[Ghm-discuss] Fw: Re: [FOSDEM-Devrooms] Proposal for Dev Room at FOSDEM 2014

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hello,

It seems FOSDEM worry that our talks might not be technical enough
(complete email response I received below).  I've responded to Philip to
let him know we wouldn't use the devroom as a soapbox, and to let him
know that I would get him a list of talks we might be able to put on.

To this end, would you have any suggestions?  The talks apparently have
to be technical, development focused and relevant to 'open source'.

Personally I think the following might be a good start:
- Guix & packaging (relevance to the GNU project as a whole and a
  hacking / packaging session).
- Guile, Emacsy & Extending software: different approaches and their
  appropriateness for different projects (this one might not be
  technical enough, but could be complemented or replaced by practical
  discussions of how Guile is embedded in some software at present?)
- The Hurd & DDE: if I understand correctly, DDE is for now the way that
  the Hurd will support the majority of hardware drivers.  It might be
  interesting to discuss how this is actually implemented?
- Gnunet in action: We could try to setup a working, secure and
  decentralised network of Gnunet in the devroom — especially if Gnunet
  might by FOSDEM be packaged in Guix? We could use that as a practical
  illustration of different elements of Gnunet (Naming System,
  file-sharing…).

You may be thinking this list echoes talks at the last GHM — it's
basically stuff that I personally would like to hear/do, and that I
think might also be interesting to 'outsiders' (hence the focus on
seeing things in action).  But obviously, I'm kind of asking the
maintainers of the above projects to provide those talks, so it depends
on whether they would be interested?

Please feel free to suggest further talks/workshops or discuss the
above.

I've asked Phil for a deadline for the list and will let you know as
soon as I know.

Best wishes,

Alex

> --- Begin Message ---
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> Subject: 
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> Re: [FOSDEM-Devrooms] Proposal for Dev Room at FOSDEM 2014
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> Date: 
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> Sun, 15 Sep 2013 00:56:39 +0200 (12 hours, 50 minutes, 49 seconds ago)
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> On 15 Sep 2013, at 01:33, Alex Sassmannshausen <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Please find below a proposal for a development room at FOSDEM 2014 by
> > the GNU project.
>
> ACK from address@hidden  Your proposal arrived safely and we'll let
> you know in due course if we choose to accept it.
>
> >  A development room at FOSDEM would serve 2 main purposes:
> > 
> >  The primary motivation for most people working on the GNU Project is
> >  philosophical (i.e. the ethical considerations that drive the Free
> >  Software movement);
>
> Note that FOSDEM is a technical conference.  We expect developer rooms to
> focus on the technical aspects of improving open source projects, not on
> philosophical discussions.
>
> >  The GNU devroom aims to share new developments in,
> >  and to promote the discussion of the guidelines themselves and the
> >  packages implementing them.  Maintainers of some of the infrastructure
> >  packages are expected to attend the event and to organise activities
> >  in the devroom.
>
> Could you elaborate on that?  The word "promote" feels very out of place
> in a developer room proposal.  Advocacy, evangelism and other kinds of
> outreach are explicit non-goals for FOSDEM developer rooms.  The people
> in the room are expected to be members of your project already, and they
> are there to collaborate.  "Promoting" at them is preaching to the
> converted.
>
> >  The second goal of this devroom is to strengthen and build the vibrant
> >  community of GNU maintainers and developers.  Experience gained
> >  through the organisation of our GNU Hackers Meetings (please see URLs
> >  below for information on and videos of past GHMs) shows how useful and
> >  fruitful getting diverse hackers meeting face to face can be.
>
> It sounds like you mostly understand what FOSDEM devrooms are for, but
> we want to be sure we're on the same page.  There are plenty of other
> conferences targeting users.  We have a limited number of developer
> rooms to assign.  We want to assign them to the projects who will make
> the best use of them.  It should be clear from the proposal how open
> source software will benefit from the project's developers being
> assigned a developer room.
>
> We would feel a lot better about this proposal if you could give us a
> list of likely presentations you would want to schedule.  This does not
> need to be exact, and it needn't be a firm commitment.  But we'd like to
> have some idea of what kind of presentations you would have.  We are
> looking for a strong technical focus, and a clear intent to improve
> existing open source projects.
>
> Thanks.
> Philip
>
> -- 
> Philip Paeps
> Senior Reality Engineer
> Ministry of Information
>
>
> --- End Message ---