Candidate Q&A - List of Questions

[Luc Verhaegen]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 09:20:13AM -0800, Eric Anholt wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:31:16 +0100, Matthias Hopf <mhopf at suse.de> wrote:
> 
> >  7) Now, a topic quite close to the heart of the author of this questionnaire:
> >     FOSDEM. 4-5000 free software users and developers over a weekend in winter,
> >     join up in the center of Europe. X.org used to have a hugely popular
> >     Developers Room there. But the interest from the X.org community has
> >     dwindled now. Why do you think this is so? Should this be different? Do you
> >     have any suggestions?
> 
> I was made unwelcome by the organizer of the FOSDEM dev room, and would
> probably not bother with it again.  FOSDEM is an excellent conference,
> though, which I would attend again.

Let me quantify this one, "slightly".

After years of begging people, steadily, throughout the whole runnup 
to the event itself, to get enough talks for FOSDEM from developers, and 
almost never hitting a full slate that i could proudly present to the 
FOSDEM organisers (who have a hard enough time refusing other projects 
as it is). After years of standing outside the door, keeping people out, 
pointing out that "this sign that states FULL means that it is really 
FULL", and then having to hear complaints that an important and 
interesting project like X.org is being given such a small devroom (no 
matter how large it was). I decided to split the devroom to better match 
real usage: saturday (which is mostly afternoon) would be reserved for 
coreboot/flashrom, sunday (the whole of sunday) for X.org.

In the end, i presented the FOSDEM organisers with 4 X.org talks, 1 of 
which i would be giving myself. And 4 talks were printed in the FOSDEM 
shedule, 4 talks were shown on the FOSDEM website and on all the 
smartphone apps. Half the available slots, not even a third of a proper 
full complete weekend devroom.

As a comparison, i had to tone some coreboot guys down to not plan even 
more talks for the highly technical FOSDEM crowd, as i feared that the 
speakers would only outstretch themselves too far. They managed to fill 
their devroom schedule in a matter of minutes, although it took longer 
than that to channel the ideas properly.

This situation did not particularly appease the FOSDEM organisers. 
So they put the openmoko project in the morning, with a very stern 
warning about this not being a worthwhile showing for the likes of 
FOSDEM, especially while so many other projects get refused, and that 
X.org will probably not get another DevRoom for 2011 if this was really 
how it played out.

On the 28th of january, _after_ the FOSDEM deadline, and after the 
openmoko decision had been made, Nicolai Haenle added himself to the 
schedule, and pinged me on irc. At first, the fact that he, out of the 
blue, just added himself to the shedule pissed me off (aided by the fact 
that he never mentioned anything before, anything that could've provided 
a better story for the FOSDEM organisers), but, since he had tried to 
contact me directly, and because we still had the ability to fit in one 
more talk, this was accepted, and Nicolai opened the X.org DevRoom the 
second the openmoko people had cleared the room.

A few days later, by sheer luck, during the creation of the a3 and a4 
posters and schedules, i noticed that Eric had added himself to the 
schedule, right in the middle of the openmoko devroom. Not a single 
attempt to contact me directly was made. I returned the favour by 
flagging on the wiki that this time was taken by the openmoko devroom 
due to limited attendance, and dropping this talk which simply could not 
fit anymore.

I never saw or heard Eric until during Nicolais talk. The statement Eric 
made then was: "i just edited the wiki, as it usually works", my answer 
was, sternly, "this is not how it works". It might work for an XDC, it 
does not work for FOSDEM or any other conference with a public schedule 
and public attendance.

If i had had been told of 2 optional talks beforehand, i would have 
managed to appease the FOSDEM organisers and provided enough space, and 
this would've changed the game completely. If i had been contacted about 
this talk popping up during the openmoko room, i would not have had to 
give Eric the stern statement on the day itself. Eric would've had an 
outright refusal though, and i believe that this was why he decided not 
to contact the organiser of the devroom at all. Yes, i do not fully 
believe the statement Eric made; a conference like this simply does not 
work like that, and i believe Eric knew that then as well.

On hindsight, though, I should probably have locked down the wiki after 
Nicolai's talk. So future organisers of anything: lock down your 
page, to not give people the chance for pulling this one.

But to the fact that you Eric, in light of this full story, did not feel 
very "welcome", to that i can only answer: "what did you expect?". 
Flowers, chocolates, champagne, and a pair of hostesses to hand those 
over on stage and then kiss you in for the cameras?

Thanks, without sarcasm this time, for your other answers though.

Luc Verhaegen.