Re: FOSDEM Aftermath - the Dev-Room

[Nicolas Roard]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 3:30 AM, Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf
<lars.sonchocky-helldorf@hamburg.de> wrote:
> Having a Dev-Room has paid of a lot IMHO, since it creates much more intense
> contacts and lively interest than just those
> "stop-two-seconds-for-a-flyer-and-ask-or-say-nothing" situations you usually
> have at a booth/stand. So I would consider having a Dev-Room much more
> important than having just a stand. And a stand also means more stuff to
> bring (computers/montitors to display GNUstep, banners, posters,
> booklets/brochures/flyers or other merchandising like buttons, T-shirts,
> Live-CDs, cups, stuffed animals … ;-)).
>
> Teaming up seems to ease getting a Dev-Room (this year it was not just the
> GNUstep Dev-Room but the GNUstep+Etoilé+OpenGroupware.org Dev-Room). I'd do
> it the same in the future (given of course that Etoilé and OpenGroupware.org
> don't feel usurped this way)

sounds good.

> The size of the Dev-Room was just right (31 seats), it wasn't to large so
> that it felt empty but sometimes all places were taken and some people had
> to stand in the aisles.
>
> The time scheduled for the sessions (one hour each) was also just right,
> most talks were finished after about 45 minutes and there was still enough
> time to ask questions and get ready for the next session. Having a lunch
> break on sunday was also just right (sessions on saturday started at 13:00
> hours so there was no need for a lunch break then).
>
>
> But of course there's still room to improve:
>
> - I like the idea of having a moderator as Sebastian suggested.
>
> - As Riccardo says: "The developer room unfortunately doesn't leave much
> space for communication and hacking, since the stream of talk is pretty much
> continuous." and Nicolas did second: There was nearly no time for "internal"
> talks, that means talks or discussions during which GNUstep developers
> itself talked to each other. While I am all for a presentation and "show and
> tell" kind of Dev-Room (since this is one of the rare occasions where we can
> get into personal contact with our users and future users) talking to each
> other shouldn't be missed out (since FOSDEM is also one of the rare
> occasions where we meet each other) I have several ideas for this:
>
> a.) having internal talks in the early sunday hours (9:00 to 11:00 when
> everybody recovers from saturday night). Pro: we won't miss a large audience
> (since they're most likely still sleeping). Contra: The most GNUsteppers
> were also not in the Dev-Room until 11 am to 12 am (recovering from the
> saturday night dinner I guess
>
> b.) having open (moderated) talks on a topic (with audience). I have no idea
> if this will work. Most likely it is difficult to define topics (for the
> FOSDEM schedule) before and I doubt it will be very efficient. Helge was
> holding a BOF (birds of a feather) talk for GroupDAV/CalDAV Implementors and
> during this several other small, fluctuating groups were discussing several
> aspects of GNUstep. So it turned out to be a general BOF for different
> aspects of GNUstep (don't ask me about all the topics that have been
> discussed during this). I guess that discussions are more productive in such
> an informal kind of setting. But such a setting is not very inviting for
> outsiders, they'll only see small groups of people standing around and will
> have a difficult time to join.

What could be done also is to limit the talks to a single day, and
leave the rest for coding.

> c.) doing it all a day earlier, on friday in the hotel (breakfast room or
> the like). Quite good time and place to do so since then we're undisturbed.
> But this would require staying in Brussels a day longer (arriving ideally
> already thursday evening) which cost more time and money and you may have to
> take a day off if you got a day job. Ideally we then also have to stay in
> the same place to avoid needless "getting around and find the
> others"-mumbo-jumbo.

yes, that would be great too, but as you said it might be more
problematic for people to attend.

> d.) Having more meetings beside FOSDEM. I for instance have nice memories of
> the Alpenstep meeting. Let's have that again.

yes, alpenstep was awesome !

> And in the end some organizational notes for the future
>
> stuff which is nice to have for the Dev-Room:
>
> - feedback sheets where attendees of the talks can rate the talks would be a
> good idea I think

I'd prefer a small webapp :)

> - power cords with multiple plugs
> - adaptors, adaptors, adaptors. Don't forget those. For power (every
> european country has still its own "standard") and to plug your laptop into
> the projector. Richard had to go to the Apple Store to get one (since he
> forgot to bring his) and sadly this adaptor was useless in the end since the
> projectors didn't came with a DVI-input.
> - one or two Ethernet hubs/switches are useful. FOSDEM did provide WLAN in
> each room but they didn't got it to work reliably until late Saturday
> afternoon.
> - loudspeakers (for video conferences or sound in the presentations)
> - an own projector (FOSDEM does provide some but you never know what you'll
> get, the first day we had one with a resolution of only 800x600 and a
> somewhat broken keystone)
> - If you're going to record the sessions on video, a small digicam should be
> sufficient. Be sure to have at least two batteries (so you can charge one
> while using the other) and two memory card (one to record while saving the
> contents of the other onto your laptop). You also need a small tripod (which
> can be used on desk - I brought my gorillapod
> http://joby.com/products/gorillapod/2 ). Recording in 320x240 @ 15fps is the
> absolute minimum to get somewhat usable video (this is what I did since my
> digicam allows only for 2GB SD Cards which gave me about 70 to 80 mins
> recording time) but don't forget that the slides are unreadable at that
> resolution (even at 640x480 it will be hard to read slides projected at a
> higher resolution than 1024x768)

We could also have two video recorders, one for the speaker, one for the slides.
It would involve some more editing though.

> - a clip microphone to record the speaker would increase the sound quality
> of the recorded speech by a magnitude

yes

> - a printer would also be nice (to print brochures/flyers or announcement of
> last minute talks ;-) but then again there ought to be a b/w laser printer
> at the front desk (and they let you print stuff if you're friendly and come
> with a PDF ready to print on an USB stick)

There's also a printer shop nearby the university, if necessary (for
printing flyers).

>
>
> My conclusions:
>
> - having a Dev-Room is more important than having a booth since we get more
> intense contact. A booth would be a nice addition if we are enough people
> (but it cost also a magnitude more of effort and organisation and splits us
> up in two groups)
> - we should grant ourselves more opportunity for talking to each other.
> Whether we do this in the Dev-Room (and having less talks this way) or on
> friday in the hotel has to be discussed.

If it can be planned/organized properly, a full friday would be great,
yes (with people arriving thursday evening...)

> - Let's have another Alpenstep in late August (it was really nice then)!

yes :)

-- 
Nicolas Roard