Date: 2014-10-31 to 2014-11-02

Three-day event at http://www.linuxhotel.de (for conditions, see: https://www.linuxhotel.de/community.html / http://www.linuxhotel.de/community.en.html, Essen (“work and play” gathering; grid power, wifi, hotel style rooms, youth hostel-like service, recreational facilities available, sightseeing tours/group entertainment available in the evening)

• planning and preparation - Stefan Baur
• carpooling option for the Karlsruhe-Frankfurt-Essen route - Mihai Moldovan
• carpooling option for the Netherlands-DUS Airport-Essen route - Jos Wolfram
• liaison for Linuxhotel staff between 2014-10-31 and 2014-11-02 - Mike Gabriel

All participants in alphabetical order:

1. Baur, Stefan
2. Burger, Uwe
3. DePaulo, Michael
4. Epema, Kees
5. Fleten, Kjetil Andre
6. Gabriel, Mike
7. Graesing, Heinz-Markus
8. Heinold, Henning
9. Heinold, Tobias
10. Moldovan, Mihai
11. Wimpress, Martin David
12. Wolfkamp, Jos

(Friday) Participants present at Linuxhotel when opening speech is held:

1. Epema, Kees
2. Fleten, Kjetil Andre
3. Gabriel, Mike
4. Graesing, Heinz-Markus
5. Heinold, Henning
6. Heinold, Tobias
7. Wimpress, Martin David
8. Wolfkamp, Jos

(Friday) Participants still on the road while opening speech is held:

1. Baur, Stefan
2. Burger, Uwe
3. DePaulo, Michael
4. Moldovan, Mihai

(Saturday) Tour participants in alphabetical order:

1. Baur, Stefan
2. Burger, Uwe
3. DePaulo, Michael
4. Graesing, Heinz-Markus
5. Moldovan, Mihai

(Saturday) Stay-behind group in alphabetical order:

1. Epema, Kees
2. Gabriel, Mike
3. Heinold, Henning
4. Heinold, Tobias
5. Wimpress, Martin David
6. Wolfkamp, Jos

• arrival: 1800 hours/6pm local time (CET - Central European Time - note that daylight saving time in Germany ends a few days before this date)
• option to order Pizza, bringing your own food is OK, too.
• get-together in the chimney room (there's Wi-Fi and power, so if you want to code away, feel free to do so)

• English guided tour: http://www.zollverein.de/angebote/about-coal-and-miners starting 1500 hours/3pm local time (note that we will have to leave Linuxhotel/Unperfekthaus before that, as our teleporter and time machine are still undergoing repairs )
  • Update: we will have to arrive by approx. 1430 hours/2:30pm local time to pick up our reserved tickets!
  • This means we will
    1. leave Linuxhotel by 1320 hours/1:20pm local time,
    2. walk to the subway station (approx 15 minutes) and buy our subway tickets,
    3. take the 1345 hours/1:45pm subway to Essen Main Station,
    4. take the Tram # 107 departing 1417 hours/2:17pm local time to Essen Zollverein
    5. walk from Essen Zollverein to the ticket booth (approx. 2 minutes)
  • Due to late feedback from some participants, there are only 6 slots available for the tour unless we would book a custom one (which would have been more expensive, so we opted against it)
  • We have reserved these 6 slots and will fill them as follows
    1. Mike#2
    2. Uwe
    3. Mihai
    4. KjetilMartin
    5. Heinz
    6. Stefan
  • Tour participants: Please bring warm clothing and wear sturdy shoes, as we will be spending a good deal of the tour outside and/or on slippery ground, and things might get dirty (it is a coal mine, after all …)!
• depending on majority vote, we will either have lunch before the guided tour, or dinner afterwards. Update: Dinner will be after the guided tour, see below.

• Pricing info
  • guided tour through the coal mine: 9 EUR per person

• For Dinner, we will go to the http://www.unperfekthaus.de restaurant, as they offer “flat rate” food and all items on their menu are tagged in English and German.
  • Tour participants:
    1. You will leave the mining site with the Tram #107 to Viehofer Platz at either
       • 1711 hours/5:11pm or Update: Departure times have changed
       • 1726 hours/5:26pm, depending on the exact ending time of the tour (it is scheduled to last 2 hours),
    2. from Viehofer Platz, it is an 11 minute walk to Unperfekthaus,
    3. So you will arrive at Unperfekthaus either around 1737 hours/5:37pm local time or 1752 hours/5:52pm local time.
  • Folks staying behind at Linuxhotel, please:
    1. leave Linuxhotel by 1655 hours/4:55pm local time,
    2. walk to the subway station Essen-Horst,
    3. get your tickets,
    4. board subway line S3 departing 1715 hours/5:15pm local time to Essen West,
    5. at Essen West, change to Tram #109 departing 1732 hours/5:32pm local time and exit at Berliner Platz,
    6. from there, it's a 5 minute walk to the Unperfekthaus, so you should be there by 1746 hours/5:46pm.
  • If you decide to tour the city on your own, please be at Unperfekthaus around 1745 hours/5:45pm.
  • Info: Unperfekthaus is located at Friedrich-Ebert-Str. 18, Essen.

• Pricing info
  • Unperfekthaus food & soft drink flat rate plus visit to the exhibition area: 15,90 EUR per person for one hour, option to upgrade to up to five hours by paying 4 EUR extra p.p. → 19,90 EUR total p.p.

