For me this year's event was the most successful and wonderful LinuxTag
I've eve been to. I've worked during LinuxTag as much as I could and did
my best to make it the best event ever. If I commit myself to something, I
try to work properly and generate proper results. This was the same for
LinuxTag. As a result, this year I had many tasks to work on.
First of all I managed the community and free projects so that they had an
opportunity to
present
themselves to the broad audience during LinuxTag. This required months of
communication with members of all attending projects and negotiating their
needs. It also required to gather information about the various parts of
LinuxTag that also affected projects.
Since it is boring having to answer the same questions all the time I
decided not doing that anymore and once started to maintain an
FAQ that
intends to contain all important information for exhibiting projects. Last
year I've also added an
location plan
with information about shops and restaurants nearby and this year I
contributed a
map for getting
to the
AKK where the legendary KaLUG
party was organised.
Being responsible for the projects I was required to decide which project
are suited to get a sponsored booth, its size and its location. This year
we have had the opportunity to use the
ground
floor of the conference building in addition to the regular
exhibition
ground, so that we've could use about 700m in total for the projects
exhibition. I've worked nearly two entire weekends to get the booths
assigned properly and to have proper graphics. For the conference building
I also created the "official" booth map, booth naming, booth signs and
booth numbering. One weekend was planned, the other was an accident since
we had to rearrange some booths.
Exhibiting projects and other community and Free Software oriented projects
also had the opportunity to use two
workshop
rooms for workshops, BoF sessions, meetings and talks. For these I
maintained the schedule and negotiated with the speakers and projects, and
also acquired moderators for both rooms for the entire time.
The people who organised the Accessibility booth people managed to get
green light for building a large booth and a so called
forum,
which is an open talk area, but without any support. Since they couldn't
fill in all slots and you can't dismantle a forum in the middle of the
show, I've taken over its maintenance and schedule and managed to complete
it with interesting talks, setting up, looking for moderators and
dismantling. One of these talks I've even held on my own. Fortunately, a
DJ contacted us and was able to provide his PA, boxes, microphone and
stuff. Without him, the
forum
would have been an utter disaster.
To support the projects we had to build up the network in the main
exhibition hall for them on our own. Otherwise it would have cost us
several thousand euro, which we didn't have. So I had to draw plans
containing the cables we had to lay, calculated the length and decide where
to deposit switches and stuff. On the day before the show opened, several
supporters went around with a large
ladder
laying the cable. In the conference building this was done by the KaLUG.
I've also coached the supporters during LinuxTag, and was even present at a
special short
meeting
for and with supporters in order to reflect the past day and talk about the
next day. This year was the first time I really had the time to attend the
meeting and thank our supporters. Before the show started I've also
negotiated food arrangements with a restaurant and a colleague so that we
had
lunch
during the show. I
ate
from it as well, but didn't manage to eat every day unfortunately.
Most additional
signs
of A4 and A3 size that we used during LinuxTag in order to help visitors
and officials to find their way were designed and printed by me. Many of
them were the result of last year's aftermath. Most of them were fixed
with adhesive tape by our supporters.
The
Coding
Marathon was supervised by me as LinuxTag representative. It was
organised by HP, intel and Red Hat and, of course, negotiated with the
acquise team of LinuxTag. The Coding Marathon was a half day programming
session for visitors. The resulting code is released under the GNU GPL and
winners were awarded with prizes at the end of each day.
This required me to attend several phone conferences, name one or two
interested people from "LinuxTag" who would propose a task and head the
marathon during one day. Last year already, when I took over this job,
With p2 and Arne I've already found two competent people, and this year
also added Alex Schmehl for a task I proposed. Naturally, it was not
possible for me to moderate the
Coding
Marathon during LinuxTag due to other obligations.
When I arrived at LinuxTag the week before it officially started my first
job was to build up the office and prepare the rooms so that the entire
"team" could work inside properly. The first office should be used by
supporters for general requests and customers, with a desk for me as well.
The next room was meant to host the speakers office and the other rooms
were intended to be back offices or private rooms.
In order to be able to work properly in the office I've also brought with
my some of my
network
equipment and set up the office LAN, server and printer. I had already
experienced cable problems last year, that prevented us to use
100MBit/s switches, so that antiquated 10MBit/s hubs had to be
used.
I've also supervised our daily shopping tours and collected demand for
various items from others. The most important items were fluids since it
was quite warm during LinuxTag and collapsing core members and supporters
are no fun. Other food had to be fetched as well. A lot of other items
had to be purchased as well, in order to run LinuxTag and be able to fix or
improve various areas. One or two supporters were taking the car for the
shopping tours.
When I arrived in Karlsruhe the HP
booth
was already being built. The other, smaller booths followed on Monday.
Hence, on Monday and Tuesday I also supervised the building of the booths.
It's important that somebody is around for questions, both from booth
builders and from officials of the fairground. One also has to check if
the booths are built properly and that they don't cause a risk for the
exhibition hall, neighbour booths, smoke detectors and stuff. Issues
should be corrected as soon as possible so that they don't become problems
later.
