Hi all,
Say, I wanted to thank everyone for coming to Wineconf 2004; as far as I can tell, a good time was had by all, and we may even have accomplished one or two useful things <grin>.
I really appreciate that so many of you braved -30C temperature and two days of constant snowfall to come work with us on Wine - such insanity^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H dedication is admirable.
I wanted to suggest that we get to planning Wineconf 2005 sooner rather than later; I'm curious to see which European city hosts the event <grin>. For the record, we're willing to be the major sponsor for the next Wineconf; we'll kick in some funds and person power to help make sure it happens. However, I think it'll only work well in conjunction with one or more locals.
I did have some closing thoughts and advice I wanted to get off my chest; there are some things I would do differently next time, and it's probably also wise to touch on the things that worked well.
In no particular order, here are a number of thoughts:
1. Screw fancy audio/video streaming.
Find an inexpensive telephone conference service, and use it. Test it, several weeks in advance, *with the intended audience* (the stream worked fine on this side of the Atlantic, afaict), and *with the expected load*. Our tests were always done with less load than we had during wineconf, because the streaming traffic used the same pipe as the 'net connection everyone was using.
We wasted a lot of time and energy on this, against my initial better judgement, and it proved to be largely useless, afaict from the #wineconf comments.
Go low tech. Swallow your geek pride. Just get simple audio that works.
/me kicks self
2. Things that worked well:
A. An inexpensive location Not one person opted for the expensive hotel I listed; cost really matters to this crowd. The last thing we want to do is scare away young people; they often have enormous energy and no cash. Help with hostels and friends with floors was appreciated.
B. Breaks The only times that I was sure that productive conversations were occuring was during the breaks. Provide lots of 'em. Go very light on scheduled topics.
C. Do lunch in; that worked really well. Have lots of food and beverages about, that also seems to work well. Bring the water cooler down on the *first* day <grin>.
D. Internet connectivity is a must. Really. And provide both wireless and wired. We had some grumpy campers when we initially didn't have enough cat5 ports.
E. All of the professional conference paraphenalia was invaluable. A wireless mic (preferably two) and someone to operate it. A PA type system. A projector. Even with the relatively small group we had it was invaluable.
3. Suggestion - blue collar location
I know it's fashionable to suggest fancy vacation spots for Wineconf 2005, but I honestly think it would be much better to pick a 'blue collar' venue. Pick somewhere that is a transportation hub, with modest prices. Someplace where some Wine hackers live; having local help is incredibly valuable (thanks to Mandi, Chris, Jon, Aric, Zak, Newman, and all of the gang who did so much work).
In fact, when we did go to the fancy tourist night spot, we ended up at a bar where it was too loud to talk; conversation amongst folks from 10 different countries is hard enough without load blaring music or odd ball distractions.
A quite room and a good supply of ale, perhaps with a whiteboard, is what folks mostly craved.
This is just my $0.02; I think others would differ sharply.
4. The final, critical piece of advice
Don't type 'ifconfig eth0 down' in a terminal Window on the Mac in an attempt to reinitialize it's DHCP settings, unless you're dead certain you haven't ssh'd over to the server that is the life blood of your community, and is physically miles away behind locked doors...
...and I still can't figure out why Alexandre won't take my patches! <grin>
At any rate, I feel much better now - thanks for listening, and thanks for coming.
Cheers,
Jeremy