discuss-gnustep
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

FOSDEM 2009 impressions summary


From: Riccardo Mottola
Subject: FOSDEM 2009 impressions summary
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2009 20:02:11 +0100

Hi all,

I think it is useful to write down a couple of impressions I got back with
from FOSDEM. It was the first year I attended, so I cannot compare to
previous years.

I'm not going to sum up what the topics were, Lars will surely do better
than me [*].

I think it is interesting to know where the audience had interest. I try tro
infer that form the number of people attending, from the questions that were
made and form the looks I got when I were doing the presentation...

Interest seen in :

- Core
    - Theming. Questions and attendance were quite good, thus it is a topic
to surely keep warm and show progress about.
    - GC: The GC class was unexpectedly well attended

- Applications. Generally tehre has been a decent interest in applications,
here some specific which I got questions about
    - Vespucci. The interest appeared high, I got questions and there was
also interest when I shoed it running on the small Letux 400 NetBook.
    - LaternaMagica. I have seen interest in this application, especially
when run on the NetBook, but also about its full-screen feature
    - FlexiSheet: ex-Improv and Quantrix user asked about it. I think that
bringing forward this idea might cater old users, a bit like DBModeler
questions about administrative tools in GAP for gnustep were posed...
(monitor managment, network managment, user managmetn and that kind)

Development:
    - Gorm
    - ProjectCenter
generally I think there was a certain interest in Development. The talks
about obj-c, cross-platfom and also GC were quite well attended.
I think that further work on PC can't be bad at all, as well as more
information about windows.


Uncertain: about these topics I cannot say if there was really itnerest or
not, I think yes, but there were mixed indicators (like people leaving
early.. being unattentive...)
    - DBModeler: The talk on this was not very fortunate, due to some
hiccups during the presentation which slowed down the pace. Yet it had a
fair number of attendees... at least at the beginning, but few question
during the talk. However, at least one user showed interest in the EOF
compatibility. I think it can be publicized more and see if old EOF user get
back from the ashes
    - Pragmatic Smalltalk: This talk, repeated twise, had a fair interest.
Maybe it catered from the missing etoilé presentation.
    - WebServices: this talk had a high number of attendees, but... not many
questions asked, so I do wonder....


I think the general impression is good, I am satisfied, I hope new users
will join us. The developer room unfortunately doesn't leave much space for
communication and hacking, since the stream of talk is pretty much
continuous.

What we really should care about:
- titles of presentations: on the booklet every user gets there is no
summary, jsut the title. I think mine was not too god("GAP Applications". if
somebody doesn't know what GAP is? I thought it wasp pretty clear it
referred to GNUstep vbeing held in that room...)
- absolutely share presentations. The interst in etoile was high apparently,
the absence of any of the etoile team was very very sad, but not having the
slides to project was definitvely unacceptable. It cost us quite some image,
really.
- try to keep a good pace, do not try to do everything on-line and if there
are problems, have examples prepared which can eb used as a back-up (or at
least, a presentation with screenshots). A hint to DBModeler that is. I was
more lucky perhaps, I had the slides and my live demo I attempted went well,
but bad luck can strike at any moment
- USB keys :)

There is a lot more ti discuss and each single point can be a topic. I also
skipped several topics. Just a start....

Riccardo


[*] If the slides of my presentations are of any use, I can provide them in
either OO format or PDF.





reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]