Hi All,
This past Wine conference, while great fun as always, was not as well attended as Wine conferences in the past.
So I would like to stir up trouble by suggesting we rethink WineConf.
For those that have not attended, the Wine conference has been a mostly annual affair since 2002. It is open to all, but is advertised as being aimed at Wine developers. About 35 people attend each year. It's been in Minnesota about every 3rd year, and is otherwise 'normally' somewhere in Europe.
I see the primary goal as creating human bonds between otherwise anonymous people (aka going to the pub). It's a bonus if it also spurs resolution to tricky issues, or motivates people to get more done.
So I'd like to ask folks to brain storm with me.
How could Wineconf be different? If you've never been, what would encourage you to come?
If you've been to a technical conference recently that you thought was well done, what did they do well? Anything we could emulate?
Any other ideas, or suggestions?
Cheers,
Jeremy
On 01/09/2012 08:31 PM, Jeremy White wrote:
Hi All,
If you've been to a technical conference recently that you thought was well done, what did they do well? Anything we could emulate?
I've gave you some of this feedback in person at WineConf in France.
First, as long as it is aimed at Wine hackers, that's who'll show up. The stagnation in attendance is, therefor, more an indication of the state of wine hackers than it is of the conference. What I'd suggest:
1. Split the days. First day aimed at hackers, second day at users. Have a better defined schedule for that second day, so people would have an idea what to expect. 2. For the hacker's day, I expected the "free form" to take on the form of small working groups. For example, in France, I expected to have some time where Aric and I could sit on a laptop together and actually hack BiDi into a better working state. The conference didn't leave enough room for such an activity. 3. Have the schedule and location ride another conference (similar to the co-op we did with Samba in Germany). Either that, or schedule the conference at a place that has a strong local LUG. The conference at Germany had a great attendance, not only of Samba hackers, but also of local Linux enthusiasts who took the opportunity to attend. Having a non-Minnesota US conference might help, where there is an established LUG that will be interested to tag along.
Any other ideas, or suggestions?
On a practical note, I suggested to help organize a conference in Jerusalem. I had a specific location in mind, which is extremely close (easy walking distances) to the pubs and restaurants of the center of the city, and it's a combination of hotel and youth hostel, so prices can be expected to be cheap(er, at least in off-season). Israel at large, and Jerusalem in particular, have established LUGs that will probably contribute a lot of fresh eyeballs. Let me know if you want me to find out more.
Shachar
Jeremy White [email protected] wrote:
the Wine conference has been a mostly annual affair since 2002 ... It's been in Minnesota about every 3rd year, and is otherwise 'normally' somewhere in Europe.
How could Wineconf be different? If you've never been, what would encourage you to come?
One thing that would encourage me to come would be holding it in Portland, Oregon. Even Seattle or San Francisco is too far away.
Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 6:07 am Post subject: If you really want users to come, I suggest you change the second sentence on http://wiki.winehq.org/WineConf. Right now it sends a very clear message that users are not the least bit welcome.
/me winces. I wrote that text; and I never intended it to make anyone feel unwelcome. The thinking when I wrote it was to give fair warning that the topics would be primarily developer oriented.
I've amended that text.
So then let's imagine that users now feel welcome, and they come in droves. Aside from going to the pub, what would make for a good conference?
Cheers,
Jeremy
Users coming to Wineconf will likely want to hear about Wine's development; what improvements they can expect, the progress on their favourite apps, etc. I suspect a great deal of users will also want to share their ideas on what they feel is important in further developments.
J. Leclanche
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 3:23 PM, Jeremy White [email protected]wrote:
Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 6:07 am Post subject: If you really want users to come, I suggest you change the second
sentence on http://wiki.winehq.org/WineConf. Right now it sends a very clear message that users are not the least bit welcome.
/me winces. I wrote that text; and I never intended it to make anyone feel unwelcome. The thinking when I wrote it was to give fair warning that the topics would be primarily developer oriented.
I've amended that text.
So then let's imagine that users now feel welcome, and they come in droves. Aside from going to the pub, what would make for a good conference?
Cheers,
Jeremy
On 9 January 2012 18:31, Jeremy White [email protected] wrote:
So I'd like to ask folks to brain storm with me.
How could Wineconf be different? If you've never been, what would encourage you to come?
Another angle on this might be making some changes to WineConf, but also making a concerted effort to make sure Wine is well represented at events many developers and users already attend such as FOSDEM and OSCON.
Alex
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 5:44 PM, Alex Bradbury [email protected] wrote:
Another angle on this might be making some changes to WineConf, but also making a concerted effort to make sure Wine is well represented at events many developers and users already attend such as FOSDEM and OSCON.
