Folks,
As you may have noticed, we haven't been making any plans for WineConf this year. Jeremy has been busy preparing his retirement, and I haven't been pushing it either, mostly because I'm not convinced that we want to continue the traditional WineConf model.
Even though we skipped a few years because of the pandemic, attendance at last year's WineConf wasn't great. We also suggested meeting at FOSDEM in February, like we did in previous years, but essentially no one showed up.
So I'm wondering whether there is still enough interest for a traditional WineConf, or whether we should try a different approach, to maybe capture some of the recent excitement around gaming and downstream uses of Wine in general.
I'd like to hear your thoughts. Should we do a Proton conference, or join some kind of gaming-related event? Do people even want to travel to conferences anymore? What kind of event would you be interested in, particularly those of you who don't show up to the traditional WineConf?
Hi,
Let me make sure there's a reply :-)
Am 21.07.2023 um 15:31 schrieb Alexandre Julliard julliard@winehq.org:
So I'm wondering whether there is still enough interest for a traditional WineConf, or whether we should try a different approach, to maybe capture some of the recent excitement around gaming and downstream uses of Wine in general.
I'll come to whatever event, I just skipped 2022 due to urgent family concerns.
I am all for changing the setup though - it has mostly turned to preaching to the choir with mostly the same people all the time. Of course we tried to extend the attendees, with mixed results. I think integrating with FOSDEM worked well, and I'd advocate for repeating that every now and then. (Actually showing up at FOSDEM, not making it an excuse to drink beer)
On 7/22/23 18:46, Stefan Dösinger wrote:
Hi,
Let me make sure there's a reply :-)
Am 21.07.2023 um 15:31 schrieb Alexandre Julliard julliard@winehq.org:
So I'm wondering whether there is still enough interest for a traditional WineConf, or whether we should try a different approach, to maybe capture some of the recent excitement around gaming and downstream uses of Wine in general.
I'll come to whatever event, I just skipped 2022 due to urgent family concerns.
I'll concur to Stefan. I'll go to whatever event. The 2022 WineConf I had to skip due delays with the visa.
I am all for changing the setup though - it has mostly turned to preaching to the choir with mostly the same people all the time. Of course we tried to extend the attendees, with mixed results. I think integrating with FOSDEM worked well, and I'd advocate for repeating that every now and then. (Actually showing up at FOSDEM, not making it an excuse to drink beer)
To attract users like the Proton users we would probably need to go to one of the games conventions. But I doubt we can afford that.
bye michael
On Tue, Jul 25, 2023 at 12:43 PM Michael Stefaniuc mstefani@winehq.org wrote:
On 7/22/23 18:46, Stefan Dösinger wrote:
Hi,
Let me make sure there's a reply :-)
Am 21.07.2023 um 15:31 schrieb Alexandre Julliard <julliard@winehq.org
:
So I'm wondering whether there is still enough interest for a traditional WineConf, or whether we should try a different approach, to maybe capture some of the recent excitement around gaming and downstream uses of Wine in general.
I'll come to whatever event, I just skipped 2022 due to urgent family
concerns. I'll concur to Stefan. I'll go to whatever event.
I'm in the same boat.
The 2022 WineConf I had to skip due delays with the visa.
I've noticed that our EU conferences tend to have more people, and I suspect that not having to deal with US visas is a factor in that.
On Fri, 28 Jul 2023 at 09:31, Austin English austinenglish@gmail.com wrote:
I've noticed that our EU conferences tend to have more people, and I suspect that not having to deal with US visas is a factor in that.
In case it helps, I'll point out that the 2019 conference in Toronto was quite possibly the best attended WineConf in North America; certainly in the time since I started contributing to Wine.
Hi everyone, just throwing my two cents in here. I was invited to WineConf last year by Jeremy but was unfortunately not able to attend due to family-related conflicts. I would still very much like to attend given the dates don't conflict with current travel plans. Ubuntu Summit takes place November 3-5 this year which would be my only current restriction. I would also be interested in attending future WineConfs given the opportunity. I agree here that the pandemic really put a damper on things from 2020-2022 and would be glad to see some normalcy return.
- Tom/Eggy
On Tue, Aug 1, 2023 at 7:20 AM Henri Verbeet hverbeet@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jul 2023 at 09:31, Austin English austinenglish@gmail.com wrote:
I've noticed that our EU conferences tend to have more people, and I
suspect that not having to deal with US visas is a factor in that.
