On Sun, May 01, 2005 at 05:11:24PM -0500, Jeremy White wrote:
However, I think we need to recognize that we Wine hackers are badly addicted to Internet access, and I think we need to set aside a formal time on day 1 to make sure that all access is good. We did have mounting frustrations over the connectivity, only getting it all ironed out midway through day two. I found myself being increasingly distracted by the problems until we finally ironed it out.
I agree that most of us are badly addicted to Internet. For this reason, I think it is counterproductive that we do have access during talks. There is very little reason to have it, it would be like providing internet access at the Opera :) [1] It has a negative impact on the general 'feel' of the audience, it is distracting and uninviting to the speakers.
After not seen each other for a year, and spending time, energy and money to attend, we can't do for a *few* hours without internet access? Are we that bad? And if we are, do we really need to encourage it? If the talks are so boring, why expand all these resources to meet in the first place?
I think it is essential to have Internet access, but *outside* the conference. This way people can get their email done, maybe code up a patch, etc after the talks.
Instead, we had the reverse situation: no Internet access outside the conference, but we did get it during the talks. And what did we do? Check email, write patches, etc. when we should have been listening. For this reason, the second day we had a much less focused audience.
And yes, I can see Juan's point that IRC is good. If that's the case, we can have a network without the Internet. But with all the good, long breaks we had in between, can't we focus for 1h at a time?