FOSDEM 2008 Wrapup

[address@hidden]

Hi Folks,
unfortunately I was sick this week and no-one else did write some
lines, so I do it...

1. Booth
We did have a nice booth at mostly the same location as the year
before (thanks Helge). The ggod thing was that the Debian Project at
the next booth did find a better location and so we simply could use
two tables!

We have shown:

Open Groupware (on 2 Notebooks)
mySTEP (OpenMoko, Zaurus, Acer n30)
GNUstep on Debian (MiniPC/NanoPC)
GNUstep on Debian (Desktop PC)

The "gadgets", i.e. the OpenMoko phone and the Nano PC were really
magnetic but some visitors explicitly asked for groupware.

What we should do better:
* we were lucky that we did not need 20m of 230V cable.
* we should prepare something againts the airconditioner outlets
directly behind the booth.
* we should have new posters and leaflets next year even more
focussing on the "develop once run everywhere" idea

2. Preparation
was mainly done by Fred and myself who did a test setup in the lobby
of the SUN hotel. Some others (Richard and others) helped to fix some
compiling and installation issues on Saturday morning.

3. Posters
thanks to good express mail (thanks, Quentin) we received the GNUstep
banners in time and could glue them to the glass window.
I also did a 8xA4 printout of the leaflet and placed it to the
windows.

4. Leaflets
We did have 50 on Saturday which was NOT enough. So, I printed 100
more for Sunday and when I had to leave on Sunday, most of them had
been distributed. So i think we could have easily distributed 200
leaflets.

5. Hotel
Well, the SUN hotel wasn't expensive but can't be recommended as a
team hotel for next year (please ask those who have been there). On
the positive side: Location is ok and the WLAN in the breakfast room
did work well.

6. Team Dinner on Saturday
We just met at the SUN hotel and walked some minutes to find a nice
Thai/Vitenamese Restaurant. Alshough there had been some surprises
what the ordered dishes were but my impression was that everyone was
happy. Thanks to Gerold to sponsor this event.

7. Presentation
I was scheduled for a presentation in the "Embedded Devroom" (we did
not have our own this year). Unfortunately I had lost my voice so
Gerold made it a jam-session and did talk about the background of
GNUstep and I just demonstrated downloading, cross-compiling and
running the Apple Sample code "Polygons" on the OpenMoko device. The
slides are available through wiki.gnustep.org

8. Next Steps
All felt that we really should have a developer workshop (other
projects call this a hackathon) in addition. Time around FOSDEM or
during FOSDEM is too short to really discuss or hack anything. So, I
will soon come with a proposal for a "FrankenSTEP" workshop (somewhere
between Frankfurt and Nürnberg). Frankfurt, because it is a large
airline hub with up to 5 intercontintental flights per day to all
major destinations. This should make it more easy for our US
developers to come.


@other participants: please add your impressions and suggestions.

Nikolaus