Fedora and LinuxDay 2010 Dornbirn

The Call for Papers for LinuxDay 2010 at Dornbirn, Austria is open now.

Wiki page : https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LinuxDay_Dornbirn_2010 Official web page : http://linuxday.at/

FOSDEM 2011

The next FOSDEM will take place in February 2011 (6. + 7. February 2011) at Brussels. Some details are already available : https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FOSDEM_2011 This post should encourage you to make an entry in your own agenda ;-)

FUDCon Zurich 2010

I will be there but only partially.

Fedora Events in Europe

There are some upcoming events in Europe (in or around Switzerland to be more precise) till the end of the year. FrOSCamp FrOSCamp is a multilingual two-day event taking place sometime on September 17-18 on the premises of the ETH Zurich in Switzerland that is completely free of charge. It's intended to be an exhibition, conference and hackfest featuring free and open source software as well as free content. While various people and projects will show, explain, demonstrate and develop further their works the event is free of any commercial offerings (save snacks and drinks). The event is open to any visitor but it's also strongly encouraged that projects take the chance and exchange ideas and experiences with other projects or hold the project's yearly meeting during the gathering. Wiki page : https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FrOSCamp_2010_Zurich Official web page : http://wiki.froscamp.org/Welcome LinuxDay Dornbirn

LinuxDay is a small event in Austria near the Swiss, German, and Lichtenstein border with around 300 visitors. There are talks, a little fair ground, lightning talks, and often spontaneous short workshops.

Wiki page : https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LinuxDay_Dornbirn_2010 Official web page : http://linuxday.at/ Those two events are looking for an event owner (aka a person who takes care of the Fedora presence/booth there). The event at Dornbirn is perfect for local ambassadors. Take your chance and become an event owner ;-)

Linuxwochen Vienna - Day 3

Around noon was the start of my talks. The first one was about Fedora 13 and its features. Kevin watched my back during that talk and helped me to answer the questions from the audience. One of the listeners was interested if it will be possible to install other distribution with boot.fedoraproject.org. boot.kernel.org (BKO) supports that feature. I think that it isn't our target to help people installing XYZ with the help of boot.fedoraproject.org that should BKO do. The Spin talk was right after the Fedora 13 talk. This talk showed what kind of Spins are available and how Spins can be made. For the future I think that this topic is more attractive for a workshop than a talk. Just listen how to do it is different that actually do it. The RPM packing workshop was placed right after the openSuSE Buildsystem workshop. There were 8 people in the audience. If the attendees not bring along their own hardware this causes problems because with Windows 7 you are not able to use rpmbuild. After the workshop Kevin answered some interesting questions about QA and the development in the Fedora world in general. Zoltan manned the booth almost alone for the whole day (Thanks again) because Kevin and I were engaged with the talks and the workshop. The appearance of Zoltan came during the awards show for the winners of the Linuxwochen quiz. We decided to donate your last Fedora t-shirt as a trophy and so he was in charge of giving over the t-shirt to the winner. I was lucky that the winner was slim and tall because this last t-shirt was in size m. For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant because I wasn't in the mood of eating potato salad again. The waiter used to work at Berne before he went to Vienna and because of that the time frame till we got a table was longer than in other restaurants. He talk about the famous "Bärengraben" and wanted to know how the new "Bärenpark" looks like. Summary: Duration 3 days (plus 2 days for traveling) Fedora Contributors: 3 Talks: 2 Workshops: 1 Kilometer to drive: 1746 (for me) Pictures: soon The Linuxwochen is an event that should be covered by local Austrian ambassadors . It's small and a good place to get in touch with other local groups.

