On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 3:30 AM, Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf <[email protected]> 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 _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