In that regard, let me say: this year I am coorganizing the CrossDesktop DevRoom at FOSDEM and I am truly disappointed we have not received a single talk proposal about Wine, even though I sent the call for talks and a reminder to this list.
With my open source developer hat on, an introductory talk on Wine development would be very appealing to me.
Also, a talk (or maybe more than one) for third-party ISVs which want to make sure their applications work with Wine would also be nice.
At work we seriously considered Wine for a big product which uses embedded virtualization that could probably be replaced with Wine, but we didn't really have a clue where to get started or what we could achieve in 1 year if we put a few people to hack on Wine. Expectations were so unclear management was not in the mood to throw a few thousands to hire CodeWeavers or any Wine hacker in Europe for a preliminary study.
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Pau Garcia i Quiles [email protected] wrote:
In that regard, let me say: this year I am coorganizing the CrossDesktop DevRoom at FOSDEM and I am truly disappointed we have not received a single talk proposal about Wine, even though I sent the call for talks and a reminder to this list.
I didn't see that post, and I can't find it in gmail, nor in http://marc.info/?a=110678333400002&r=1&w=2
With my open source developer hat on, an introductory talk on Wine development would be very appealing to me.
Also, a talk (or maybe more than one) for third-party ISVs which want to make sure their applications work with Wine would also be nice.
At work we seriously considered Wine for a big product which uses embedded virtualization that could probably be replaced with Wine, but we didn't really have a clue where to get started or what we could achieve in 1 year if we put a few people to hack on Wine. Expectations were so unclear management was not in the mood to throw a few thousands to hire CodeWeavers or any Wine hacker in Europe for a preliminary study.
I've been involved in several efforts to use wine in commercial products, I might be able to put something together. At the very least, I should update http://kegel.com/wine/isv/ a bit more. - Dan
On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 5:54 AM, Dan Kegel [email protected] wrote:
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Pau Garcia i Quiles [email protected] wrote:
D'oh! Looks like I was fooled by a long-delayed message delivery. The message I replied to is from *six months* ago. I've gotten several of those from winehq in the last day or so, I should have checked the date. - Dan
On Mon, Jan 09, 2012 at 12:31:11PM -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
Hi All,
This past Wine conference, while great fun as always, was not as well attended as Wine conferences in the past.
So I would like to stir up trouble by suggesting we rethink WineConf.
For those that have not attended, the Wine conference has been a mostly annual affair since 2002. It is open to all, but is advertised as being aimed at Wine developers. About 35 people attend each year. It's been in Minnesota about every 3rd year, and is otherwise 'normally' somewhere in Europe.
I see the primary goal as creating human bonds between otherwise anonymous people (aka going to the pub). It's a bonus if it also spurs resolution to tricky issues, or motivates people to get more done.
So I'd like to ask folks to brain storm with me.
How could Wineconf be different? If you've never been, what would encourage you to come?
If you've been to a technical conference recently that you thought was well done, what did they do well? Anything we could emulate?
Any other ideas, or suggestions?
- Users ... as this was brought up
Reality check: Wine users will not travel 100s of kms to a standalone conference.
This would make sense only if we attach wineconf to another general conference
- Attaching to other conferences?
We do not really share much with other projects (please do not bring up Samba: we don't), but perhaps attaching to general conferences...
General conferences like FOSDEM (where other projects run Developer Rooms)... or LinuxCon with their specific tracks. This might be workable... but I do not think it will bring more people.
- Changing the style...
A talk / discussion only wineconf is not really flying anymore... we don't have that much talks.
The workshop elements we introduced in the last years are however more the direction to go. So something of a workshop is my best bet at keeping interest.
Question is whether we can find workshop style things besides "fixing the testsuite" that attract all developers? I think that will be hard.
- Perhaps a shrinking audience is unavoidable.
This is a bit of a fact that some projects I have been in found hard to cope with... That after the interest peak it might go down.
Ciao, Marcus
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 11:00 PM, Marcus Meissner [email protected] wrote:
The workshop elements we introduced in the last years are however more the direction to go. So something of a workshop is my best bet at keeping interest.
Question is whether we can find workshop style things besides "fixing the testsuite" that attract all developers? I think that will be hard.
I think that a workshop 'How to start coding for wine' workshop would do good. That might attract programmers that really want to help out, but as you probably all know, the learning curve for wine is pretty steep.
Matijn
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 12:00 AM, Marcus Meissner [email protected]wrote:
- Attaching to other conferences?