Linuxwochen Vienna - Day 3

Around noon was the start of my talks. The first one was about Fedora 13 and its features. Kevin watched my back during that talk and helped me to answer the questions from the audience. One of the listeners was interested if it will be possible to install other distribution with boot.fedoraproject.org. boot.kernel.org (BKO) supports that feature. I think that it isn't our target to help people installing XYZ with the help of boot.fedoraproject.org that should BKO do. The Spin talk was right after the Fedora 13 talk. This talk showed what kind of Spins are available and how Spins can be made. For the future I think that this topic is more attractive for a workshop than a talk. Just listen how to do it is different that actually do it. The RPM packing workshop was placed right after the openSuSE Buildsystem workshop. There were 8 people in the audience. If the attendees not bring along their own hardware this causes problems because with Windows 7 you are not able to use rpmbuild. After the workshop Kevin answered some interesting questions about QA and the development in the Fedora world in general. Zoltan manned the booth almost alone for the whole day (Thanks again) because Kevin and I were engaged with the talks and the workshop. The appearance of Zoltan came during the awards show for the winners of the Linuxwochen quiz. We decided to donate your last Fedora t-shirt as a trophy and so he was in charge of giving over the t-shirt to the winner. I was lucky that the winner was slim and tall because this last t-shirt was in size m. For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant because I wasn't in the mood of eating potato salad again. The waiter used to work at Berne before he went to Vienna and because of that the time frame till we got a table was longer than in other restaurants. He talk about the famous "Bärengraben" and wanted to know how the new "Bärenpark" looks like. Summary: Duration 3 days (plus 2 days for traveling) Fedora Contributors: 3 Talks: 2 Workshops: 1 Kilometer to drive: 1746 (for me) Pictures: soon The Linuxwochen is an event that should be covered by local Austrian ambassadors . It's small and a good place to get in touch with other local groups.

Linuxwochen Vienna - Day 2

It's nice that the hotel is not that far away from the "Altes Rathaus". So we can sleep longer. In the morning the workshop thing started with Inkscape and the room was pretty full. Probably workshops are the new way to attract people. At Vienna this definitely works. Just walking through an exhibition is only consuming but during a workshop you are able to learn something and actively hit your teeth in a specific topic. Just looking at a command line on a big screen is completely different that typing in commands and see what will happen. I'm curious how many people will attend the RPM packaging workshop on Saturday afternoon. We have had a long conversation with Daniel Seuffert from *BSD about the "free and open source operating system world". The conclusion was that it's good that OpenSolaris, Linux, and *BSD are living in parallel because this "competition" let focus all groups on their main target. But nobody knows what will happen with OpenSolaris.

Linuxwochen Vienna - Day 1

The location of the Linuxwochen is cool. Like a lot of other building in Vienna, the "Altes Rathaus" is a baroque building and the rooms are awesome. There is plenty of Gold and red carpets around. The "fair ground" or to be more precise the "fair room" is not that big. The area is 150 m^2 for five projects, five commercial booths, and a coffee bar. The event was not very crowded but that was not bad because this way we had had more time talk with the guys from openSuSE. Their table is next to us and we "shared" some visitors who were interested in RPM packaging and stuff like that. Kevin and his experience about RPM packaging was very useful. He also offered to assists me during the RPM packing workshop on Saturday. I can't wish a better partner for that topic than him. Unfortunately we will not be able to switch our time slot with the guys from openSuSE. To bad, so they will start with the workshop about their Buildsystem and later on we will speak about building packages. Plenty of people asked questions about the upcoming release of Fedora. And like at every event there were questions about the support of nonfree graphics cards. You know those names...During the afternoon a guys stopped at your booth. This guy haven't hear anything about Linux, and then he decided to participate in the free software world. We will see if he really open up an account in FAS.

Linuxwochen Vienna - Day 0

Driving from Switzerland to Vienna by car is a long trip. Of course, are there planes flying and trains rolling. After the outbreak of the Eyjafjalla and the ash in the air, I was happy that I didn't bought a plane ticket. I'm not in the mood to hang around at an airport for several days and to wait till the ash is gone. I like it more to sit behind a steering wheel, drive for 8 hours , and to know when I will be home or at my destination. At the moment there is no ash around but I think that this can change every time. I arrived at 6 p.m. and met Zoltan in our hotel room. He arrived during the day because his trip was a bit shorter than mine. Before dinner we went for a little sight-seeing by foot in the inner circle of Vienna. I have to say that Vienna is definitely the right place for people who are interested in Middle Ages and the architecture of that period in time. Unfortunately I wasn't able to eat a real "Wiener Schnitzel" because the Italian restaurant we have chosen didn't have that meal on the card. So I will try it again during my stay at Vienna.

