Dear Osmocom Community,
[please respect the Reply-To and post all follow-up discussion to this to openbsc@lists.osmocom.org, so we avoid having long threads cross-posted to several mailing lists.]
From 2012 to 2016 we were running a series of small, invitation-only
Osmocom Developer Conferences. Access was intentionally restricted to those community members who have demonstrated an existing track record of contribution to any of the projects under the Osmocom umbrella.
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.
On the other hand, the Osmocom project has grown in scope and diversity, and some of those projects don't have all that much relationship to each other - except being started by people from within the same group. There's the cellular communications (GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS and hopefully at some point LTE) protocols which is attracting a lot of professional users. And then there's pure community projects like rtl-sdr, OsmocomBB, OsmocomGMR and many other efforts.
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.
So I'd like to start a discussion on how to possibly change the event format to accomodate the various interests and parties. I definitely don't want to loose the "annual meeting of old friends" atmosphere, while at the same time also opening up to other interested parties.
One idea would be to keep OsmoDevCon as-is and have a separate event where non-contributing/developing users / sysadmins / system integrators could also be attending.
Another idea would be to split into a 'user day' and 'developer days' format. This is something the netfilter developer workshops have been using for many years, and from my limited insight quite successfully so. The "user day" is more like a traditional tech conference, with a large auditorium and talks oriented towards users / sysadmins / integrators of the software. The "developer days" are the invitation-only part, for known contributing developers only, similar to what we have at OsmoDevCon.
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.
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?
What is the general opinion about this?
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?
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...
Regards, and looking forward to meeting you [again] in 2017, Harald
On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 08:11:39PM +0100, Harald Welte wrote:
One idea would be to keep OsmoDevCon as-is and have a separate event where non-contributing/developing users / sysadmins / system integrators could also be attending.
Over at Apache Subversion, we used to have parallel users' and developers' events, with conference style talks being held in one room and a hackathon next door for devs only.
The advantage is that both happen alongside each other, so all people involved are guaranteed to be present. But the disadvantage was that we devs were drawn to the hacking room, while every hour or so one or two left to next door to hold a talk for the users -- so we'd pretty much never be all just there together to discuss something, with a background ruffle of last-minute slide edits and people leaving and coming back.
In the end we went back to having *just* "DevCon" aka hackathon events, because it was more enjoyable and productive for the hackers.
With that experience in mind, I think that, *if* we have a users' conference, we should indeed have the events back-to-back ... the "if" probably depending on the users' feedback.
And my clear vote would be for Berlin, naturally. Unless ... we could decide to visit Holger in Amsterdam, too ;)
~N
Hi Harald, all,
On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 10:11 PM, Harald Welte laforge@gnumonks.org wrote:
Another idea would be to split into a 'user day' and 'developer days' format. This is something the netfilter developer workshops have been using for many years, and from my limited insight quite successfully so. The "user day" is more like a traditional tech conference, with a large auditorium and talks oriented towards users / sysadmins / integrators of the software. The "developer days" are the invitation-only part, for known contributing developers only, similar to what we have at OsmoDevCon.
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.
It would be great to have a user part at OsmoDevCon and having them back to back is the best option IMHO - exactly for the reasons above.
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?
Not sure why public developer part can't be a part of the public user part? Lets just find a good name for it which doesn't contain word "user". :)
Hi Alexander,
On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 03:05:05PM +0300, Alexander Chemeris wrote:
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.
It would be great to have a user part at OsmoDevCon and having them back to back is the best option IMHO - exactly for the reasons above.
Happy to see you agree there :)
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?
Not sure why public developer part can't be a part of the public user part? Lets just find a good name for it which doesn't contain word "user". :)
Well, the topics are invariably different. A user (aka "operator") cares about configuration + running + monitoring [the software], while a developers care about code architecture, interfaces, testing, etc.
In general, there is not much overlap betwene those two groups, particularly not as their respective orgaization gets larger.
Hence my proposal to split the two. Of course it could e a "morning/afternoon", a "day 1/day 2" or a "2 tracks in parallel" split.
On Dec 13, 2016 2:15 AM, "Harald Welte" laforge@gnumonks.org wrote:
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?
Not sure why public developer part can't be a part of the public user part? Lets just find a good name for it which doesn't contain word "user". :)
Well, the topics are invariably different. A user (aka "operator") cares about configuration + running + monitoring [the software], while a developers care about code architecture, interfaces, testing, etc.