In case it helps, I'll point out that the 2019 conference in Toronto was quite possibly the best attended WineConf in North America; certainly in the time since I started contributing to Wine.
Am Dienstag, 25. Juli 2023, 20:41:45 EAT schrieb Michael Stefaniuc:
To attract users like the Proton users we would probably need to go to one of the games conventions. But I doubt we can afford that.
Do you have something like Gamescom or Dreamhack in mind here? It would be an interesting experiment, even if we just stay in some Hotel in the same place the days before/after the big show.
On 7/28/23 12:12, Stefan Dösinger wrote:
Am Dienstag, 25. Juli 2023, 20:41:45 EAT schrieb Michael Stefaniuc:
To attract users like the Proton users we would probably need to go to one of the games conventions. But I doubt we can afford that.
Do you have something like Gamescom or Dreamhack in mind here? It would be an interesting experiment, even if we just stay in some Hotel in the same place the days before/after the big show.
Yeah, I had Gamescon in mind as knew about that one. But I'm not a gamer so no clue what else is there.
bye michael
I really don't want WineConf to end. If you want to hold a conference on Proton, then that would be very cool! Regarding the place of providence, I think the best option would be to do everything online, through Telegram, and in principle to gather a community of developers in a chat so that they can communicate with each other and better adapt their games through communication between themselves, how do you look at this option?
(Sorry for possible errors in the text, I do not know English well, so I translated through Google Translate)
Am 21.07.23 um 14:31 schrieb Alexandre Julliard:
Folks,
As you may have noticed, we haven't been making any plans for WineConf this year. Jeremy has been busy preparing his retirement, and I haven't been pushing it either, mostly because I'm not convinced that we want to continue the traditional WineConf model.
Even though we skipped a few years because of the pandemic, attendance at last year's WineConf wasn't great. We also suggested meeting at FOSDEM in February, like we did in previous years, but essentially no one showed up.
So I'm wondering whether there is still enough interest for a traditional WineConf, or whether we should try a different approach, to maybe capture some of the recent excitement around gaming and downstream uses of Wine in general.
I'd like to hear your thoughts. Should we do a Proton conference, or join some kind of gaming-related event? Do people even want to travel to conferences anymore? What kind of event would you be interested in, particularly those of you who don't show up to the traditional WineConf?
Hi,
I think it still might be that last year was still a bit special. The pandemic wasn't "over" that long and I noticed quite high flight prices to Minnesota for the WineConf dates. Maybe there was some other, bigger event? The original plan for this year was Japan, which would be really interesting, but I guess flight prices would be high as well from USA and Europe at least.
Am 28.07.23 um 09:29 schrieb Austin English:
On Tue, Jul 25, 2023 at 12:43 PM Michael Stefaniuc <mstefani@winehq.org mailto:mstefani@winehq.org> wrote: The 2022 WineConf I had to skip due delays with the visa. I've noticed that our EU conferences tend to have more people, and I suspect that not having to deal with US visas is a factor in that.
I also think so. ESTA is not for everyone.
On 30/07/2023 13:47, André Zwing wrote:
I think it still might be that last year was still a bit special. The pandemic wasn't "over" that long and I noticed quite high flight prices to Minnesota for the WineConf dates. Maybe there was some other, bigger event?
Last year's event was scheduled for midweek rather than the usual weekend slot, and I found that flight prices from the UK at least were really expensive unless you stayed a Saturday night.
A midweek event would also likely mean people needing to take holidays from work, which may not be the case at the weekend, and could also have an effect on attendance I imagine.
Cheers,
Owen
On Friday, July 21, 2023 7:31:23 AM CDT Alexandre Julliard wrote:
Folks,
As you may have noticed, we haven't been making any plans for WineConf this year. Jeremy has been busy preparing his retirement, and I haven't been pushing it either, mostly because I'm not convinced that we want to continue the traditional WineConf model.
Even though we skipped a few years because of the pandemic, attendance at last year's WineConf wasn't great. We also suggested meeting at FOSDEM in February, like we did in previous years, but essentially no one showed up.
So I'm wondering whether there is still enough interest for a traditional WineConf, or whether we should try a different approach, to maybe capture some of the recent excitement around gaming and downstream uses of Wine in general.
I'd like to hear your thoughts. Should we do a Proton conference, or join some kind of gaming-related event? Do people even want to travel to conferences anymore? What kind of event would you be interested in, particularly those of you who don't show up to the traditional WineConf?
