Hi,
This format of a small, tightly knit group of about 20 people has been successful over the years, and I have received a lot of positive feedback from past participants.
Yes, I'm looking forward to it every year :)
Particularly the cellular infrastructure projects (OsmoBTS, OsmoPCU, OsmoBTS, OsmoNITB, OsmoSGSN, OpenGGSN, OsmoIuh & co) are somehow "standing out" of the othe projects in the context of having a wider user bsae, and in that user base also primarily commercial users.
This seems pretty clear that those project stand out in several ways and could probably benefit from a public event. The reasons why OsmoDevCon is kept invitation-only mostly don't apply to theses. I think dev presentations regarding those could also be in the "user" even, but I'd keep workshop / discussion style events to the invitation only part.
Having both events (or both parts of an event) back-to-back has the advantage that a large number of potential speakers for the 'user day' are already present, and they don't have to travel yet another time.
Definitely back-to-back, for the reasons you mentioned and I think different venues would also make sense. I'd also do the user part first, so that the dev part includes the weekend.
One could even structure it further and say we have one user day, one public 'Osmocom cellular developer day' and then the closed 'OsmoDevCon classic', maybe reduced from 4 days to 3 or even 2 days only?
2 days seems short, especially since the last one of often just a half day with people leaving and from experience most of the 'hands-on' part are often done in the evening after the presentations and I'd have to diminish the time we have for that.
Are there people lurking on this list who would be interested in attending a public 'user day' or even 'developer day' about the Osmocom cellular projects, with presentations and workshops around topics such as running Osmocom based cellular networks?
That'd be the first thing to know : How many people would actually be interested to travel and attend a 1 or 2 day event. If it's only people from Berlin, then the usergroup would seem to be enough ?
In terms of when/where, I would suggest to keep the tradition of April in Berlin/Germany. But I'm of course very happy if somebody wants to host it some place else...
Makes sense to keep it in Berlin IMHO.
Cheers,
Sylvain