In general, there is not much overlap betwene those two groups, particularly not as their respective orgaization gets larger.
Hence my proposal to split the two. Of course it could e a "morning/afternoon", a "day 1/day 2" or a "2 tracks in parallel" split
On a second thought I do agree. Thank you for further explaining!
I personally believe parallel tracks make most sense to save everyone's time, but it's up to organizers to decide, because it puts additional load on them.
Please excuse typos. Written with a touchscreen keyboard.
-- Regards, Alexander Chemeris CEO Fairwaves, Inc. https://fairwaves.co
Hi all,
First, I think it's great you're considering doing this Harald. It's been exciting to see the user community develop around Osmocom projects, and I would be very interested in attending an in-person gathering.
My $0.02 on splitting. I think the premise makes sense, given the very different focuses of the two groups, but I'd encourage if possible not doing parallel tracks. In my experience with other conferences, parallel tracks wind up forcing participants who are interested in both to make difficult decisions, leading to people missing out on things. Doing a temporal split (day 1/2 or morning/afternoon) would be my preference, but of course you and the other developers would be bearing the brunt of the time burden!
At risk of bikeshedding, how about "OsmoCon" as a name for the entire event, with OsmoDevCon remaining the usual developer-only portion?
Thanks, Shaddi
On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 10:37 AM, Alexander Chemeris alexander.chemeris@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 13, 2016 2:15 AM, "Harald Welte" laforge@gnumonks.org wrote:
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?
Not sure why public developer part can't be a part of the public user part? Lets just find a good name for it which doesn't contain word "user". :)
Well, the topics are invariably different. A user (aka "operator") cares about configuration + running + monitoring [the software], while a developers care about code architecture, interfaces, testing, etc.
In general, there is not much overlap betwene those two groups, particularly not as their respective orgaization gets larger.
Hence my proposal to split the two. Of course it could e a "morning/afternoon", a "day 1/day 2" or a "2 tracks in parallel" split
On a second thought I do agree. Thank you for further explaining!
I personally believe parallel tracks make most sense to save everyone's time, but it's up to organizers to decide, because it puts additional load on them.
Please excuse typos. Written with a touchscreen keyboard.
-- Regards, Alexander Chemeris CEO Fairwaves, Inc. https://fairwaves.co
Hi Shaddi,
On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 10:43:00PM -0800, Shaddi Hasan wrote:
First, I think it's great you're considering doing this Harald. It's been exciting to see the user community develop around Osmocom projects, and I would be very interested in attending an in-person gathering.
Thanks! I think it is ver useful not only for the respective users (and developers) to gain more input on Osmocom related projects, but also equally interesting for us to get more insight into who actually usees the software in whcih context, with which goals, etc.
My $0.02 on splitting. I think the premise makes sense, given the very different focuses of the two groups, but I'd encourage if possible not doing parallel tracks. In my experience with other conferences, parallel tracks wind up forcing participants who are interested in both to make difficult decisions, leading to people missing out on things.
Yes, I wasn't advocating parallel tracks, I was merely iterating theoretical options. I think it would be too difficult both venue-wise, as well as speaker-wise, and of course the difficult choices imposed on at least some attendees as you pointed out.
Doing a temporal split (day 1/2 or morning/afternoon) would be my preference, but of course you and the other developers would be bearing the brunt of the time burden!
I don't see the actual event as the big burden, it's mostly the organizational matters regarding venue, catering, registrations, etc. that I'd expect to consume most of the time. And that luckily can be done at least to a large extent by non-developers.
At risk of bikeshedding, how about "OsmoCon" as a name for the entire event, with OsmoDevCon remaining the usual developer-only portion?
Good point. Unfortunately OSmocomBB already has an 'osmocon' program (the osmocom console program). Though the context should make it hard to mix-up, the programmer in me likes to not overload the global namespace ;)
On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 10:15:32AM +0100, Harald Welte wrote:
At risk of bikeshedding, how about "OsmoCon" as a name for the entire event, with OsmoDevCon remaining the usual developer-only portion?
