9 Jan
2012
9 Jan
'12
6:31 p.m.
Hi All,
This past Wine conference, while great fun as always, was not as well
attended as Wine conferences in the past.
So I would like to stir up trouble by suggesting we rethink WineConf.
For those that have not attended, the Wine conference has been a mostly
annual affair since 2002. It is open to all, but is advertised as being
aimed at Wine developers. About 35 people attend each year. It's been
in Minnesota about every 3rd year, and is otherwise 'normally' somewhere
in Europe.
I see the primary goal as creating human bonds between otherwise
anonymous people (aka going to the pub). It's a bonus if it also spurs
resolution to tricky issues, or motivates people to get more done.
So I'd like to ask folks to brain storm with me.
How could Wineconf be different? If you've never been, what would
encourage you to come?
If you've been to a technical conference recently that you thought was
well done, what did they do well? Anything we could emulate?
Any other ideas, or suggestions?
Cheers,
Jeremy
10 Jan
10 Jan
5:26 a.m.
On 01/09/2012 08:31 PM, Jeremy White wrote:
Hi All,
If you've been to a technical conference recently that you thought was
well done, what did they do well? Anything we could emulate?
I've gave you
some of this feedback in person at WineConf in France.
First, as long as it is aimed at Wine hackers, that's who'll show up.
The stagnation in attendance is, therefor, more an indication of the
state of wine hackers than it is of the conference. What I'd suggest:
1. Split the days. First day aimed at hackers, second day at users. Have
a better defined schedule for that second day, so people would have an
idea what to expect.
2. For the hacker's day, I expected the "free form" to take on the form
of small working groups. For example, in France, I expected to have some
time where Aric and I could sit on a laptop together and actually hack
BiDi into a better working state. The conference didn't leave enough
room for such an activity.
3. Have the schedule and location ride another conference (similar to
the co-op we did with Samba in Germany). Either that, or schedule the
conference at a place that has a strong local LUG. The conference at
Germany had a great attendance, not only of Samba hackers, but also of
local Linux enthusiasts who took the opportunity to attend. Having a
non-Minnesota US conference might help, where there is an established
LUG that will be interested to tag along.
Any other ideas, or suggestions?
On a practical note, I suggested to help organize a conference in
Jerusalem. I had a specific location in mind, which is extremely close
(easy walking distances) to the pubs and restaurants of the center of
the city, and it's a combination of hotel and youth hostel, so prices
can be expected to be cheap(er, at least in off-season). Israel at
large, and Jerusalem in particular, have established LUGs that will
probably contribute a lot of fresh eyeballs. Let me know if you want me
to find out more.
Shachar
--
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com
4:17 p.m.
New subject: [Wine] Rethinking WineConf
Jeremy White <jwhite(a)codeweavers.com> wrote:
the Wine conference has been a mostly annual affair
since 2002 ...
It's been in Minnesota about every 3rd year, and is otherwise
'normally' somewhere in Europe.
How could Wineconf be different? If you've never been, what would
encourage you to come?
One thing that would encourage me to come would be holding it in
Portland, Oregon. Even Seattle or San Francisco is too far away.
3:23 p.m.
Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 6:07 am Post subject:
If you really want users to come, I suggest you change the second sentence on
http://wiki.winehq.org/WineConf. Right now it sends a very clear message that users are
not the least bit welcome.
/me winces. I wrote that text; and I never intended it to make anyone
feel unwelcome. The thinking when I wrote it was to give fair warning
that the topics would be primarily developer oriented.
I've amended that text.
So then let's imagine that users now feel welcome, and they come in
droves. Aside from going to the pub, what would make for a good conference?
Cheers,
Jeremy
4:22 p.m.
Users coming to Wineconf will likely want to hear about Wine's development;
what improvements they can expect, the progress on their favourite apps,
etc.
I suspect a great deal of users will also want to share their ideas on what
they feel is important in further developments.
J. Leclanche
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 3:23 PM, Jeremy White <jwhite(a)codeweavers.com>wrote;wrote:
Posted: Tue
Jan 10, 2012 6:07 am Post subject:
If you really want users to come, I suggest you change the second
sentence on
http://wiki.winehq.org/WineConf. Right now it sends a very
clear message that users are not the least bit welcome.