We do not really share much with other projects (please do not bring up Samba: we don't),
What about Mono? .NET applications that use P/Invoke won't ever work outside Windows without Wine, so they kind of need us, and many native applications now also use .NET, so we kind of need them. Unlike with Samba, the licenses are compatible, and a combined/attached conference might attract some of their developers to help us out.
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 8:34 PM, Damjan Jovanovic [email protected] wrote:
What about Mono? .NET applications that use P/Invoke won't ever work outside Windows without Wine, so they kind of need us, and many native applications now also use .NET, so we kind of need them. Unlike with Samba, the licenses are compatible, and a combined/attached conference might attract some of their developers to help us out.
From what I recall, the Mono people don't really intend
to support those apps; they're more into supporting people who are writing new apps from scratch. - Dan
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Dan Kegel [email protected] wrote:
From what I recall, the Mono people don't really intend to support those apps; they're more into supporting people who are writing new apps from scratch.
There needs to be some mechanism to provide for the legacy user, even if they don't want to pick up the ball and run with it.
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Steven Edwards [email protected] wrote:
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Dan Kegel [email protected] wrote:
From what I recall, the Mono people don't really intend to support those apps; they're more into supporting people who are writing new apps from scratch.
There needs to be some mechanism to provide for the legacy user, even if they don't want to pick up the ball and run with it.
Well, sure. I was replying to a suggestion that we tack wineconf onto the side of, say, http://monospace.us/ by saying that I didn't think they'd be interested. Do you think they would be?
On January 17, 2012 at 8:49 PM Dan Kegel [email protected] wrote:
Well, sure. I was replying to a suggestion that we tack wineconf onto the side of, say, http://monospace.us/ by saying that I didn't think they'd be interested. Do you think they would be?
Well, if they would, it would be the greatest thing since sliced bread IMHO. Someone please ask.
best regards, Jakob
Well, sure. I was replying to a suggestion that we tack wineconf onto the side of, say, http://monospace.us/ by saying that I didn't think they'd be interested. Do you think they would be?
Well, most of them are not very interested in Wine, but they're not hostile to it either. So it's not impossible. No harm in asking the organizers.
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 04:21:47PM -0600, Vincent Povirk wrote:
Well, sure. I was replying to a suggestion that we tack wineconf onto the side of, say, http://monospace.us/ by saying that I didn't think they'd be interested. Do you think they would be?
Well, most of them are not very interested in Wine, but they're not hostile to it either. So it's not impossible. No harm in asking the organizers.
one conference of two sets of groups that are not that interested in each others work might share the organisation burden ... but its not that useful i guess to attract more people to wineconf :/
Ciao, Marcus
On January 10, 2012 at 11:00 PM Marcus Meissner [email protected] wrote:
- Perhaps a shrinking audience is unavoidable.
This is a bit of a fact that some projects I have been in found hard to cope with... That after the interest peak it might go down.
And if you are looking for a reason, one is that interest in the Windows platform itself is waning. Maybe if Wine picked up the Metro glove, interest in Wine as a whole could be rekindled. //Jakob
Am Dienstag, 10. Januar 2012, 23:00:38 schrieb Marcus Meissner:
Users ... as this was brought up
Reality check: Wine users will not travel 100s of kms to a standalone
conference.
This would make sense only if we attach wineconf to another general conference
An unconventional thought crossed my mind: Attach it to one of those gigantic Lan parties like the DreamHack. A big number of private users are gamers, this might catch some of them.
Of course we can't simultanously attach it to a Lan party and a classic conference, but we can variate things over the years.
Am 11.01.2012 16:23, schrieb Stefan Dösinger:
Am Dienstag, 10. Januar 2012, 23:00:38 schrieb Marcus Meissner:
Users ... as this was brought up
Reality check: Wine users will not travel 100s of kms to a standalone
conference.
This would make sense only if we attach wineconf to another general conference
An unconventional thought crossed my mind: Attach it to one of those gigantic Lan parties like the DreamHack. A big number of private users are gamers, this might catch some of them.
Of course we can't simultanously attach it to a Lan party and a classic conference, but we can variate things over the years.
We used wine to get COD2 running on Vista with wined3d and an intel chip on a private LAN party. It worked, but I couldn't comment on the rendering quality anymore. Well the game is old and I think a normal windows user would never try something like this. So using wine at LAN parties might be a good idea to get more attention and to arrive new users.
Hello,
most of the answers i read so far were about the "content" of wineconf. Here are two different ideas:
1. when i looked around a wineconf i noticed that wineconf 2012 is not fixed jet. I know lots of companies here in Germany who ask their employee to announce the plans for the holidays within the first two month of the year or even earlier. How is this handled in the rest of the world? This might become a problem for developers their job is not working on wine. Wineconf may be within their holidays or shortly after. They may need to take some days of for travel and can not, ...