As soon as I arrived I also took over our own
storage
area and maintained deliveries for booths that haven't built up yet.
Several companies negotiated with me before the show so that I knew which
deliveries to expect and could move them to their respective booths as soon
as they were built up.
This year the first X.Org developers
conference
took place right before LinuxTag as well. I negotiated with both the X.Org
people and the fairground people so that this developers conference could
really take place. Unfortunately the plans and acknowledgements were sent
out quite late so we were in a hurry getting everything set up and
organised. Since we experienced network problems this year, they had not
network as well, so did we in the office. Two days without a network
connection. Pure horror.
On Thursday the legendary
KaLUG
party took place. The location had to be prepared for the party, for
which several supporters went there before the party has started. It was
planned that I attend the party, so I went there at about 1 a.m. For
some reason I didn't manage to leave the fairground earlier, and on the way
to the
AKK some of my friends who were
also supporters were on their way home, excusing themselves for leaving
before I arrived. Eumh... When I arrived at the party I first checked the
situation and saw loads of uncleaned pots and stuff. Since nobody was
cleaning them, I jumped into the mobile kitchen and started cleaning before
I even ate or drank anything. That was fun, though a bit unplanned.
The social event on Friday was organised by Claudia from a service provider
who got some support from me before the show and during the show. Several
supporters helped her
clean
the area that was unused for several years. During the evening I only gave
away free tickets for the supporters and moved inside afterwards, always
looking around if everything was ok, negotiating with her, of course. Very
well managed, I can only say.
This year I gave three talks during LinuxTag. Usually I only give zero or
one during such an event, due to my other obligations. However, this time
I felt, that I should make a maximum use of LinuxTag, anticipating the
future. Hence, it started with
Debian
Security held during this year's
Debian
day, followed by
Howto
LinuxTag on the following day and finally
Debian
Internals together with other Debian developers.
After the last talk I had about two hours to calm down again and initiate
the general dismantling. Fortunately I've already planned a lot before the
event because after my final talk I was a bit exhausted and needed to calm
down and get into LinuxTag organisation again. Dismantling is the most
parallel work at LinuxTag because all booths are dismantled at once and
many people are running around with arbitrary stuff. One really has to
take care of ones own stuff or it gets lost faster than one can shout.
During the evening the entire fairground was cleaned, from all conference
rooms the audio and video technique was removed again, all bottles and
glasses were moved back into the office, the movable walls collected and
moved back to their owners, the Internet caf was dismantled and computers
moved back into their respective boxes. Some exhibitors had to use extra
storage space temporarily.
The Community forum in the conference hall had to be dismantled and chairs
stacked properly. The same goes for tables and chairs used by the projects
booths in both, the exhibition hall and the conference building. The
network for projects had to be removed again, cables and switches secured.
All additional signs had to be removed again. Since we have used some
durable signs that could be used for future events again these had to be
removed carefully and secured again.
We've also ordered a container for paper since a lot of paper had to be
thrown away and throwing away large amounts of junk is expensive. This way
we were able to get rid of paper stuff a bit cheaper, but had to take extra
care so that only paper went into this container. Hence, we needed a
supporter who stayed with the container until it was fetched again.
When the internal LinuxTag party in the office was nearly over, I came back
into the office with all other areas finished, ready to start dismantling
the office - usually the colleagues don't let me because they want to party
and don't have any obligations anymore. That sucks a lot. So, again the
internal party went on nearly without notice by me, but I'm used to that.
This year I had already taken this into account and organised some stuff
for an after work party (contrary to the other while-others-work party)
outside of the office with supporters, friends and some team members that
were still sober. This night we went to bed after 5a.m. and hence
had a chance to get a quick breakfast already (we didn't use it, though).
It was when we thought "Yes, this was a hell of an event!"
I usually went to bed at 1 to 3a.m. and got up again at 5 or
6a.m. so that I was able to work on the important stuff that I
committed myself to, and so that I was able to chat with friends and
supporters in the evening. That was something I really missed on past
events. Last year I probably wouldn't have spoken to Alfie if he hadn't
placed himself into my way as a brake block. Thanks Alfie! This year such
a maneuver wasn't required.
In order to be able to work on so many areas during LinuxTag I tried to
optimise the workflow and the processing as much as I could. I also used
several sheets and paper to write down stuff for later processing so that
my brain was kept clear and I don't become insane (or more insane, for what
it's worth). That worked quite well and all areas I worked in worked fine
as well, since I had time to talk to people even during the day. Even
after my talks I wasn't flooded by phone requests like last year.
After the event I had to drive some 750km back, after having only
little sleep. Getting to Karlsruhe is always the easy part. Driving back
is exhausting because I'm usually quite exhausted and in need of a lot of
sleep. I won't disclose how long it took me to reach Oldenburg but it was
faster than last year.
