Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Get ready for the Maemo Summit 2009!

October 9-10-11 - WesterGasFabriek - Amsterdam
http://www.westergasfabriek.nl/engli...ls_welcome.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSkAFGGv5nY

3 days: 1 organized by Nokia and 2 by the community.

4 post-industrial spaces surrounded by culture, parks, canals and fun:

* Transformatorhuis: keynotes & track 1. http://www.westergasfabriek.nl/engli...php?detail=295

* Machinegebouw: track 2.
http://www.westergasfabriek.nl/engli...php?detail=313

* De Kapel: track 3
http://www.flickr.com/photos/quimgil/3527500913/

* Oostelijk Meterhuis: special activities.
http://www.westergasfabriek.nl/engli...php?detail=453

Location plan: http://www.westergasfabriek.nl/uploa...lattegrond.pdf (1,1MB)

Free entrance! Registration needed to grant you food, drinks, a maemo.org shirt and a seat.

300 participants expected: developers and engaged users, community members and curious newcomers, from many countries and The Netherlands too.


FAQ

Q - Are the dates definitive now?
A - Yes. We have changed them because we believe more people will join, even if we are not close to OSiM World anymore. Also because it's a good time to start talking about Harmattan.

Q - How has been the venue decided?
A - Kees (council member based in Amsterdam) coordinated a first round of possible venues. Kees, Niels (maemo.org webmaster, also Dutch) and Quim (Nokia contact) visited 3 finalists. It was decided with the Council that this one offered the best combination of price, flexibility and cool atmosphere.

Q - Can I register? Recommended accommodation? What about the party?....
A - Ah yes, the little details. :) Now we have just pinned the venue and the organization is bootstrapping. We also need to get past a successful http://wiki.maemo.org/Mozilla_Maemo_Danish_Weekend

Q - How can I help?
A - Book your travel and/or go to http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2009 to see what to do. In case of doubt just ask.

Q - Can you sponsor my travel/accommodation?
A - No idea since we don't know you (or do we? :) ) and we have to organize first the budget. In the meantime help yourself: be a core community member and/or a genius independent developer.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Made sticky (for a time anyway).

Tim

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

One thing worth stressing: the first Maemo Summit was mainly for developers (as Stefan Constantinescu put so well). In the second edition developers should be just as happy or more... but engaged users AS WELL. We need to think what to offer and how to attract them.

Note that engaged users are not necessarily power users. They are people with different degrees and types of expertise with one thing in common: they are really interested in Maemo, the software, the community, the devices...

If we make happy developers and engaged users there is no doubt that power users will be happy as well. ;)

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

I've already been thinking about a talk on community dynamics and better integrating users and developers... Just thinking right now, though. ;)

Tim

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

How about a product? Only having fun and am anxious to see what is cooking.............

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Honestly, most of the stuff at the first summit was way over my head. I thought I'd understand it before I went, but it was really low-level technical things for Real Developers. And really, I'm not a developer.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Practice makes perfect! And really, I'm sure most people would be more than happy to explain to you what they're doing in not-too technical terms.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

For instance, I survived lardman's session and now I can even teach DSP hacking to my kids in the park. http://www.flickr.com/photos/quimgil/2871881289/

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

They need a translator up at the front who quietly speaks into a microphone throughout the developer sessions; non-developers can wear headphones and listen to the Not-Too-Technical version.

EDIT: qgil, I was really hoping for a shot of you teaching your kids DSP hacking in the park.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

This time we want to have a non-developer or at least less technical track too. So that one should be more interesting for you?

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

lol

Reckon you can manage "reverse engineering binary drivers" for this year's...? ;)

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Personally, as a developer, I would love to see more development talks. This is where the idea of separate streams comes in handy like last year. A developer stream, a familiar user stream and a newbie stream would work well.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Well, I've got the airline miles, so if I can wrangle a place to stay I just might go!

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Very nice location with rich cultural background!!

