Hi,
The FrOSCon organisers have informed me that this year we can have our own developers room. So I want to see if this is something we want to do or not.
I think it could be useful if there are enough people involved with it. But on the other hand, I also want to make sure we have people at the booth as well.
I do think we need to come together on a regular basis with as many as possible to discuss and advance CentOS, but I am not sure if an event like this is the perfect opportunity :-/ (Given the fact that I hardly am able to do anything at FOSDEM)
Apart from that I am going to submit my CentOS/Enterprise Linux presentation and I would encourage anyone to submit a CentOS related presentation.
Hi,
I don't have any idea if a devroom is a good idea or not. However, I feel that running a devroom and especially doing discussion there is a general issue on every event. People want to attend presentations, they should take part in discussion and somebody has to man the booth. So what I'd suggest is that we do not have any "official" CentOS discussion during the day, so we still have enough people to man the booth even when someone wants to attend a presentation.
The downside is that we'd have to do the discussion in the morning or in the evening. As I don't like to get up even earlier (I guess most people will agree) we'd have to do the discussion in the evening. For most events that means the devrooms are closed (because the whole event site is closed) and usually people are hungry and want to go to dinner.
So I guess the best way to run a working discussion (i.e. one where everybody can attend and nobody is waiting for food) would be in the evening during and after dinner. This would require a bit more organization concerning the dinner, because whoever organizes the dinner would have to make sure that the enviroment is discussion-friendly. What would be required imo are quiet surroundings (i.e. not dozens of uninvolved people talking in the background), a table where everyone can see everybody's face (possibly a round table) and of course the optional, but highly recommended WiFi. I think it should be possible to find a place offering all that near every event site as long as we have someone living near there who can organize the event. After all, that means we'd have to find someone who organizes the evening event(s) ahead of time, but I think that should be doable.
For FrOSCon I could offer my apartment to have a discussion (and dinner) with up to 6 people. If there are more people I know a few places which should be able to fulfill most of the requirements. If desired, I could organize that.
Concerning regular meetings I absolutely agree with you. As stated above, I don't think an event is a good place to have internal discussion. After all the events are there to show off the project and to get in touch with other people/projects and not for internal discussion. I wonder if there are enough people who would attend a "developer weekend" somewhere. Organization for that isn't too hard to do and the event itself is cheap. The problem that always arises is travel and accomodation expenses. However, I remember last year at FrOSCon there was somebody from Linuxhotel[1] at our booth and offered a special deal for free software projects that isn't officially announced on their website. That would at least lower the accomodation expenses, but the travel cost will stay.
Regards, Andreas
P.S. my apartment has funitures, internet access and a working kitchen now :)
Dag Wieers schrieb:
Hi,
The FrOSCon organisers have informed me that this year we can have our own developers room. So I want to see if this is something we want to do or not.
http://www.froscon.org/I think it could be useful if there are enough people involved with it. But on the other hand, I also want to make sure we have people at the booth as well.
I do think we need to come together on a regular basis with as many as possible to discuss and advance CentOS, but I am not sure if an event like this is the perfect opportunity :-/ (Given the fact that I hardly am able to do anything at FOSDEM)
Apart from that I am going to submit my CentOS/Enterprise Linux presentation and I would encourage anyone to submit a CentOS related presentation.
On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, Andreas Rogge wrote:
I don't have any idea if a devroom is a good idea or not. However, I feel that running a devroom and especially doing discussion there is a general issue on every event. People want to attend presentations, they should take part in discussion and somebody has to man the booth. So what I'd suggest is that we do not have any "official" CentOS discussion during the day, so we still have enough people to man the booth even when someone wants to attend a presentation.
I think I agree :)
The downside is that we'd have to do the discussion in the morning or in the evening. As I don't like to get up even earlier (I guess most people will agree) we'd have to do the discussion in the evening. For most events that means the devrooms are closed (because the whole event site is closed) and usually people are hungry and want to go to dinner.
So I guess the best way to run a working discussion (i.e. one where everybody can attend and nobody is waiting for food) would be in the evening during and after dinner. This would require a bit more organization concerning the dinner, because whoever organizes the dinner would have to make sure that the enviroment is discussion-friendly.
What would be required imo are quiet surroundings (i.e. not dozens of uninvolved people talking in the background), a table where everyone can see everybody's face (possibly a round table) and of course the optional, but highly recommended WiFi. I think it should be possible to find a place offering all that near every event site as long as we have someone living near there who can organize the event. After all, that means we'd have to find someone who organizes the evening event(s) ahead of time, but I think that should be doable.
I agree we should consider FrOSCon an event for users and potential users, and keep an internal meeting seperate and at a different time/location ?
And maybe we should consider doing the same for FOSDEM in the future.
Thanks for the offer ! Let's see how many CentOS people are interested to come ?
PS Are you interested in organising the booth ? Since it is close to where you live and you speak German there is less confusion ? If not I will do best-effort like last year :-)
Dag Wieers schrieb:
PS Are you interested in organising the booth ? Since it is close to where you live and you speak German there is less confusion ? If not I will do best-effort like last year :-)
No Problem, I think I already offered that at FOSDEM. Maybe you could tell them that I'll be the contact so they don't get confused.
However, I'll probably bug you with questions whenever I get stuck.
On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, Andreas Rogge wrote:
Dag Wieers schrieb:
PS Are you interested in organising the booth ? Since it is close to where you live and you speak German there is less confusion ? If not I will do best-effort like last year :-)
No Problem, I think I already offered that at FOSDEM. Maybe you could tell them that I'll be the contact so they don't get confused.
I thought so, but I no longer trust my memory :-)
However, I'll probably bug you with questions whenever I get stuck.
I will forward you all the communication. I already requested a booth (today) and have commited one paper. (no, not dstat :-))
With the upcoming NLLGG CentOS day in the Netherlands, I hope we can produce some more presentation content that we can reuse at other events.
I was also thinking of making some groundrules for our presentation framework, like:
- presentations should be available in English as well and maintained at least in English (so people can contribute and give feedback)
- presentations should contain notes with a summary of what the main motivation is for each slide and special examples/points you want to make (so other people can give the same presentation)
- presentations should be versioned and are maintained by the original author (to prevent mistakes or having to merge content after someone edited a local copy)
And we should probably think of important main presentations that we want people to look at about:
- The CentOS project - CentOS and Enterprise Linux distributions - Installing and configuring CentOS for desktop use (!) - Installing and configuring CentOS for server use - CentOS system administration (tips and best practices)
so that we have content (free to use) for schools and organisations.
PS I also noticed that moinmoin has a Slideshow capability but I am not sure if that is something we want to use to work collectively on presentations. I myself am fond of using OpenOffice and I can imagine people do not want to spend a lot of time on layout before a presentation to get the latest bits.
-
Andreas Rogge -
Dag Wieers -
Dag Wieers