Douglas DeMaio

Douglas DeMaio is a well-known figure in the open-source community, specifically within the openSUSE Project. He was born and raised in the United States and moved overseas, which is where he developed a passion for technology and open-source software.

DeMaio was a marketing intern at Siemens where he managed and developed corporate communication tools for Siemens Healthcare. He worked as a Sales and Marketing Manager for microdrones GmbH where he negotiated business development, designed informational products and was the press spokesperson. He has more than 20 years of experience in Marketing, Public Relations and Media Relations. He has worked as a Public Affairs Officer, Media Relation and Command Information Chief for the US Army. He has extensive experience in all aspects of newsgathering for local, national and international media.

DeMaio joined the openSUSE Project in 2014. His initial contributions focused on improving the project's marketing, documentation and organizing of events for the project. He was elected to the openSUSE Board in 2022 and nominated by the board to represent the project as part Geeko Foundation trustee. In addition to his work on the openSUSE Project, DeMaio is an accomplished writer and blogger.

Today, DeMaio remains passionate about open-source software and is dedicated to helping others discover its benefits and potential.

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Svebor Prstačić

Svebor Prstačić has been a part of the Geeko community since the early 2000s, and his engagement peaked in 2014, when he led the organization the openSUSE conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia.


His professional interests include free and open source software, component-based software engineering for the web, system architecture and project management.

He is currently:

  1. The head of IT department at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, where he got his PhD in computer science;
  2. CEO and co-owner of a company specializing in delivering integrated web application solutions for faculties, to support teaching and business processes;
  3. The president of Croatian Association for Open Systems and Internet (HrOpen), where he leads the organization of the oldest European Linux and free software conference in Zagreb, Croatia.

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Patrick Fitzgerald, Founder

Patrick started as a programmer since age 15, have hacked around in Basic, Forth (look it up), Pascal, 8086 Assembler (he was young at the time, ok?), JavaScript, Python, Go - and probably others - ever since spending 8 years working on special visual effects (non digital!) in various film and television productions in Australia. Once described as "creative in all directions”, he has built Linux based, open source cloud in 2010 (still running in data centers in Zurich and London), hosting customers in the financial sector.

  • Large scale Linux deployment specialist
  • Brexit refugee, currently residing in Germany
  • openSUSE board member
  • Survivor of many things.