Linuxwochen Wien 2010

The Fedora Project will be present at the Linuxwochen 2010 at Vienna. Location : Altes Rathaus, Wipplingerstraße 8, Vienna, Austria Date: 6. bis 8. Mail 2010 Want to join us there? Add a note to the organization page in the Fedora wiki.

OpenExpo 2010 Berne

The OpenExpo will be hold at Wednesday, March 24th and Thursday 25th, 2010. We are not in a hurry about that event at the moment but I would like to know if you are planning to attend OpenExpo and/or help at the booth. I sent this beside the ambassadors-list to keep everybody in the loop. Please add a note to the organizing page in the Fedora Wiki if you will join us there.

LinuxDay 2009 Dornbirn

Once again the Fedora Project was present at LinuyDay (a small linux event near the German, Swiss, and Austrian border beside the Lake Constance). This year Matthias Summer went with me. It was the first time I met him. The event was hosted at the University of Applied Sciences of Dornbirn. The signs are very funny in this building: "Textilphysik" or "Näherei". Not very affiliate with informatics. Again we haven't had swag, t-shirts, or stand-up banners. Yaakov sent me a Fedora logo on a truck plan but unfortunately the one that was used on the table during FOSDEM (It's in a very bad shape). Gerold wasn't able to join us because he had to work. So,no stand-up banners. As usual there were not much visitors. That was not bad because this way Matthias and I had had more time to talk about different things. After that day my new fav tool is conky. This is a very light weight system monitor. There were a lot of new faces at the table of the other projects. It's good to see that because new brains brings new ideas and always talking about the same stuff gets unamusing ;-) There is not much more to tell than "Thank you" to Matthias for his company during that Saturday.

OpenExpo 2009 Winterthur - Tag 2

Wieder das gleiche Spiel für den Parkplatz: "Nein, ich bin kein Austeller. Projekt...", dann fahren sie auf den Parkplatz und viel Spass. Ja, wer die falsche Frage stellt, kriegt die richtige Antwort. Die "Sind Sie Besucher?"-Frage würde die richtige Antwort liefern und alle Unklarheiten beseitigen. Sandro, Marcus und Jörg waren schon da am Morgen, als ich angekommen bin, noch nicht ganz wach, aber immerhin anwesend ;-). Es ist, dass auch heute wieder nicht tausende Besucher zur TopSoft und der OpenExpo geströmt sind, sondern weniger als in Bern im Frühling und den letzten Jahren. Es war gut, denn Marcus mühte sich mit einem Paket ab, welches so ziemlich jede Hürde enthielt, die ein Paket enthalten kann. Während des Tages besuchte uns eine Schulklasse, aber dies war auch schon der Höhepunkt. Der grösste Teil des Tages verbrauchten wir mit den Networking mit anderen Projekten. Ein kleiner Auszug:

• Helping Handz werde ich mit meinen Möglichkeiten unterstützen. Auch wenn dort vieles noch unklar ist, aber die Idee dahinter finde ich sehr interessant.
• Fedora Swiss Respin oder wie auch immer, könnte eine Möglichkeit sein, um Fedora unter das Volk zu bringen. Auch wenn dies nicht der Fokus von Fedora ist, aber es wäre einen Versuch wert, da dort wo Open Source draufsteht nicht immer Open Source drin steht. Die Dinge sind alle vorhanden, es müsste nur ausführlich getestet werden.
• Zusammenarbeit mit CAcert, da digitale Sicherheit weitergeht als nur Zertifikate.

Erstaunlicherweise sind die Firmenstände immer sehr schnell leer, wenn die Veranstaltung vorbei ist. Und so verstopfen die dunklen Audi-Kombis die Autobahn ;-). OK, es sind nicht nur die, sondern das Problem war mehr die Uhrzeit als ich mit der Fahrt nach Hause begann. Einmal schalfen und dann geht es schon nach Rheinfelden an den FAD.