I do have my doubts about the current formula of WineConf. I think it's been well-recognized by now that the most valuable thing about it is the parts that aren't presentations, i.e. the conversations between Wine developers in the hallway and at bars and so on.
I suppose this is largely because Wine as a project is just too small for people to be unaware of what's going on. I find that most of our presentations are not news to me. That may be because I personally pay attention to what people are working on in many different parts of Wine, though, so maybe this isn't universal.
Even if this is true more generally, though, I don't know how to resolve this. WineConf without the talks seems kind of silly, and I don't know what to replace them with.
It's also true that some talks really are valuable. In the conferences I've been to I've quite appreciated the talks from the SFC (Karen Sandler in 2019, and Bradley Kuhn in 2018 and 2022), as well as the talk from Snorri Sturluson in 2018 (which, for reference, was basically about the experience of using Wine as a porting tool for a large piece of software). I found that these talks provided an interesting perspective that I am not usually exposed to.
[Perhaps the same is true in reverse—that non-developers may appreciate developer presentations—but I have a hard time seeing any of these talks, especially my own, as particularly interesting; most of them end up being bland descriptions of features we have implemented.]
I am not sure that merging with another conference really makes sense, mostly because I don't really see what we are trying to accomplish by doing that. The idea seems to be "raising awareness of Wine", but to what end?
On the other hand, if the answer is just looking for a place to have developers meet without actually trying to hold a conference, that may make sense. I.e. if FOSDEM were *the* yearly event for Wine developers, then I would definitely attend, regardless of location.
--Zeb
On 8/21/23 19:30, Zeb Figura wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 7:31:23 AM CDT Alexandre Julliard wrote:
Folks,
As you may have noticed, we haven't been making any plans for WineConf this year. Jeremy has been busy preparing his retirement, and I haven't been pushing it either, mostly because I'm not convinced that we want to continue the traditional WineConf model.
Even though we skipped a few years because of the pandemic, attendance at last year's WineConf wasn't great. We also suggested meeting at FOSDEM in February, like we did in previous years, but essentially no one showed up.
So I'm wondering whether there is still enough interest for a traditional WineConf, or whether we should try a different approach, to maybe capture some of the recent excitement around gaming and downstream uses of Wine in general.
I'd like to hear your thoughts. Should we do a Proton conference, or join some kind of gaming-related event? Do people even want to travel to conferences anymore? What kind of event would you be interested in, particularly those of you who don't show up to the traditional WineConf?
I do have my doubts about the current formula of WineConf. I think it's been well-recognized by now that the most valuable thing about it is the parts that aren't presentations, i.e. the conversations between Wine developers in the hallway and at bars and so on.
I suppose this is largely because Wine as a project is just too small for people to be unaware of what's going on. I find that most of our presentations are not news to me. That may be because I personally pay attention to what people are working on in many different parts of Wine, though, so maybe this isn't universal.
Even if this is true more generally, though, I don't know how to resolve this. WineConf without the talks seems kind of silly, and I don't know what to replace them with.
It's also true that some talks really are valuable. In the conferences I've been to I've quite appreciated the talks from the SFC (Karen Sandler in 2019, and Bradley Kuhn in 2018 and 2022), as well as the talk from Snorri Sturluson in 2018 (which, for reference, was basically about the experience of using Wine as a porting tool for a large piece of software). I found that these talks provided an interesting perspective that I am not usually exposed to.
[Perhaps the same is true in reverse—that non-developers may appreciate developer presentations—but I have a hard time seeing any of these talks, especially my own, as particularly interesting; most of them end up being bland descriptions of features we have implemented.]
I think the problem here is more of one of the choice of topic and not one with the conference itself. At XDC, many of the talks were about things I didn't know about and went into great depth of specifics of eg. a piece of hardware or software I had never touched before.
I think WineConf could benefit from more talks that are discussing not "what was achieved"/news but rather how and in great depth.
I would absolutely love to see talks from either you or Gofman, or whoever doing deep dives into whatever crazy shit that I know nothing about, random crazy stuff games do, ancient stuff like dshow, all the weird red-herrings to fixing a bug.
- Joshie 🐸✨
I am not sure that merging with another conference really makes sense, mostly because I don't really see what we are trying to accomplish by doing that. The idea seems to be "raising awareness of Wine", but to what end?