2. Think about the time of the year. Last year wineconf was earlier as the two year before. <joke> It was during Octoberfest in Munich. Where do you like to got better? </joke>. What about conflict with courses/exams at university.
Or just ask (in private mails?) the members of wineconf 2010, who stayed away in 2011 what may need to change for 2012 to see them again. What about GSOC workers, have they all been at wineconf? These are the next generation wine developer.
Regards Stefan
Thank you for all the replies. Here is what I've taken away so far:
1. Our intro text was overtly hostile to users. I've removed that.
2. Potential attendees want a clear agenda.
3. Coordinating with another event remains interesting.
So, exploring #3 a bit further - what if we asked for our own track within FOSDEM 2013? (I presume that would be February 2013 in Brussels) It would let us all get together, allow us to have a few sessions targeted at non Wine developers, and could also save us some hassle. And I like Belgian beer.
Would we lose some of the joy of having our very own conference?
We could try it once and go back to the old format if it doesn't work out.
Of course, given our (so far) non participation in FOSDEM 2012, we may not be welcome... :-/
Cheers,
Jeremy
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Jeremy White [email protected] wrote:
So, exploring #3 a bit further - what if we asked for our own track within FOSDEM 2013? (I presume that would be February 2013 in Brussels) It would let us all get together, allow us to have a few sessions targeted at non Wine developers, and could also save us some hassle. And I like Belgian beer.
FOSDEM was the only conference mentioned by more than one person in my little survey :-)
I see Fosdem 2012 has a mono room: http://weblog.savanne.be/470-mono-developer-room-at-fosdem-2012-cfp I wonder if that would be a model to, um, emulate. - Dan
Hey,
Op 17-01-12 22:01, Dan Kegel schreef:
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Jeremy White[email protected] wrote:
So, exploring #3 a bit further - what if we asked for our own track within FOSDEM 2013? (I presume that would be February 2013 in Brussels) It would let us all get together, allow us to have a few sessions targeted at non Wine developers, and could also save us some hassle. And I like Belgian beer.
FOSDEM was the only conference mentioned by more than one person in my little survey :-)
I see Fosdem 2012 has a mono room: http://weblog.savanne.be/470-mono-developer-room-at-fosdem-2012-cfp I wonder if that would be a model to, um, emulate.
- Dan
Yeah there's some Xorg stuff going on as well. I'm visiting fosdem 2012 for that reason. Would be interesting to know if any wine devs go this year. Might meet up, and drink something non-alcoholic together. I'm only there saturday though.
~Maarten
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:43 PM, Jeremy White [email protected] wrote:
Thank you for all the replies. Here is what I've taken away so far:
1. Our intro text was overtly hostile to users. I've removed that.
2. Potential attendees want a clear agenda.
3. Coordinating with another event remains interesting.
So, exploring #3 a bit further - what if we asked for our own track within FOSDEM 2013? (I presume that would be February 2013 in Brussels) It would let us all get together, allow us to have a few sessions targeted at non Wine developers, and could also save us some hassle. And I like Belgian beer.
I cannot speak for the FOSDEM organization, but I seriously doubt you will get a full track on the first year with no single talk about Wine in the past.
Would we lose some of the joy of having our very own conference?
IMHO having WineConf as part of FOSDEM would dilute WineConf. FOSDEM is just too big.
Having Wine-related talks at FOSDEM would be perfectly fine, though, and I would even encourage you to ask for a keynote (you have to submit the keynote proposal in October, IIRC).
Of course, given our (so far) non participation in FOSDEM 2012, we may not be welcome... :-/
This should not be a problem at all. Wine fits perfectly in the contents of the CrossDesktop DevRoom. I cannot say there will be a CrossDesktop DevRoom next year but I'm 99% sure there will be.
Unfortunately for you, we have received confirmation from all the speakers in the CrossDesktop DevRoom already. Would you be interested in a slot in case we receive a last-minute cancellation?
-
Alex Bradbury -
Damjan Jovanovic -
Dan Kegel -
gurketsky -
Jakob Eriksson -
Jeremy White -
Jerome Leclanche -
Maarten Lankhorst -
Marcus Meissner -
Matijn Woudt -
Pau Garcia i Quiles -
perryh＠pluto.rain.com -
Shachar Shemesh -
Stefan Dösinger -
Stefan Leichter -
Steven Edwards -
Vincent Povirk