Re: [Debconf-discuss] [penta] Evaluating new conference software

[Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@gwolf.org>]

Basic info
----------

Software name: Open Conferences System (OCS)
URL: http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ocs
License: GPLv2
Last sign of upstream activity: 2012-03-16 v2.3.5 release
Programming language: PHP
Supported database backends: MySQL, PostgreSQL
Supported authentication backends: (not checked, internal only IIRC)

DebConf requirements:
---------------------

Ability to manage attendee data:

   It includes a large array of fields, but AFAICT it's basically
   targetted at academic, contact information

Talk submission workflow:

   This ConfMS really shines on this, as it's built for peer-reviewed
   academic conferences. The workflow can be a bit daunting, as it is
   sometimes just too rich.

Talk rating workflow:

   Several workflows available, including strict peer-review (where
   some attendees can take the role of reviewing peers),
   director-based, committee-based. Usually, each abstract is sent to
   two or three people who decide whether a full paper should be
   requested or not. Quite different from our needs IMO

Talk feedback workflow:

   Don't know if there is one.

Reporting ability:

   Don't know

Internationalization capability:

   I18N-able; translations provided for ~20 languages. However, the
   quality of the translations is sometimes below par (i.e. the
   Spanish translation is quite lacking IMO)

Ability to extend in a maintainable way:

   Does not seem *too* hard... but then again, it's PHP, so I think
   we'd all feel quite dirty. Maintainability and PHP don't mix well
   together.

Any other DebConf features already supported:

   Payments accomodation IIRC

Have you ever successfully installed or hacked it? Was it hard?

   I have installed it recently, and hacked it _very_ little
   (i.e. removing functionality rather than adding to it). It's not
   hard, although it is not as trivial as I'd like (and then again,
   when is it?)

Overall summary
---------------

Most important strengths:

   Great for academic conferences, very good talk workflow. The PKP
   group that authors it authors other important pieces of free
   software for academic purposes (such as the Open Journal System,
   Open Harvest System... do you see a pattern here?)

Most important weaknesses:

   Not as user-friendly as I'd like, many users have complained at
   getting to the right screens.

Would you recommend we use it, and why?

   No. It's a great piece of software, but not precisely suited for
   our mindset.