[andreagrandi]

Hi all,

It would be nice to organize a weekend like the Barcelona Long Weekend we (the Maemo Community) organized on October 2009. These two days should be completly organized by the community and for the community. No formal conferences or talks, but interactive activities and hacking sessions where you, the partecipant, are the main actor.

What about the content of these two days? We could have (for example) programming tutorials, Qt tutorials, hacking sessions on a specific task, round tables where a developer explains his difficoulties implementing a feature and the others help him, ecc...

I really think these two days will give one more reason for people to come to the MeeGo Conference in Dublin.

The first thing to do is spreading this and asking people (users, developers ecc...) what they would like to find during these two days. Once we've gathered some nice ideas we can organize them better.

I've prepared a page on the wiki where we'll add informations once we get new ideas or details about these two days. You can find the page here: http://wiki.meego.com/MeeGo_Conferen...ly_Bird_Events

So please post here you ideas and let's start the discussion

For any information you can contact me or Thomas Perl (we're both organizing this event). Of course if there are any other volunteers who want to help us they will be welcome!

[texrat]

I would love to see something built around community development/enhancement. More as I think about it.

[lcuk]

hey andreagrandi,

we had an *amazing* time in Barcelona and achieved so much in just a couple of days!
It would be excellent to get together and expand on those aspects.

the one potential issue I see with this is how would the participants be sponsored for extended hotel stays, obviously if flights are covered it does not really matter whether they arrive on a Friday or a Sunday, but for the hotel stay it would need sorting.

[andreagrandi]

Originally Posted by lcuk

hey andreagrandi,

we had an *amazing* time in Barcelona and achieved so much in just a couple of days!
It would be excellent to get together and expand on those aspects.

the one potential issue I see with this is how would the participants be sponsored for extended hotel stays, obviously if flights are covered it does not really matter whether they arrive on a Friday or a Sunday, but for the hotel stay it would need sorting.

let's see how many people are interested in these two days and if we're able to properly organize the weekend.

After this, I think that both Nokia and Intel could consider to extend the sponsorship for just 2 more nights.

The important thing is that we are able to add a strong value to an already interesting Conference.

[thp]

By the way, it would again be awesome to have the UX experts and graphical artists there and have a half day of focused productivity (paper prototypes, mock-ups, etc..) going on per project/application.

And of course, a hackathon going through the whole weekend, with status reports in the form of lightning talks at the end of each day. This would be a perfect opportunity for developers to finish or start projects that have been put on the back burner - especially with the density of knowledgeable people around

[jnwi]

Maybe it would be beneficial to start with some generic team building rather than just focus on strictly relevant topics? People could split into groups of 5 and go do something fun somewhere completely different. There could even be a few puzzles every team has to solve.

[andreagrandi]

Originally Posted by jnwi

Maybe it would be beneficial to start with some generic team building rather than just focus on strictly relevant topics? People could split into groups of 5 and go do something fun somewhere completely different. There could even be a few puzzles every team has to solve.

could you be more specific providing some example? I don't think I did understand what you mean :\

Thanks

[jnwi]

Originally Posted by andreagrandi

could you be more specific providing some example? I don't think I did understand what you mean :\

Thanks

Nothing extravagant. People could be placed into 5 person groups. Then team members could get to know each other for 5-10 minutes, after which there are some predetermined tasks that are scored.

A quiz, a practical challenge (for example: build the tallest tower with the materials that are provided), and a physical challenge (find the closest McDonald's and bring back a photo). Winning team gets something fun, like N9... stickers . (If Nokia/Intel get involved, maybe let them see some secret screenshots of minor features.)

Standard team-building bs that works surprisingly well. Then there would be MeeGo-related activities, after which the teams still have to get together for lunch the next day and talk about who else they've met.

[andreagrandi]

Originally Posted by jnwi

Nothing extravagant. People could be placed into 5 person groups. Then team members could get to know each other for 5-10 minutes, after which there are some predetermined tasks that are scored.

A quiz, a practical challenge (for example: build the tallest tower with the materials that are provided), and a physical challenge (find the closest McDonald's and bring back a photo). Winning team gets something fun, like N9... stickers . (If Nokia/Intel get involved, maybe let them see some secret screenshots of minor features.)

Standard team-building bs that works surprisingly well. Then there would be MeeGo-related activities, after which the teams still have to get together for lunch the next day and talk about who else they've met.

uhm.... I would like to organize something more developer/hacker oriented or maybe related to Maemo/MeeGo. Other activities can be funny, but at that point I don't think that Nokia/Intel would be interested sponsoring or helping with the event. Just my hopinion eh...

[jnwi]

Originally Posted by andreagrandi

uhm.... I would like to organize something more developer/hacker oriented or maybe related to Maemo/MeeGo. Other activities can be funny, but at that point I don't think that Nokia/Intel would be interested sponsoring or helping with the event. Just my hopinion eh...

How many participants are you expecting? Large groups get to know each other much better if they're divided randomly instead of by interest, and something like my suggestion shouldn't take more than an hour or two + lunch.