[Grok-dev] future sprint opportunities

[Uli Fouquet]

Hi there,

Martijn Faassen wrote:

> After EuroPython this year there are two days of sprinting (the 
> conference is 4 days this year!). I'm going to be there and I'd be happy 
> to work on Grok related stuff with people.
> 
> Next on the agenda in September is the DZUG zope conference. There are 
> sprints connected to it and I'm currently reviewing my travel plans for 
> this event.

Will there also be a Grok-dedicated sprint? If yes, then it again will
only be two days, right? So, anybody interested in doing a sprint there?

> Then Uli's been researching a possible dedicated Grok sprint in October 
> somewhere in Germany.

Right. For everybody to know what's going on there (I informed Martijn
in advance): Aroldo and I wanted to organize another Neanderthal-sprint
in Cologne this year. Unfortunately we cannot use the usual location
(GfU), as they already spent their Zope-related sponsoring funds for
Plone this year :-(

I therefore looked around for an alternative location and found an old
farmhouse located in "Teutoburger Wald", half an hour to the east of
Osnabrück near a little Village called "Bad Essen".

Hm, difficult to describe, you may have a look here:

http://maps.google.de/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=de&geocode=&q=Am+Mahnmal+7,+Bad+Essen&sll=52.307075,8.297038&sspn=0.013172,0.033002&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Am+Mahnmal+7,+49152+Bad+Essen,+Osnabr%C3%BCck,+Niedersachsen&t=h&z=17

It's the house with the marker.

The farmhouse is owned by some clients of me, a friendly couple that
runs a multimedia company (Fafalter) in Düsseldorf, and use the
farmhouse as a weekend cottage. They are nice enough to offer their
farmhouse for a sprint for one week.

I happily accepted a friendly invitation to this place for one day and
explored it a bit deeper. As a result I'd say that it is not impossible
to do a sprint there, but it will be less comfy compared to Cologne. We
would have to share a DSL connection with limited bandwith (2 MBit
downstream, 512 KBit upstream), a kitchen and a large central room. We
would not have a second room to split in workgroups or similar.

The house is very solid, very old (few centuries) and surrounded by a
large beautiful garden and forrests. It's heated by underfloor heating
and one or two fireplaces (yes, real fireplaces with woodfiring). We
could use up to two bedrooms in the house, but there are also a hostel
and a hotel (at least the hostel with very reasonable prices) in
footwalking distance.

A real problem is the location far away from public transport, shops,
etc. The next train station is about 20 mins away by car. That means,
that we would have to do self-catering and also transport has to be
self-managed.

If we want to organize a sprint there (and Aroldo kindly offered to care
for the cultural events, naming, and sponsor-acquisition),  this would
happen in the second week of October this year.

I'm, however, not sure, if we can really manage all that. We would need
at least some volunteers with cars to get people from the train station
to the farmhouse and back (also for going around during sprint). Also
cooking could hardly be done by me alone (beside the fact, that some
people would rather prefer to die from starving after checking my
cuisine ;-). After we finished, we also had to clean up the house
properly. Overall we would have to improvise lots of things and everyone
should be prepared for limited comfort and service.

Unfortunately, that's too much for one person alone. So, we would need
at least a second person to help with preparation (buying supplies from
local farmers and shops, preparing wiki pages, negotiating with the
hotels, activating the heating, cleaning, arriving one or two days
before the others, being available for questions of participants on
mobile; we could split these tasks), even if participants are willing to
help during their stay (we certainly would like to chop wood, for
instance). I yet could not find anybody else to help (Fafalters offered
help, but I don't want to burden our generous maybe-hosts with even more
work), so it might be good that you ask in public.

The landscape and surroundings are quite romantic and I could imagine
that such a sprint in autumn could be quite cozy.

Overall I'd say: if we find one or two others persons willing to do the
organisational part together with me (preferable with cars), we could
have a 1-week sprint in mid-October. I'd be happy if that would
happen :-)

> To make sure our sprint agenda remains full: there's still room on our 
> agenda for a Grok sprint sometime late this year or early 2011 as well; 
> any volunteers to help plan one?

If there are other possible locations, I'd be glad to help there as
well, of course :-)

Best regards,

-- 
Uli

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