On the other hand, if the answer is just looking for a place to have developers meet without actually trying to hold a conference, that may make sense. I.e. if FOSDEM were *the* yearly event for Wine developers, then I would definitely attend, regardless of location.
--Zeb
On Monday, August 21, 2023 3:41:43 PM CDT Joshua Ashton wrote:
On 8/21/23 19:30, Zeb Figura wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 7:31:23 AM CDT Alexandre Julliard wrote:
Folks,
As you may have noticed, we haven't been making any plans for WineConf this year. Jeremy has been busy preparing his retirement, and I haven't been pushing it either, mostly because I'm not convinced that we want to continue the traditional WineConf model.
Even though we skipped a few years because of the pandemic, attendance at last year's WineConf wasn't great. We also suggested meeting at FOSDEM in February, like we did in previous years, but essentially no one showed up.
So I'm wondering whether there is still enough interest for a traditional WineConf, or whether we should try a different approach, to maybe capture some of the recent excitement around gaming and downstream uses of Wine in general.
I'd like to hear your thoughts. Should we do a Proton conference, or join some kind of gaming-related event? Do people even want to travel to conferences anymore? What kind of event would you be interested in, particularly those of you who don't show up to the traditional WineConf?
I do have my doubts about the current formula of WineConf. I think it's been well-recognized by now that the most valuable thing about it is the parts that aren't presentations, i.e. the conversations between Wine developers in the hallway and at bars and so on.
I suppose this is largely because Wine as a project is just too small for people to be unaware of what's going on. I find that most of our presentations are not news to me. That may be because I personally pay attention to what people are working on in many different parts of Wine, though, so maybe this isn't universal.
Even if this is true more generally, though, I don't know how to resolve this. WineConf without the talks seems kind of silly, and I don't know what to replace them with.
It's also true that some talks really are valuable. In the conferences I've been to I've quite appreciated the talks from the SFC (Karen Sandler in 2019, and Bradley Kuhn in 2018 and 2022), as well as the talk from Snorri Sturluson in 2018 (which, for reference, was basically about the experience of using Wine as a porting tool for a large piece of software). I found that these talks provided an interesting perspective that I am not usually exposed to. [Perhaps the same is true in reverse—that non-developers may appreciate developer presentations—but I have a hard time seeing any of these talks, especially my own, as particularly interesting; most of them end up being bland descriptions of features we have implemented.]
I think the problem here is more of one of the choice of topic and not one with the conference itself. At XDC, many of the talks were about things I didn't know about and went into great depth of specifics of eg. a piece of hardware or software I had never touched before.
I think WineConf could benefit from more talks that are discussing not "what was achieved"/news but rather how and in great depth.
I would absolutely love to see talks from either you or Gofman, or whoever doing deep dives into whatever crazy shit that I know nothing about, random crazy stuff games do, ancient stuff like dshow, all the weird red-herrings to fixing a bug.
It sounds like what you're looking for is entertainment, at least primarily. And while I think there's certainly value in that, and also that an informative talk which is not engaging lacks something important, I also can't help but feel like it's not worth holding a conference for talks which for the most part aren't going to impart some valuable and useful information.
I imagine that the scope of XDC is much broader, too, and so it is easier to find new information. Or, alternatively, the number of XDC contributors is much higher, so whereas one can get a pretty holistic picture of what's happening in the Wine world just from watching wine-devel, that's not possible with Mesa and all its related projects.
(And, to be quite frank, I get the impression that there are many XDC presenters who are much more charismatic than I am, or experienced at making engaging presentations. It's only a vague impression, since I didn't actually attend any such XDC presentations. Regardless, there's only so much effort I can put into presenting.)
Hi,
Il 23/08/23 22:22, Zeb Figura ha scritto:
I think WineConf could benefit from more talks that are discussing not "what was achieved"/news but rather how and in great depth.
I would absolutely love to see talks from either you or Gofman, or whoever doing deep dives into whatever crazy shit that I know nothing about, random crazy stuff games do, ancient stuff like dshow, all the weird red-herrings to fixing a bug.
It sounds like what you're looking for is entertainment, at least primarily. And while I think there's certainly value in that, and also that an informative talk which is not engaging lacks something important, I also can't help but feel like it's not worth holding a conference for talks which for the most part aren't going to impart some valuable and useful information.
I can't answer for Joshua, but I didn't read his answer as primarily oriented to entertainment. I think there are a lot of valuable lessons and knowledge in the kind of topics he mentions, and of course some entertainment too.
