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 -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd. http://www.lingnu.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-users/attachments/20120110/ec5ce2a9/attachment.html>
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.
Jeremy White <jwhite at codeweavers.com> 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.
On 9 January 2012 18:31, Jeremy White <jwhite at codeweavers.com> 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 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
What conferences do people already attend? Maybe we can piggyback on those.
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 5:44 PM, Alex Bradbury <asb at asbradbury.org> 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. -- Pau Garcia i Quiles http://www.elpauer.org (Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)
On January 10, 2012 at 11:00 PM Marcus Meissner <marcus at jet.franken.de> 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-users/attachments/20120111/fa320676/attachment.html>
jwhite wrote:> > 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? >One thing I think you need to do to get more new people to come is to publish a clearer agenda beforehand. Saying "we'll figure it out as we go along" may be enough for the regular attendees, but I wouldn't expect many new people, users or developers, to spend the time and money based on that vague description. I don't think ordinary users are likely to attend unless the conference happens to be in their hometown, but some of the regular non-developer volunteers might. I, for one, would be very interested in is a session for AppDB admins and maintainers.
Just adding another point of view: The number of wine devs isn't growing much, because it is a very challenging project. Allmost all the simple things are implemented. From the perspective of users and programmers, wine can be frustrating, because sometimes you have to wait for years, until a feature like USB support will eventually be implemented. There may be 10000s of Win32 API experts out there in various countries ignoring DMCA, but they may have demanding daytime jobs and may prefer reverse engineering. All this means that wine urgently needed professionalization, incorporated by Codeweavers. Wine isn't a hobby project anymore. The 'simplest' way to enlarge the number of wine devs nowadays seems to be Codeweavers hiring more people. So far this may sound a bit too negative, on the other hand I'd propose something like that: Offer a workshop for users with programming skills, every participant may choose one application he/she wants to get running and/or bugfree, the goal of the workshop should be to demonstrate how to debug issues and solve or at least work around issues. I don't know how much time would be required for such a workshop, maybe 2-5 days, and probably one professional wine dev per participant (economic issue?). And again, some issues like copy protection, USB, etc may not be resolvable in short time, so there should be some kind of preceding discussion.
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