[openbeos] Re: Waltercon 07

Hi,
Participation at the "village of associations" is probably too much work for the small french community.
At least, i will probably go there as an observer to see what is possible to do in a futur edition.
Two weeks ago, i went to the 8th Libre Software Meeting (http://www.rmll.info) at Amiens, already discussed in this old thread.
Here are my thoughts about this event. But first, some informations to give an idea of what is it :
Libre Software Meeting (LSM) is one of the biggest open source event in France (if not the biggest). This event usually gather more than 1000 attendees. This year it was even more, with about 2000 peoples in four days. Maybe three main reasons for this success : 

- relative proximity from Paris
- some well known speakers like Alan Cox
- and the increasing interest in open source in France.

This event host differents kinds of conferences around free software:
- scientific conferences more dedicated to researchers (use of free software in medical research for example) - technical sessions involving differents projects around a common theme, with a different one each day. For example, virtualization and containers in the Linux kernel. - technical sessions organised by differents open source projects or community, especially for developpers (around a language like ruby or a database like firebird for example). - non-technical conferences around standard file format, free software philosophy, licenses or translation... - some workshops to present how to install or use some well known open source projects (open office, Firefox...) - a village where user groups and communities can get a stand to meet their users and where people can connect to internet (with a WIFI network)
Some conferences are dedicated to enterprises, education and public administrations.
LSM usually take place in a different french university each year. This give a lot of rooms of differents size for conferences. There is also some low cost housing in student rooms (on reservation, limited number of places). In some universities, those room may be less comfortable than a german youth hostel ;-) (but in fact not "tested" as i leave near this year's event). 

All conferences are free for all (from end-users to kernel developpers).

Now, back to Haiku.
An haiku event at LSM could have many advantages for the small french haiku community : - increasing Haiku's visibility in France. Except mmu_man's presentations in the south-east, nothing much happens elsewhere. - LSM provide conference rooms for free and some low cost housing. An important advantage compared to an haiku only event. - maybe recruiting of new developpers. As the event take place in a university at the end of the academic year, a lot of students take part in LSM. 

I see two main drawbacks :
- most of the event happens on work days, so it could be more difficult for haiku developpers to come (compared to a week-end). - the event could take place anywhere in france. Sometimes it will be near an haiku developper, but sometimes it will not.
Given all those facts, i think we should consider organizing some haiku's conferences at LSM in a future edition.
The next event has not yet been announced. So, we still have time to think about this. 

Olivier

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