/me winces. I wrote that text; and I never intended it to make anyone
feel unwelcome. The thinking when I wrote it was to give fair warning
that the topics would be primarily developer oriented.
I've amended that text.
So then let's imagine that users now feel welcome, and they come in
droves. Aside from going to the pub, what would make for a good
conference?
Cheers,
Jeremy
4:44 p.m.
On 9 January 2012 18:31, Jeremy White <jwhite(a)codeweavers.com> wrote:
So I'd like to ask folks to brain storm with me.
How could Wineconf be different? If you've never been, what would
encourage you to come?
Another angle on this might be making some changes to WineConf, but
also making a concerted effort to make sure Wine is well represented
at events many developers and users already attend such as FOSDEM and
OSCON.
Alex
10:58 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 5:44 PM, Alex Bradbury <asb(a)asbradbury.org> wrote:
Another angle on this might be making some changes to
WineConf, but
also making a concerted effort to make sure Wine is well represented
at events many developers and users already attend such as FOSDEM and
OSCON.
In that regard, let me say: this year I am coorganizing the
CrossDesktop DevRoom at FOSDEM and I am truly disappointed we have not
received a single talk proposal about Wine, even though I sent the
call for talks and a reminder to this list.
With my open source developer hat on, an introductory talk on Wine
development would be very appealing to me.
Also, a talk (or maybe more than one) for third-party ISVs which want
to make sure their applications work with Wine would also be nice.
At work we seriously considered Wine for a big product which uses
embedded virtualization that could probably be replaced with Wine, but
we didn't really have a clue where to get started or what we could
achieve in 1 year if we put a few people to hack on Wine. Expectations
were so unclear management was not in the mood to throw a few
thousands to hire CodeWeavers or any Wine hacker in Europe for a
preliminary study.
--
Pau Garcia i Quiles
http://www.elpauer.org
(Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)
26 Jul
26 Jul
12:54 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Pau Garcia i Quiles
<pgquiles(a)elpauer.org> wrote:
In that regard, let me say: this year I am
coorganizing the
CrossDesktop DevRoom at FOSDEM and I am truly disappointed we have not
received a single talk proposal about Wine, even though I sent the
call for talks and a reminder to this list.
I didn't see that post, and I can't find it in gmail, nor in
http://marc.info/?a=110678333400002&r=1&w=2
With my open source developer hat on, an introductory
talk on Wine
development would be very appealing to me.
Also, a talk (or maybe more than one) for third-party ISVs which want
to make sure their applications work with Wine would also be nice.
At work we seriously considered Wine for a big product which uses
embedded virtualization that could probably be replaced with Wine, but
we didn't really have a clue where to get started or what we could
achieve in 1 year if we put a few people to hack on Wine. Expectations
were so unclear management was not in the mood to throw a few
thousands to hire CodeWeavers or any Wine hacker in Europe for a
preliminary study.
I've been involved in several efforts to use wine in commercial products,
I might be able to put something together.
At the very least, I should update http://kegel.com/wine/isv/ a bit more.
- Dan
1:05 p.m.
On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 5:54 AM, Dan Kegel <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Pau Garcia i Quiles
<pgquiles(a)elpauer.org> wrote:
D'oh! Looks like I was fooled by a long-delayed message delivery. The
message I replied to is from *six months* ago. I've gotten several
of those from winehq in the last day or so, I should have checked
the date.
- Dan
10 Jan
10 Jan
10 p.m.
On Mon, Jan 09, 2012 at 12:31:11PM -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
Hi All,
This past Wine conference, while great fun as always, was not as well
attended as Wine conferences in the past.
So I would like to stir up trouble by suggesting we rethink WineConf.
For those that have not attended, the Wine conference has been a mostly
annual affair since 2002. It is open to all, but is advertised as being
aimed at Wine developers. About 35 people attend each year. It's been
in Minnesota about every 3rd year, and is otherwise 'normally' somewhere
in Europe.
