In order to build a community, we occasionally hold workshops for the NYC area. The vary from things for total beginners, to users of Debian, to advanced topics. Check below for information.
Our next workshop is November 12, 2009, Packaging/Bug Squashing Party
Workshop Index
Introduction to Debian packaging, October 15, 2009. Presented by Daniel Kahn Gillmor and Micah Anderson
Packaging concepts and worksession, followup to #1, November 12, 2009.
Other workshop ideas
- How to build packages from scratch
- BSPs
- Development parties
- General work/brainstorming time (barcamp kind of thing)
- Team-joining parties (or, forming locally-organized teams to maintain certain things)
- Usability brainstorming
- Installation help (probably this could happen at any of these)
- DD sponsorship and requirements-doing workshops.
- Lightning talks: best obscure {user, development} tools, intro to all VCSs,
- Backporting
- How to report bugs
- Tear apart a package, learn what all the bits do
- Tear apart a "wall of shame" package and explain what all it does wrong.
- Advanced packaging tools
- Boot process
Possible workshop locations: CSdept, Lime, ABCNoRio, IBM, Google, NYPLs, eyebeam, SFLC
We should try more targeted outreach, instead of mostly targeting towards people already in the free software world as we have been doing.
Space considerations
- Room arrangements:
- all one room? Several conference rooms?
- Projector?
- Whiteboard?
- Seating:
- How many table spots are there? (most people seem to prefer tables)
- How many free seats are there, couches, etc?
- Can we rearrange things? (of course, we'll put it all back and clean up)
- Seating to see the screen?
- Enough power in the room for 15-20 laptops? How many power strips do we need to bring? Extension cords?
- Network:
- How stable/fast is the uplink?
- Do you have wireless we can use?
- Is it possible to set up wired connections for some seats?
- Somewhere to plug in our Debian mirror (wired preferable)
- Time: Earliest time attendees can arrive? When do we need to leave? Organizers arrive early to set-up?
- Access: can people show up last minute and come in?
- Food: allowed?
Lessons Learned
- Make sure the mirror works, and everyone can use it (the NFS mount didn't work so well for everyone)
- Net connection did go slow when everyone was using it
- Get stable and testing? I bet some didn't use it because it only had unstable.
- Problem during introductions: computers were distracting from us getting to know each other.
- Plan on 15 minutes at the beginning to get computers set up.
- Expect it to take longer than you planned.
- Have a firm introduction, focusing people.
- If you want to make announcements, you have to try hard to make sure everyone is paying attention. You should do it at the very beginning, or right after the lecture portion. Don't forget to make your "we want you to give back" and stuff announcements here.
- If you want the second half to stay on track, you need to take decisive action.
- Don't forget to bring: List of names of attendees.