Good point. Unfortunately OSmocomBB already has an 'osmocon' program (the osmocom console program). Though the context should make it hard to mix-up, the programmer in me likes to not overload the global namespace ;)
I really like the name "OsmoCon" as such, and unless people run on FAT OsmoCon and osmocon are different names? :)
On the meta meaning side, we're dropping from "Osmocom" the "com" part which means "communication", which is actually the most important part of the conference. OsmocomCon? OsmoComm? as in Osmocom Communication Conference...
No idea. OsmoCon still has the nicest ring to it.
Interestingly enough, there doesn't seem to be a naming conflict with events on chemical or biological topics (osmosis)...
~N
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
Hi all.
Latish response to this thread is no indication of lack of interest! I was travelling and then thinking somewhat about the response. Also, allow me to assume if you're reading, you've read the thread, so I'll dispense with quoting and inline commenting of contributions so far.
On "User" or "Dev":
I believe there may be a kind of third hybrid here. Yes I care about config, monitoring, running, and this leads to discovering both bugs and lacking features, which therefore leads to caring about code. Thus I've been slowly over the last year or so, making an attempt to get familiar with that. Please let me also say that the hospitality of the osmocom group and having had to opportunity have a one to one with certain key individuals at times has been an enormous help! Therefore I'm very happy with Harald's proposal, I would concur with others on avoiding a parallel event. That said, and also seeing that the response so far has been limited to the usual suspects (+Shaddi maybe), I might be a somewhat unique case in terms of user/dev cross over.
On OpenBSC etc al:
Yes, although I'm not dis-interested in the other Osmo projects, my main focus is of course the cellular infrastructure. So I do have an interest in attending the "dev" part on those projects, whereas attending the talks on other osmo project would be.. well, interesting but not warranting taking up space..
On Venue and organisation.
Berlin seems as good a place as any. Why break with tradition. If one needs to travel it's a reasonably easy place to get to and not so expensive to be in. As no users have replied yet, at this point it looks unlikely to find volunteers to help with registration, catering, although that might come on stream later. At this point, I can't confirm anything myself.
I wonder if there might be a sufficiently large group of Osmo Devs/Users/Fans at congress this year to warrant a brief meeting, say 30 mins to discuss a possible agenda (workshop/talk titles) of the potential user part of OsmoDevCon 2017?
Dear all,
for further planning, I have created a new project in the osmocom.org redmine. You can find it at https://osmocom.org/projects/osmo-dev-con/issues
Please feel free to add tickts or to add information to the existing tickets. Time is running, so we should try to align on the exact format, time and venue soon, so we can work on an announcement to be publsihed, etc.
Regards, Harald
Hi Keith,
On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 08:10:43PM +0100, Keith wrote:
I believe there may be a kind of third hybrid here.
of course. The point is not to introduce artificial barriers. It's just that there are some users/sysadmins that clearly are not concerned with or involved in development of the code. And that should be the biggest group of people, actually.
I wonder if there might be a sufficiently large group of Osmo Devs/Users/Fans at congress this year to warrant a brief meeting, say 30 mins to discuss a possible agenda (workshop/talk titles) of the potential user part of OsmoDevCon 2017?
We could do that, sure. Most of the "usual suspects" will be around at 33C3, I guess.
On 20 December 2016 01:22:43 CET, Harald Welte
30
mins to discuss a possible agenda (workshop/talk titles) of the potential user part of OsmoDevCon 2017?
We could do that, sure. Most of the "usual suspects" will be around at 33C3, I guess.
So, should we make a time for this to happen?
Dear all,
we're currently working towards scheduling the public day (OsmoCon) on April 21st and the invitation-only OsmoDevCon from April 22nd through 24th, 2017.
If you have any serious concerns with the dates above, please speak up now, while we still have a chance to change it.
Regards, Harald
Dear all,
thanks for the constructive discussion and feedback. The format and dates have now been settled:
* public OsmoCon on 21st of April, 2017 for users + operators some initial information at https://osmocom.org/projects/osmo-dev-con/wiki/OsmoCon2017 - official information will be launched once venue + schedule + website is clear
* private OsmoDevCon on 22nd through 24th of April 2017 for known contributors If you're interested in attending OsmoDevCon, please add your name to https://osmocom.org/projects/osmo-dev-con/wiki/OsmoDevCon2017#Requested until the end of January.
Looking forward to meeting all of you, Harald
-
Alexander Chemeris -
Harald Welte -
Keith -
Neels Hofmeyr -
Shaddi Hasan -
Sylvain Munaut