I see the primary goal as creating human bonds between otherwise
anonymous people (aka going to the pub). It's a bonus if it also spurs
resolution to tricky issues, or motivates people to get more done.
So I'd like to ask folks to brain storm with me.
How could Wineconf be different? If you've never been, what would
encourage you to come?
If you've been to a technical conference recently that you thought was
well done, what did they do well? Anything we could emulate?
Any other ideas, or suggestions?
- Users ... as this was brought up
Reality check: Wine users will not travel 100s of kms to a standalone conference.
This would make sense only if we attach wineconf to another general conference
- Attaching to other conferences?
We do not really share much with other projects (please do not bring up Samba: we
don't),
but perhaps attaching to general conferences...
General conferences like FOSDEM (where other projects run Developer Rooms)...
or LinuxCon with their specific tracks.
This might be workable... but I do not think it will bring more people.
- Changing the style...
A talk / discussion only wineconf is not really flying anymore... we don't have that
much
talks.
The workshop elements we introduced in the last years are however more the direction to
go.
So something of a workshop is my best bet at keeping interest.
Question is whether we can find workshop style things besides "fixing the
testsuite" that attract
all developers? I think that will be hard.
- Perhaps a shrinking audience is unavoidable.
This is a bit of a fact that some projects I have been in found hard to cope with...
That after
the interest peak it might go down.
Ciao, Marcus
10:05 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 11:00 PM, Marcus Meissner <marcus(a)jet.franken.de> wrote:
The workshop elements we introduced in the last years are however more the direction to
go.
So something of a workshop is my best bet at keeping interest.
Question is whether we can find workshop style things besides "fixing the
testsuite" that attract
all developers? I think that will be hard.
I think that a workshop 'How to start coding for wine' workshop would
do good. That might attract programmers that really want to help out,
but as you probably all know, the learning curve for wine is pretty
steep.
Matijn
11 Jan
11 Jan
4:34 a.m.
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 12:00 AM, Marcus Meissner <marcus(a)jet.franken.de>wrote;wrote:
- Attaching to other conferences?
We do not really share much with other projects (please do not bring up
Samba: we don't),
What about Mono? .NET applications that use P/Invoke won't ever work
outside Windows without Wine, so they kind of need us, and many native
applications now also use .NET, so we kind of need them. Unlike with Samba,
the licenses are compatible, and a combined/attached conference might
attract some of their developers to help us out.
4:44 a.m.
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 8:34 PM, Damjan Jovanovic <damjan.jov(a)gmail.com> wrote:
What about Mono? .NET applications that use P/Invoke
won't ever work outside
Windows without Wine, so they kind of need us, and many native applications
now also use .NET, so we kind of need them. Unlike with Samba, the licenses
are compatible, and a combined/attached conference might attract some of
their developers to help us out.
From what I recall, the Mono people don't really
intend
to support those apps; they're more into supporting people
who are writing new apps from scratch.
- Dan
17 Jan
17 Jan
7:30 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Dan Kegel <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
From what I recall, the Mono people don't really intend
to support those apps; they're more into supporting people
who are writing new apps from scratch.
There needs to be some mechanism to provide for the legacy user, even if
they don't want to pick up the ball and run with it.
--
Steven Edwards
"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is
an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
7:49 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Steven Edwards <winehacker(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Dan Kegel
<dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
Well, sure. I was replying to a suggestion that we tack
wineconf onto the side of, say, http://monospace.us/
by saying that I didn't think they'd be interested.
Do you think they would be?
From what I recall, the Mono people don't
really intend
to support those apps; they're more into supporting people
who are writing new apps from scratch.
There needs to be some mechanism to provide for the legacy user, even if
they don't want to pick up the ball and run with it. 
8:25 p.m.
On January 17, 2012 at 8:49 PM Dan Kegel <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
Well, sure. I was replying to a suggestion that we tack
wineconf onto the side of, say, http://monospace.us/
by saying that I didn't think they'd be interested.
Do you think they would be?
Well, if they would, it would be the greatest
thing since sliced bread IMHO. Someone please ask.
best regards,
Jakob
10:21 p.m.
