[csw-maintainers] OpenCSW summer camp: What were your impressions? Brainstorming for further camps.

[Sebastian Kayser]

Sebastian Kayser wrote on 29.08.2009 23:22:
> i would like
> to capture some of the impressions that you took away from Oslo while
> they are still fresh so that we know what to take care of for further
> meetings.

Let's see.

> - How would you sum up the weekend and what you took away from it?

Created project momentum with creative people that see things from
different perspectives - always something new to learn (not only
project-wise). All this with such an easy way of communication, none of
the ambiguities that online mediums tend to introduce. Solved things
easily that would have not been addressed or taken ages otherwise.

Stepped onto a next level of GAR understanding thanks to the excellent
modulation talk. Got to know people behind names, which should help with
future online discussions and finally got to know someone who works at
Google :) I also learnt, that i seem to belong to a minority group of
non-MacBook-users. ;)

> - What would you like to see again?

- Pre-selected hotel (with wireless) for all people to stay at.
- Prepared talks/demos.
- People bringing precise ideas to the table for topics they are
  interested in. Less talk, more gain. Like Trygve with his ideas
  for the web infrastructure and the release process.
- Small task-focused teams moving things forward.
- Integrated, pre-arranged lunch to streamline things.
- Fruits/snacks and drinks during the day to keep people alive.
- Prioritization of topics to be discussed (via voting).
- A venue where people can take a short walk and sort their mind.
  Soria Moria was just fantastic.
- Meeting room which helps to focus on things (no noise, no distraction)
- Two full days of working together. Leaves room to address things that
  need to be addressed, to digesting all the input and to develop
  ideas (one day would feel too packed).
- Group picture!!!

And last but not least: Inoffical CPU insider talks by Dominique ;)

> - What would you have wished to be different? How?

- Better way to keep track of and to settle on agreements and TODO
  lists. Hock up the meeting minutes keeper to the beamer.

- Better integration of people not attending the camp. Once you have
  been to a camp you know that this is a _very hard_ task with
  all the ideas flying around and discussions going on. Still:
  * An in advance designated minutes keeper.
    -> Faster release of these minutes.
  * This person could maybe also post progress&topics to twitter / IRC.
  * IRC could be a way for people who couldn't make the way to the
    camp to interact. So could Skype or some conferencing system.

@all: Does anyone have experience with integrating non-attendees (that
would have liked to attend) into a conference without too much impact?

- A hotel with a meeting room, where people can hack on things
  outside the schedule. Thon Gyldenlove didn't have a meeting room.

- More team-oriented hacking on Sunday. This should be easy if people
  brought problems they are facing with them, so that other people can
  help out. But this also requires more people to stay the whole day
  on Sunday.

- Shorter ways between the meeting center and the accommodation. But
  maybe i am getting too "streamline" here. ;)

> - Any other ideas that don't fit into the two above? Stuff that we
> should try next time?

- If we split up the meeting a bit or extend it to Friday (afternoon),
  we could have a "compilation basics" / "porting to Solaris" / "GAR
  beginners" technical part that we could announce on the opencsw.org
  web site. There should be people out there who are interested
  and this might also be a way to get new maintainers on board.

Sebastian