Debian Med sprint meeting in Southport

After the success of the last Debian Med sprint meeting in Lübeck we propose to organise a similar event in early 2012. This page will be used to plan the event and record outcomes of the meeting.

The main organiser is Tim Booth (tbooth_ceh.ac.uk), the lead NEBC Bio-Linux developer.

Location/Date/Capacity

The sprint will run from the 27th-29th January 2012 (Friday to Sunday). The main part of event will begin on Saturday morning.

The venue will be the Dukes Folly Hotel Southport, UK. This is an independent hotel that will provide a similar atmosphere to the one we enjoyed in Lübeck, and we will have the place to ourselves for the duration. The hotel has only 17 bedrooms, but to accommodate up to 30 of us working in the daytime will not be a problem. For overspill, other hotels are nearby - see below. For after hours, our hotel has a fully licensed bar and Southport is also well supplied with places to eat and drink. Unfortunately, the famous funfair will not be open at this time of year.

Signing up/Cost

Please add your name and other details below. You will need to contact the hotel directly TODO: confirm details and required deposit and reserve your own room. There is a flat rate per person of £35 per night for bed and breakfast. On the Saturday and Sunday the hotel will provide refreshments plus a full buffet lunch for £10 per person. So if you are staying for three nights the total cost to pay will be £125. For dinner each night and for lunch on the Friday/Monday we will make our own arrangements.

Getting to Southport

The Hotel is very near to the main rail station in Southport. There are three international airports nearby:

Manchester Airport - trains run hourly direct from Manchester Airport Station to Southport, taking around 90 minutes

Liverpool John Lennon Airport - short bus or taxi ride into Liverpool, then trains run half-hourly to Southport

Blackpool Airport - is technically the closest, but there is no direct transport link to Southport, only a bus service via Preston.

For all public transport journeys in the UK, you should check http://www.transportdirect.info.

Overspill accommodation

If we end up filling the hotel, people may want to consider:

Talbot Hotel - Just around the corner, cheap. No on-line booking available.

Rosedale Hotel - Small hotel opposite Talbot. No on-line booking available.

Brittania Price of Wales Hotel - Large hotel nearer to station. Headline prices are high but promotional offers may reduce the cost to under ~£43 per night. See website for bookings.

Attendees

No

Name

Email

Organisation (Interests)

Living in

Arrival at

Departure at

1

Steffen Möller

<moeller>

U Lübeck (Debian)

Lübeck (D)

2

Andreas Tille

<tille>

Debian

Wernigerode (D)

3

Tim Booth

tbooth_ceh.ac.uk

NERC (Bio-Linux)

Oxford (UK)

Friday

Monday

4

Alan Williams

U Manchester (Taverna)

Manchester (UK)

5

Richard Holland

richard.holland_eaglegenomics.com

Eagle Genomics (NGS, Cloud)

Southampton (UK)

Friday

Monday

People to invite

Other than those who follow the Debian Med packaging list, there are some other Debian people who maintain related packages. From my (Tim B ) personal point of view I'd like to invite some Ubuntu MoTU maintainers - not necessarily ones who just do biomed stuff. I'd also like to bring in upstream authors of actively developed software. For eg., EMBOSS was represented by Peter Rice last time. Qiime is of particular interest. Galaxy and its dependencies warrants a packaging team all to itself.

Sponsorship

Without wanting to taint the non-corporate volunteer nature of Debian, attending these events is expensive. I'm hoping to get some sponsorship. I have a couple of ideas but suggestions are welcome.

Agenda

* Interaction of with Ubuntu (MOTU) maintainers * Interaction with upstream authors * Review of latest developments

It's worth noting for those not in the know that there is some symbiosis between this sprint event and the annual BOSC Codefest which is held before the ISMB conference. Though the meetings are quite different in focus, they have recently engaged many of the same people and projects.