Well, sure. I was replying to a suggestion that we
tack
wineconf onto the side of, say, http://monospace.us/
by saying that I didn't think they'd be interested.
Do you think they would be?
Well, most of them are not very interested in Wine, but they're not
hostile to it either. So it's not impossible. No harm in asking the
organizers.
11:10 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 04:21:47PM -0600, Vincent Povirk wrote:
one conference of two sets of groups that are not that interested in each others work
might share the organisation burden ... but its not that useful i guess
to attract more people to wineconf :/
Ciao, Marcus
Well, sure. I
was replying to a suggestion that we tack
wineconf onto the side of, say, http://monospace.us/
by saying that I didn't think they'd be interested.
Do you think they would be?
Well, most of them are not very interested in Wine, but they're not
hostile to it either. So it's not impossible. No harm in asking the
organizers.
11 Jan
11 Jan
7:31 a.m.
On January 10, 2012 at 11:00 PM Marcus Meissner <marcus(a)jet.franken.de> wrote:
- Perhaps a shrinking audience is unavoidable.
This is a bit of a fact that some projects I have been in found hard to
cope with... That after
the interest peak it might go down.
And if you are looking for a reason, one is that interest in the Windows
platform itself is waning.
Maybe if Wine picked up the Metro glove, interest in Wine as a whole could be
rekindled.
//Jakob
3:23 p.m.
Am Dienstag, 10. Januar 2012, 23:00:38 schrieb Marcus Meissner:
- Users ... as this was brought up
Reality check: Wine users will not travel 100s of kms to a standalone
conference.
This would make sense only if we attach wineconf to another general
conference
An unconventional thought crossed my mind: Attach it to one of those
gigantic
Lan parties like the DreamHack. A big number of private users are gamers, this
might catch some of them.
Of course we can't simultanously attach it to a Lan party and a classic
conference, but we can variate things over the years.
12 Jan
12 Jan
8:36 a.m.
New subject: [Wine] Rethinking WineConf
Am 11.01.2012 16:23, schrieb Stefan Dösinger:
Am Dienstag, 10. Januar 2012, 23:00:38 schrieb Marcus
Meissner:
We used wine to get COD2
running on Vista with wined3d and an intel chip
on a private LAN party. It worked, but I couldn't comment on the
rendering quality anymore. Well the game is old and I think a normal
windows user would never try something like this. So using wine at LAN
parties might be a good idea to get more attention and to arrive new users.
- Users ... as this was brought up
Reality check: Wine users will not travel 100s of kms to a standalone
conference.
This would make sense only if we attach wineconf to another general
conference
An unconventional thought crossed my mind: Attach it to one of those
gigantic
Lan parties like the DreamHack. A big number of private users are gamers, this
might catch some of them.
Of course we can't simultanously attach it to a Lan party and a classic
conference, but we can variate things over the years. 
14 Jan
14 Jan
10:58 a.m.
Hello,
most of the answers i read so far were about the "content" of wineconf. Here are
two different ideas:
1. when i looked around a wineconf i noticed that wineconf 2012 is not fixed jet. I know
lots of companies here in Germany who ask their employee to announce the plans for the
holidays within the first two month of the year or even earlier. How is this handled in
the rest of the world? This might become a problem for developers their job is not working
on wine. Wineconf may be within their holidays or shortly after. They may need to take
some days of for travel and can not, ...
2. Think about the time of the year. Last year wineconf was earlier as the two year
before. <joke> It was during Octoberfest in Munich. Where do you like to got better?
</joke>. What about conflict with courses/exams at university.
Or just ask (in private mails?) the members of wineconf 2010, who stayed away in 2011 what
may need to change for 2012 to see them again. What about GSOC workers, have they all been
at wineconf? These are the next generation wine developer.
Regards
Stefan
17 Jan
17 Jan
8:43 p.m.
Thank you for all the replies. Here is what I've taken away so far:
1. Our intro text was overtly hostile to users. I've removed that.
2. Potential attendees want a clear agenda.
3. Coordinating with another event remains interesting.
So, exploring #3 a bit further - what if we asked for our own track
within FOSDEM 2013? (I presume that would be February 2013 in Brussels)
It would let us all get together, allow us to have a few sessions
targeted at non Wine developers, and could also save us some hassle.