To give some idea where its located
http://maps.google.com/maps?cid=1976...,0.616608&z=11

Satellite/terrain
http://maps.google.com/maps?cid=1976...38538&t=h&z=15

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Any chance of a webcast? Even though I'm a noob I'd love to see what's cooking ;), and plane fares from brazil are just INSANE =(

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

I'm sure there will be videos after the summit, by either myself or others. Not sure about a live stream but videos last year started to be processed within a week or so after the event.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

I just spotted this today, looks very interesting. One question for now, what language(s) will the summit be using?

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

English is the official language, although there shouldn't be anything against proposals for sessions in other languages.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Well, if anyone is interested, I can do a talk on emulator development, interfacing with various video/audio hardware and frameworks, and/or optimizing code for best performance (including ARM assembly and hardware considerations). None of these are Maemo-specific but they may be helpful to Maemo developers as well. Somebody has to be really interested though, as it makes no sense talking to an empty room. So, if you are interested, shout, and let me know what topic you would like best.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

First (very rough) proposal about a schedule. Basically 1 Nokia driven day and 2 community driven days:

* Friday 9: Schedule coordinated by Peter @ Maemo Devices and contains all the sessions originated by Nokia in relation to Maemo 5 and Harmattan. Some keynotes and perhaps some simultaneous track sessions tbd. Audience: Maemo engaged users and developers, also open to newcomers. Friday night PARTY coordinated by Jussi @ Maemo Devices.

* Saturday 10: Community driven agenda TBD

* Sunday 11: Community driven agenda TBD

http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2009#Schedule_DRAFT

If you agree on the Nokia day then Peter is happy to start working on the agenda.

We need to discuss then the 2 community days scope, main tracks, audiences... It would be good to have purte community members driving that. I can help with my pure community shirt and also keeping the link with Maemo Devices if needed.

The objective would be to define the placeholders for the 3 days so people like fms can start filling it with proposed sessions.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

The venue looks superb. Lets hope its nice weather so we can take advantage of the open spaces outside.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Hi Quim,

This sounds great! A few questions that probably need resolving before we get started on community content are:

• How do we select content? will the council do it, will there be some kind of Summit presentations committee? If so, how will it get chosen?
• Timeline: Summer is almost upon us and with Summer holidays typically being in July in Finland, we will need to get a move-on with the call for papers.
• Infrastructure: How will we manage collecting presentation proposals? A mailing list, submissions in the wiki, a Midgard module, or some other specialised solution? If we're going for the low-tech solution, the workload for the papers committee will be greater, and the risk of error (an overlooked proposal, or an error in transcribing) is higher, but if we go for some kind of conference infrastructure, it will take time to set up.
• Talk formats: This will decide how many talk slots are available - how long will talks be? With what breaks? How many talk slots will there be in the day?

I mived the draft schedule and a bunch of other schedule related questions to http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2009/Schedule in the wiki to try to keep the main page cleaner.

Cheers,
Dave.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

I'd say people should add their name, a proposed talk title, short description and a presentation length to the wiki. Far easier to keep track of all the proposals that way than having to trawl through either a mailing list or the forum.

I should add that once we know what sorts of talks people want to do, it should be easier to plan the structure of the day, numbers of talks, sessions (depending on the number of topics and how they could be streamed), etc.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Managing potentially dozens of proposals in the wiki doesn't sound easy to me.

Ideally, we would have a situation where each proposal is 1 page, and we have a summary with presenter/title and the one line summary linking to the proposal. But getting people submitting proposals to respect posting guidelines is difficult.

I agree, we should be flexible & see what comes out of the call for content - but we have time & space limits which we should be aware of. Let's say we're working with 40 minute presentations, with 5 minutes break between each one, and a half an hour morning break and half an hour afternoon break, and a 1.5 hour lunch. You end up with

09:00 - 09:45: Presentation 1
09:45 - 10:30: Presentation 2
10:30 - 11:00: BREAK
11:00 - 11:45: Presentation 3
11:45 - 12:30: Presentation 4
12:30 - 14:00: LUNCH
14:00 - 14:45: Presentation 5
14:45 - 15:30: Presentation 6
15:30 - 16:00: BREAK
16:00 - 16:45: Presentation 7
16:45 - 17:30: Presentation 8

End of day

So we have 24 presentation slots per day, max.