I also would like to have more in-depth content about Wine (and related projects) at WineConf (or in whatever other form: any other conference event, blog posts, developer screen casts). For example, I would like to know more about the internals of WoW64, ARM emulation and all the glue that does or will make Wine working on foreing architectures, but there is basically no content around. I could spend a lot of time reading the code and recovering the intentions from it, but it would be globally more efficient if somebody who already knows spent a modest amount of time giving a presentation about that, which would allow me and possibly other interested folks getting up to speed quicker.
(and yes, I realize that could go in the other way too: even while being relatively young in Wine I probably have something to share that is not so obvious yet interesting for somebody else; that was my main motivation for contributing my talk to WineConf 2022, though I'm not sure the final result was really in the right direction)
I imagine that the scope of XDC is much broader, too, and so it is easier to find new information. Or, alternatively, the number of XDC contributors is much higher, so whereas one can get a pretty holistic picture of what's happening in the Wine world just from watching wine-devel, that's not possible with Mesa and all its related projects.
(And, to be quite frank, I get the impression that there are many XDC presenters who are much more charismatic than I am, or experienced at making engaging presentations. It's only a vague impression, since I didn't actually attend any such XDC presentations. Regardless, there's only so much effort I can put into presenting.)
From my view point, the technical presentations are precisely those where I really care about the content, much less about the presenter's charisma. Indeed it's not unheard of, for me, that a presenter being excessively funny feels annoying or gets in the wat of understanding the content.
Gio.
On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 2:42 PM Joshua Ashton joshua@froggi.es wrote:
I think WineConf could benefit from more talks that are discussing not "what was achieved"/news but rather how and in great depth.
I would absolutely love to see talks from either you or Gofman, or whoever doing deep dives into whatever crazy shit that I know nothing about, random crazy stuff games do, ancient stuff like dshow, all the weird red-herrings to fixing a bug.
I would also appreciate hearing a talk about how some difficult and inscrutable bug was diagnosed and fixed. Ideally the presenter would start with an old version of Wine and walk the audience through the debugging process step by step. Debugging closed-source applications is difficult for the best of us, and being far from the best myself, I could learn a lot by example. That's the sort of thing that I've gotten out of WineConf in the past by talking with people outside of the presentations, but there's no reason why the knowledge couldn't be shared in a presentation.
-Alex
So practically speaking, should I be planning to travel to Brussels to meet Wine developers this February?
Henri
Henri Verbeet hverbeet@gmail.com writes:
So practically speaking, should I be planning to travel to Brussels to meet Wine developers this February?
Yes, for now the plan is to use FOSDEM as a substitute for the social part of WineConf.
A number of Wine developers will be there in February. We'll walk around the conference, but since finding people at FOSDEM proper is not exactly easy, the plan is to organize an event at a local bar on Saturday evening. Anybody who'd like to hang out will be more than welcome to join us there.
On 30 Oct 2023, at 10:50, Alexandre Julliard julliard@winehq.org wrote:
A number of Wine developers will be there in February. We'll walk around the conference, but since finding people at FOSDEM proper is not exactly easy, the plan is to organize an event at a local bar on Saturday evening. Anybody who'd like to hang out will be more than welcome to join us there.
I've booked a table at the BrewDog [1] for 18:30 on Sat 3rd Feb.
Looking forward to seeing folks there!
Huw
On 30 Oct 2023, at 11:12, Huw Davies huw@codeweavers.com wrote:
On 30 Oct 2023, at 10:50, Alexandre Julliard julliard@winehq.org wrote:
A number of Wine developers will be there in February. We'll walk around the conference, but since finding people at FOSDEM proper is not exactly easy, the plan is to organize an event at a local bar on Saturday evening. Anybody who'd like to hang out will be more than welcome to join us there.
I've booked a table at the BrewDog [1] for 18:30 on Sat 3rd Feb.
Note that this is next weekend. It looks like there will be ~15 of us going.
If anybody else feels like joining us, we'll be coordinating social gatherings via wineconf's matrix room. You can reach out to me privately if you have problems finding that or want further details of where we'll be.
Huw
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Alex Henrie -
Alexandre Julliard -
André Zwing -
Austin English -
Giovanni Mascellani -
Henri Verbeet -
Huw Davies -
Joshua Ashton -
kirmozor＠riseup.net -
Michael Stefaniuc -
Owen Rudge -
Stefan Dösinger -
Thomas Crider -
Zeb Figura