And I like Belgian beer.
Would we lose some of the joy of having our very own conference?
We could try it once and go back to the old format if it doesn't work out.
Of course, given our (so far) non participation in FOSDEM 2012, we may
not be welcome... :-/
Cheers,
Jeremy
9:01 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Jeremy White <jwhite(a)codeweavers.com> wrote:
So, exploring #3 a bit further - what if we asked for
our own track
within FOSDEM 2013? (I presume that would be February 2013 in Brussels)
It would let us all get together, allow us to have a few sessions
targeted at non Wine developers, and could also save us some hassle.
And I like Belgian beer.
FOSDEM was the only conference mentioned by more than one person in my
little survey :-)
I see Fosdem 2012 has a mono room:
http://weblog.savanne.be/470-mono-developer-room-at-fosdem-2012-cfp
I wonder if that would be a model to, um, emulate.
- Dan
18 Jan
18 Jan
11:20 a.m.
Hey,
Op 17-01-12 22:01, Dan Kegel schreef:
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Jeremy
White<jwhite(a)codeweavers.com> wrote:
Yeah there's some Xorg stuff going on as well. I'm visiting fosdem 2012
for that reason.
Would be interesting to know if any wine devs go this year. Might meet
up, and drink
something non-alcoholic together. I'm only there saturday though.
~Maarten
So, exploring #3 a bit further - what if we asked
for our own track
within FOSDEM 2013? (I presume that would be February 2013 in Brussels)
It would let us all get together, allow us to have a few sessions
targeted at non Wine developers, and could also save us some hassle.
And I like Belgian beer.
FOSDEM was the only conference mentioned by more than one
person in my
little survey :-)
I see Fosdem 2012 has a mono room:
http://weblog.savanne.be/470-mono-developer-room-at-fosdem-2012-cfp
I wonder if that would be a model to, um, emulate.
- Dan
12:25 a.m.
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:43 PM, Jeremy White <jwhite(a)codeweavers.com> wrote:
Thank you for all the replies. Here is what I've
taken away so far:
1. Our intro text was overtly hostile to users. I've removed that.
2. Potential attendees want a clear agenda.
3. Coordinating with another event remains interesting.
So, exploring #3 a bit further - what if we asked for our own track
within FOSDEM 2013? (I presume that would be February 2013 in Brussels)
It would let us all get together, allow us to have a few sessions
targeted at non Wine developers, and could also save us some hassle.
And I like Belgian beer.
I cannot speak for the FOSDEM organization, but I seriously doubt you
will get a full track on the first year with no single talk about Wine
in the past.
Would we lose some of the joy of having our very own
conference?
IMHO having WineConf as part of FOSDEM would dilute WineConf. FOSDEM
is just too big.
Having Wine-related talks at FOSDEM would be perfectly fine, though,
and I would even encourage you to ask for a keynote (you have to
submit the keynote proposal in October, IIRC).
Of course, given our (so far) non participation in
FOSDEM 2012, we may
not be welcome... :-/
This should not be a problem at all. Wine fits perfectly in the
contents of the CrossDesktop DevRoom. I cannot say there will be a
CrossDesktop DevRoom next year but I'm 99% sure there will be.
Unfortunately for you, we have received confirmation from all the
speakers in the CrossDesktop DevRoom already. Would you be interested
in a slot in case we receive a last-minute cancellation?
--
Pau Garcia i Quiles
http://www.elpauer.org
(Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)
4301
days inactive
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25 comments
17 participants
participants (17)
-
Alex Bradbury -
Damjan Jovanovic -
Dan Kegel -
gurketsky -
Jakob Eriksson -
Jeremy White -
Jerome Leclanche -
Maarten Lankhorst -
Marcus Meissner -
Matijn Woudt -
Pau Garcia i Quiles -
perryh＠pluto.rain.com -
Shachar Shemesh -
Stefan Dösinger -
Stefan Leichter -
Steven Edwards -
Vincent Povirk