acknowledge that this ambiguity can be resolved by changing what you
> are asking, why are you arguing this point? Just use better form fields.

I mean, it's a very simple cosmetic fix and has no bearing on the schema. I
thought you were arguing that the first name / last name model is
fundamentally broken, but I guess you were not.

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ggm
Anyone reviewed how it compares to indico or eventbirght?

~~~
fnord123
Or easy chair: [https://www.easychair.org/](https://www.easychair.org/)

~~~
faster
Or OpenConferenceWare:
[http://openconferenceware.org/](http://openconferenceware.org/)

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agumonkey
doo people have open source recording gig ? to ensure nice sound and synced
slides ?

~~~
markvdb
Have a look at what we use at [https://fosdem.org](https://fosdem.org) [0][1].
In terms of software, a crucial component is voctomix [2], using it as a
headless video mixer. Another invaluable component is nginx-rtmp [3] for
streaming.

We made a heavy push to get all of this packaged in Debian. It's a
surprisingly powerful combination.

[0]
[https://github.com/FOSDEM/infrastructure/tree/master/ansible...](https://github.com/FOSDEM/infrastructure/tree/master/ansible/playbooks/roles)
[1]
[https://github.com/FOSDEM/video/blob/master/instructions/FOS...](https://github.com/FOSDEM/video/blob/master/instructions/FOSDEM_AV_manual.pdf)
[2] [https://github.com/voc/voctomix](https://github.com/voc/voctomix) [3]
[https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module/](https://github.com/arut/nginx-
rtmp-module/)