Cheers,
Dave.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Don't forget the lightning talks :) .

By your assumptions, I see that you are pointing for 3 tracks at the same time. For a small audience (yes, 300 persons is a small audience) the schedule should be carefully done, probably the rooms should be divide by intended audience (developers/power users/users...), instead of the usual themes/areas (desktop/multimedia...). We can't make everyone happy, but trying to avoid very related presentations at the same time should be a good start, people usually get pissed when they have two presentations at the same time, that they like to attend. As participants, some of you already experienced that situation for sure :) .

About the call for papers, I don't know the amount of submissions that you are expecting, but agree that the wiki isn't the best option to organize it.

How was it done in the 2008 summit ?

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Indeed - these should have 1 or 2 sessions with no competition.

Makes sense.

Very tricky to do. It's easy not to put two Mer presentations at the same time, not so easy to please people who are interested both in application development and developing the platform, say.

The wiki. Quim can speak to how easy/hard it was to organise.

Dave.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Also don't forget to leave 5 minutes between talks as the talks are split over different venues. Moving from one building to another should be taken into consideration.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Quim,
can you comment about the distance between the 3 rooms ?

Exist a inside pathway between them or you need to go outside to switch between rooms ?

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Thus my suggestion 40 mins + 5 mins break...

Dave.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Last year we used the wiki and actually presenters and organizers were happy about the system. If we go for something different at least it would be good to know what problems found last year are you trying to address.

Three tracks, yes. What about thinking by default on users (big room), app developers (medium) and platform developers (small). We can always adapt for specific cases.

Lightning sessions with everybody in the room are proven to be successful and are also a way to canalize presentations that didn't make it as own sessions.

We can also think about 2-4 keynote sessions in the two community days. If we have speakers with the guts, the skills and the content.

The medium and small rooms are next to each other with a common door from the outside. The big room is 1 minute away walking a straight line in the park. No crossing streets or anything.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Doh, missed that in the body of the reply :D

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

I remember the projector being one of the biggest issues last year for the lightning sessions. I wish there were some way to be more prepared for the lightning sessions, make sure the A/V worked...

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

At Fosdem, the lightning talks are all made in a organization Linux PC, so they avoid the complications of switch to a new PC every 15 minutes. The speakers can also request the installation of some additional software that they may need.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

The only thing which will probably be different this year compared to last year is that last time was more or less first come first served, and this time I expect that there will be a good bit more interest, and we will probably over-subscribe the 2 days of talks. I'm not overly concerned, just wondering whether that might reduce the effectiveness of using the wiki.

Dave.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Other option is do something like is done in the 'elevator talks' in the programming/hacking contests (e.g. hackday), where is set a hour before the presentations to test the equipment. The speakers set their machines properly for the speech and then is just plug and go :) .

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

Excellent idea. There should be a standard PC for presentations.

What if you want to use the tablet Maemo device to present? ;)

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

How about if we have a laptop plugged into the projector and tested, plus Xephyr set up for people who want to show off applications?

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

If the new device is released, and it has video out, everyone will want to use their own devices :)

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

40min is quite a long time for a presentation unless it's a keynote.

I'd suggest 30min total, i.e. 25min talk + 5min questions, and just make sure we stick to it and don't overrun.

For the lightning talks, we should differentiate between the true lightning talks (i.e. the sort of talks about someone's plans, which might take 5-7min to talk + a few minutes for questions/comments) and the short presentation types, which might be 15min talking + 5min questions.

Re: Maemo Summit dates and venue!
 

It may need WiFi to install additional software at request of presentator, and it requires a way for presentator to upload their presentation (e.g. PDF) onto the laptop.

You could also have that PDF on seperate projected screen, with a primary screen (with Xephyr) showing the Maemo demo. The seperate screen showing PDF is then used to support the speech and demo while the primary screen shows the actual demo. This may need 2 control devices.

Also, some folks might want to show something on their own heavily hardware or software modified device or OS.

You could have the output of X to a second screen over WiFi.

Demos can be pre-made as well with e.g. pyRecordMyDesktop.