• we need to clean the rooms ourselves, that's one of the reasons why the rates are so cheap
• ROOMS MUST BE CLEANED OF TRASH AND CLEARED OF YOUR PERSONAL BELONGINGS BY 1000 hours/10am local time!
• stowing of personal belongings in chimney room or conference room

• departure is around 1530 hours/3:30pm local time

1. brain storming: organizational structure for an X2Go foundation/club/association or similar
   • suggestion by Stefan: Since it will most likely be a “club” (“eingetragener Verein”) under German law, we need 7 people physically present for the founding.
     • The Gathering 2014 will be too early to get the club founded.
     • We should prepare all the necessary paperwork ASAP after “X2Go: The Gathering 2014” and aim for a “X2Go: The Gathering 2015” way earlier in 2015, maybe some time between March-May, where we can get the club founded.
     • “X2Go: The Gathering 2015” could take place in Treuchtlingen, where X2Go was originally created.
2. show-and-tell:
   1. new X2Go TCE (both Mike#1's and Stefan's approach)
   2. electronic GloveBox (Stefan)
   3. mTelePlayer (theUserII/GZNG will join us for a talk - via Skype)
3. X2Go Client/Server NG - event-driven architecture (Mike#1? Who else?)
4. support for rbash, postgres, gssapi (Henning)
5. possibly something Window-ish or Mac-ish by Mike#2 and/or Mihai

• Attention: Lufthansa and Germanwings are suffering from intermittent strikes by the pilots' union! Avoid using these airlines until further notice!

• Attention: German Rail (Deutsche Bahn) is suffering from intermittent strikes by the train operators' union! Avoid using trains until further notice! The union has released a statement that no strikes are scheduled until November 2nd, 23:59/11:59pm. So taking the train to X2Go: The Gathering 2014 and back should be possible.
• The nearest subway station is “Essen-Horst”
• This subway line is operated by Deutsche Bahn, so you can book your railway ticket to destination Essen-Horst and have the subway ticket included in your regular train ticket. Advantage: no need to figure out how the local ticket vending machine works (plus it's probably cheaper that way).
• It's a ~ 15 Minute walk from Essen-Horst to the Linuxhotel, please use the route as suggested here: http://goo.gl/maps/wJWrv
• NB: some navigation systems plot a shorter pedestrian route that leads through the woods, but from personal experience I (Stefan) can tell you that you do not want to use that path when carrying luggage, possibly in the dark, when you've never walked it before.

IBM Power Systems Linux has decided to sponsor the X2Go project and our “X2Go: The Gathering” event by supplying us with these “goodies”:

These are goodiebags for the X2Go-Devs that were involved with getting X2Go running on IBM Power.	Here's the content of a sample goodiebag: a black briefcase, a black notepad (genuine leather!), 1 white and 1 black lapel pin, a 1 GB USB key fob, a Tux/IBM polo shirt (size L), a business card holder, a four-tip pen (black ballpoint, red ballpoint, neon-red ballpoint, mechanical pencil, eraser at top), and some IBM leaflets

These giftboxes were sent for the participants of our “X2Go: The Gathering” event.	The boxes were filled with all kinds of nice goodies - way too many to fit them all onto a single picture! So here are a few samples (one or two of each item).

In total, we received:

The following is an inofficial translation of Linuxhotel's house rules.

The original, German edition can be found here. Note that only the German edition is the legally binding one.

Guidelines for a good working relationship in the Linux Hotel

We want all our guests to remember the Linux Hotel as a friendly professional networking location. This includes ensuring that all guests treat each other in a respectful and kind way during their entire stay with us.

• Regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, appearance, body size, origin or religion no one shall be harassed here.
• We simply do not tolerate harassment of guests of any sorts.
• It's plain and simple: be nice to others. Do not insult other guests and respect their personal dignity. Do not post photos of others without their consent. Remember that offensive, sexist, racist or similar jokes aimed at singling out somebody (or a group) are inappropriate.
• If participants violate these rules, we will take corrective action, which go up to expulsion from the event without refund of the cost.

We hold these rules to be self-evident. And we have the impression that all our guests share this belief. By publishing these rules, we want to prepare ourselves for those situations where it is necessary to defend them.

• less talks/agenda items per day
• shorter agenda items, longer breaks after each item:
  • no item longer than 45 minutes, evahr
  • minimum 20 minutes of break after every agenda item - try to schedule longer (25-30min) breaks if possible. You need this as a buffer zone when a talk goes longer than expected, so the audience has at least another 10 minutes of the break left. Ignore this advice, and the next talk will suffer. Hard.
• never ever schedule two talks back to back. It is VERBOTEN, SCHWEINHUND!
• Absolutely do not give in to Mike#1 when he wants additional talks added!
• move talks to the evenings/nights
  • easier wrt/ projector
• schedule coding sessions during daytime
  • needs no projector
  • can take place outside if weather permits
• Entertainment event/sightseeing
  • should be around dinner (before or after is less relevant, though afterwards is recommended)
  • only one event per day
  • none on departure day
  • an entirely optional one on arrival day
• Lunch vs. Dinner
  • go for a short lunch break (20-30 minutes) and a long dinner break (60-90 minutes)
  • make sure there is ample time to sit together and discuss things after dinner - With no computers present! ¡Muy importante!
• remember that birds of a feather flock together (no, this is not about a BoF meeting), so try to match people with similar interests in a way that they share the same
  • hotel room,
  • hotel floor,
  • or at least the same hotel building (This will be especially important for Treuchtlingen, where our accomodation is not centralized as it was at Linuxhotel)