Qubes OS Summit: History from organizer's perspective www.qubes-os.org/news/20…-history Editor’s note: This is a guest article by Michał Żygowski from 3mdeb (https://3mdeb.com/) about the history of Qubes OS Summits. Thanks for sharing with us today, Michał! Introduction The next Qubes OS Summit 2022 (www.qubes-os.org/news/20…mit-2022) edition is upcoming. This year it will be held in Berlin from September 9th to 11th in hybrid format, in person and live-streamed for remote access. More details here (https://qubesos.3mdeb.com/). Don’t miss the event and more importantly how it started. In the article the history and organizer’s perspective of the event will be described. How did all of this start? In May 2019 3mdeb funded Linux training for its employees, having no idea who the instructor will be. At some point, it occurred that the mysterious instructor will be none other than Marek Marczykowski-Górecki, the same person who leads the Qubes OS project. As huge fans of Qubes OS and its approach to security, as also fans of Joanna Rutkowska security research in the area of firmware and computer architecture, we were delighted to meet him in person in our office in Gdańsk, Poland. The time has come when the idea of a short event focused on firmware impact on Qubes OS security has been born. We asked Marek if he has some spare time to discuss firmware impacts on Qubes OS security and he liked the idea. The event has been called humorously a “minisummit”. That is how the first Qubes OS summit started, one day, in a small conference room, with a tiny group of people passionate about firmware and system security, nothing outrageous (in the meaning of scale). One may still read what topics have been discussed here (blog.3mdeb.com/2019/20…nisummit). The main focus was on Qubes OS certification and ecosystem as well as the firmware-related security technologies support like TPM 2.0 and DRTM (Anti Evil Maid). The event helped 3mdeb realize how to get involved in Qubes OS project and help to improve it with our expertise. The past of Qubes OS Summits Everyone enjoyed that one particular day so much, that we decided to repeat the event next year. The environment we created together, bending and crossing the event horizon between firmware and operating system, was something wonderful, both to hear and to speak about. The potential we saw in that kind of event, to bring various companies together and collaborate on the project on every possible layer, has been pushing us forward to enlarge the community and introduce more open-source firmware to the Qubes OS world. Another May has come, the year 2020, the pandemic dominated the world. But it didn’t stop us from holding the event again! It even gave us a better opportunity to attract and gather more people virtually to attend the event. Thanks to our 3mdeb colleagues, who set up the live recording and streaming of the whole Qubes OS 2020 Summit, it is possible to see and listen to the talks given by Qubes OS and 3mdeb experts on Youtube (www.youtube.com/playlis…playlist) over and over again. From 3mdeb side we continued firmware-related topics, for example first time Qubes OS Anti Evil Maid on AMD platform. It was quite a challenge for us because we have organized such a virtual event for the first time. Fortunately, everything went smoothly and finished with success after 4 sessions 2.5 hours long. In August 2021 we held yet another Qubes OS Summit together with the Qubes OS team, still virtually, unfortunately. However, this year brought more speakers from other companies and projects, which we were very happy about. There were 2 sessions almost 4 hours each and one may watch the talks at Youtube (www.youtube.com/playlis…playlist).