These Open Source Days were kind of a mixed experience.
The social part
Things started off quite nicely; the speaker dinner was very
pleasant and the people at my table interesting to talk with. The
way back to the hotel and breakfast on Saturday were even more
interesting; talking with
Amelia
Andersdotter, a member of the European Parliament for the
Swedish Pirate Party, about anti-trust measures, privacy
protection, lobbyists, and creating the right incentives for
companies to actually protect user data was fun and engaging. My
own claim to fame is that I told her that while Microsoft is
willing to sign UEFI payloads for x86, they refuse to do so for ARM
which she didn't know. From my understanding, their interpretation
is that any anti-trust rulings apply to PCs only, and not general
computing devices like tablets. It will be interesting to see how
that plays out in the long run, especially once ARM processors
start appearing in laptops and desktops as main CPUs where
Microsoft clearly still has a near monopoly.
It was fascinating to discuss all those issues with someone
who's actively involved with legislation, mainly because her style
of talking was markedly different from what I am used to. One point
which she stressed repeatedly is that the most important skill
within the context of political work in the EU is to be able to
track down, read, and then reference all the content that's being
produced in Brussels and Strasbourg. Maybe that tidbit is useful to
people who want to try themselves at political activism. She
nicely, and maybe unknowingly, emphasized that point by always
referring to specific papers, directives, and studies after making
any point. Statement of opinion, reference to supporting document.
Statement of opinion, reference to supporting document. Statement
of opinion, reference to supporting document. Rinse, repeat.
It's no secret that I'm continuously disappointed by the
political process in general and politicians in particular. Yet, I
have to say that this encounter had a lasting and positive
impression on me. Amelia has an incredible amount of energy and
genuinely
cares about the issues which too many other
politicians ignore completely. It's good to know someone like this
is on our side. If you're Swedish, please inform yourself about her
and consider voting in her favour.
Other than that, I met several other people, new and old. This
year's OSD felt a lot more relaxed and there were more informal and
spontaneous conversations going on in hallways and at tables. Even
though I failed to have any intense discussion of Mercurial vs git
this year, all those conversation were still really
interesting.
The "workshop"
I already knew that the room assignment for my workshop on
Saturday afternoon would be a last-minute thing. What I didn't
expect was that the final confirmation by Copenhagen Business
School would be given on Friday evening. Mixed with a very
cumbersome process to update the slides of the CBS-owned and
-operated information beamer in the lobby, this resulted in the
official schedule showing my room as "Workshop" instead of "SP
214". The official schedule repeatedly stated that people had to
pre-register for the workshop which was a left-over from last year
where they actually had to plan the amount of hardware kits needed;
the registration itself was was very well hidden behind a rather
generic link you saw exactly once after purchasing your ticket. Add
to this that my room was literally in the farthest corner of the
building and on the top floor and things start to turn sour real
quick. All other rooms were either close to the main entrance or on
the ground floor. Helpers at the front desk had a lot of people
asking where my room was and gave out directions, yet...
...the grand total of six people who arrived were all telling me
how they couldn't find the room and almost gave up on finding it.
As more people asked for directions than turned up at the workshop,
this means that even
with directions, the room was really
hard to find. Myself, it took me two attempts to find the room
after which I was led there by one of the helpers who wasn't
completely sure we were going in the right direction, himself.
Still, I managed to get everyone who had a laptop and access to
a UNIX-based system set up with working mr and vcsh repositories
they can work from as well as a demo git-annex repository to play
with. Sadly, not everyone had a laptop, or access to UNIX, or the
tools installed, or even an idea where to install them from, even
though I had noted these "requirements" in the description. Next
time I do this workshop, I will need to make sure to include
information on what distributions have the relevant packages and
how to find and install the software on Max OS X in the workshop
description.
Feedback from the very few people who actually managed to find
me was very good and one of the attendants asked if I would be
willing to hold the workshop again at another conference in
Denmark. I am still awaiting details on this, but I would obviously
enjoy having the chance to reach more people.
At least I fared better than the guys who did the workshop on
"Binary exploitation 101" in yet another room. Two guys held a
workshop with a total attendance of... one...
I know the organizers of OSD were
really unhappy with
how this turned out and I believe them when they say that something
like this will never happen again. It's the second year that this
team is running the conference, running conferences is an
incredible amount of work, and things were smoother this year than
last year. Iterate and improve, etc.
The talk
Saturday evening,
Alex
offered me the chance to hold a reparation talk on Sunday morning
to compensate for the botched workshop. Said talk was scheduled for
the first slot and not really announced (but the schedule on both
www and the beamer was changed over night). Additionally, this was
merely an updated and extended version of the talk which I already
held at OSD 2012 so at least part of the visitors knew most of what
I had to say, already.
To be honest I didn't expect too much, but more than twenty
people turned up which is a
very decent turnout, all
things considered.
Same as with the workshop, feedback was extremely positive and I
was told afterwards by
Bryan that several people
mentioned my talk as one of the highlights, or even the highlight,
of OSD when he was talking to them.
To make things even better this talk has, finally, been
videotaped; I will update this blog with a link as soon as the
video is online.