OpenExpo 2009 Winterthur - Tag 1

Der Standort der Halle ist etwas ausserhalb des Stadtzentrums. Die Anzugträger kamen in Scharen in ihren dunkelblauen Audi-Kombis. Ein VW Golf mit 310000 km fällt da schon merklich aus dem Rahmen. Ja, ich liefere Waren an und fahren dann später auf den anderen Parkplatz. Da ich sicher nicht auf einen Parkplatz fahren, wo ich bezahlen muss, stand der Wagen den ganzen Tag auf dem richtigen Parkplatz, sprich vor der Halle. Irgendwo muss man ja die Wertsachen sicher verwahren. Wie immer kam Jörg pünktlich zur Messehalle und hatte die Medien und die Banner im Gepäck. Der Stand war in der gleiche Reihe, wie im letzten Jahr, nur ein bisschen weiter hinten. Gentoo, KDE und Ubuntu waren unsere Nachbaren. Das Insel-System mit vier Projekten zusammen wurde beibehalten, auch wenn immer noch mit den Tisch und den vier Stühlen gearbeitet wird. Schon lange versuchen wir mit Hilfe der Feedback-Formulare Stehtische zu erhalten, da sich so das ganze Erscheinungsbild verändern würde und die Projekte (mich eingeschlossen) weniger dazu veranlassen würde zu bloggen oder zu hacken. Es würde auf die Besucher offener wirken, da es aber nur wenig Besucher hatte, spielt es nicht so eine Rolle. Ja, der grosse Besucheransturm blieb aus und so bliebt mehr Zeit sich mit den Projekten zu unterhalten. Die Diskussionen über die Verbesserung der Welt kann natürlich nicht zu kurz, aber wir beginnen bei uns selber zuerst mit den Veränderungen. Oder bei neugierigen Besuchern, die finden, dass auf ihrem Acer One, oder so ähnlich, das Limpus (irgendetwas, was auf Fedora 8 basiert), nicht das richtige für ihn sein. Und er Fedora möchte...es artete in einer mehrstündigen Installationsmarathon aus, denn Fedora 11 hat einen Installer-Bug, der es auf die Live-CD geschafft hat. Der Abend verbrauchten wir am Social Event und liessen und von freier Musik berieseln. Da wir um 22.00 herausgeworfen wurden, gingen wir zurück zum Pfadiheim. Der Rasenmäh-Roboter war gerade bei der Arbeit und faszinierte die meisten, denn das Ding mäht den Rasen automatisch, leert sich automatisch und läd sich auch automatisch auf. Das der Roboter nicht gestohlen wird, besitzt der eine GSM-Verbindung und kann seinen Besitzer alamieren. Interessante Sache.

OpenExpo 2009 Winterthur - Tag 0

Das erste Mal bin ich schon am Vorabend nach Winterthur gefahren, damit ich am Morgen nicht um 06.00 abfahren musste. Die Fahrt ausserhalb der Rushhour auf der meist befahrenen Autobahn der Schweiz war recht entspannend. Und mein N810 leitet mich mit den Karten von Openstreetmap sicher zum Pfadiheim in Winterthur. Carlos war wieder so freundlich, dass er eine günstige und zweckmässige Unterkunft organisiert hat (er wurde fast ein bisschen dazu genötigt). Sven von Amarok war schon da, jedoch sonst niemand, so verbrachten wir den Abend im Aufenthaltsraum und erledigten unsere eigenen Sache. Das Pfadiheim ist nicht so, wie ich Pfadiheime in Erinnerung hatte...Industrieküche, sanitäre Installationen, die keine Wünsche offen lassen und schöne Schalfräume. Mit Doppelzimmern würde es fast in die Kategorie 3-Sterne-Hotel fallen.

OpenExpo Winterthur 23.-24. September 2009

The next OpenExpo will take place at Winterthur (Switzerland) from 24th till 25th of September 2009. Yes, that's next week. If you will be there and want to give a hand at the booth, please add yourself to the list of attendees.

FUDCon-Präsentationen

This article was moved: http://fabian-affolter.ch/blog/index.php/fudcon-praesentationen

Patch

This article was moved: http://fabian-affolter.ch/blog/index.php/patch

FUDCon EMEA, where?

The exact location of the FUDCon EMEA 2009 will be: Marshall-Haus at the 'Messegelände unter dem Funkturm'. But I guess that there will be some signs which shows the way from the LinuxTag exhibition halls to FUDCon.

Fedora Painting Wall

The 'Fedora Painting Wall' for FUDCon EMEA is ready. The size is huge (approx. 840 mm x 4000 mm).