X2Go: The Gathering 2019

Date: 2019-09-27 to 2019-09-29

Location: Linuxhotel, Villa Vogelsang, Antonienallee 1, Essen, Germany

X2Go: The Gathering is the annual event where users, admins, and developers (including the i18n volunteers) of X2Go meet face to face, to discuss current X2Go-related issues, fix open bugs, and have a good time getting to know each other. As there is some overlap between X2Go, Arctica, and orca e.V., you can expect to see members of those groups as well. This year, we're back at http://www.linuxhotel.de (for conditions, see: https://www.linuxhotel.de/community.html / http://www.linuxhotel.de/community.en.html), Essen, Germany.

As usual, this will be a three-day event, and a “work and play” gathering; We'll have grid power, WiFi, hotel style rooms, youth hostel-like service, recreational facilities available, group entertainment available in the evening.

Please visit this page regularly to keep track of all updates.

Important updates will also be posted on our X2Go-Project mailing list.

@HuWutze (Mirko Glotz) will be part of our Orga crew and will greet all arriving participants on Friday, starting at 14:00/2pm CEST. Also, he will be there until 18:00/6pm on Sunday, so the conference room will be available for anyone interested in staying that late. In addition to that, he will be our resident video recording/live streaming expert, most likely bringing his own equipment.

For those of you that are interested in signing up for accommodation, the following rules are part of the deal:

1. We need to know the number of beds and nights you want to reserve, as well as your full name (as printed on your passport) and your nationality ASAP. As of 2019-09-12, we still have a few beds in 2- and 3-bed bedrooms available. If you're interested in joining us, please contact Stefan Baur. First come, first serve!
2. As single rooms are in short supply, please book your bed in a 2- or 3-bed room, unless you absolutely have to use a single room.
3. If you become sick, then please stay at home. Let us know ASAP so we can cancel your reservation/reassign your room.
4. If you've had recent contact with someone that has some contagious disease, and you are not 100% sure that you're immune - please, stay at home as well, and let us know ASAP so we can cancel your reservation/reassign your room.
5. If you know that someone has a contagious disease, and you've signed up for our event, please do not seek physical contact with that person before the event. If you have anything that needs to be discussed because you need it for the event, use e-mail, phone calls, whatever, but don't visit each other, the reason being rules #3 and #4.
6. Reservations cancelled less than 10 days before the event may mean we still have to charge you, if we cannot fill your spot with someone else. Of course, we will do our best to avoid this.
7. If you have any dietary requirements (vegetarian, vegan, no pork, no alcohol, …), please let us know when you sign up so we can prepare everything in advance. Same goes for any food allergies or other medical conditions that we should know of.

• We will be visiting Bochum Railway Museum on Friday afternoon. Tickets are 8 EUR per person.

• planning and preparation - Stefan
• carpooling option for the Karlsruhe-Frankfurt-Essen route (Mihai/Martti) - Mihai Moldovan
• carpooling option for the Stuttgart-Essen route (Uli/Juri/Stefan) - Stefan Baur
• liaison for Linuxhotel staff and video/livestreaming guru - Mirko

As always, we are open to sponsorships, and two have already found their way to us.

CFD.direct, who also co-sponsored our cloud-based macOS build servers - have agreed to sponsor this event with 500 EUR (plus VAT), like they already did in the previous years.

gbgsoft are sponsoring the event with 200 EUR.

We are pooling these sponsorships to cover transportation, lodging and dining costs for several key and non-commercial participants. And it looks like we might also be able to sponsor one of the Friday/Saturday dinners with it.

Thinking of becoming a sponsor as well? Let us know! The more, the merrier! Of course, all sponsors will be named on our sponsorship wiki page, unless they wish to remain anonymous.

The following participants have been confirmed and have beds reserved for them:

1. 'Stefan#1 - Timemeister
2. Hans
3. Kjetil, prefers single room
4. Nito, prefers single room
5. Thomas - confirmed via phone call on 2019-08-12, prefers single room
6. 'Mike#1' - Note: Vegan food preferred, Vegetarian food required
7. Juri - confirmed via phone call on 2019-08-12
8. Mihai 'ionic' - Timegeselle and Endian-chasing Cowbyte, needs single room
9. Martti
10. Ulrich, single room
11. Heinz-M. - X2Go co-founder, needs single room - will arrive on Saturday around 13:30
12. Juan, prefers single room

The following participants have been confirmed, but have their own accomodation:

1. Jens (not 100% confirmed, but pretty likely …)
2. Mirko - liaison for Linuxhotel staff and video/livestreaming guru
3. Tobias

Names in bold indicate that the particular person is one of the event organizers. Italics show nicknames and honorary titles.

Who can't make it this year:

1. 'Mike#2' - Deep C Diver - unable to attend in person :'( - but will join us via Skype
2. Franz - will hopefully be available via Video link (Skype, Hangouts, …)
3. Bernhard - will hopefully be available via Video link (Skype, Hangouts, …)
4. Oleksandr 'Alex' - will hopefully be available via Video link (Skype, Hangouts, …) X2Go co-founder

Notes:

Livestream can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BmsjNDHOGA - We'll start at 10:00am CEST.

A Livestream of the ORCA meeting can be found at http://217.11.62.3:1935/Event_MG/myStream/playlist.m3u8 (please use VLC or a similar player)

To actually join in and talk with us, please use https://gathering.x2go.org/index.php/call/u24pqydc

We'll start at 10:15am CEST.

• 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 0900 hours/09am local time already! NEW!
• stowing of personal belongings in chimney room or conference room

• latest departure is at 1800 hours/6:00pm local time

• This is the annual meeting (“Jahreshauptversammlung”) of ORCA e.V., a German public-benefit nonprofit association
• ORCA
  • stands for Open Remote Computing Association
  • has been founded at X2Go: The Gathering 2017
  • includes members of several open remote computing projects, like Arctica and FreeRDP, not only X2Go
• Donations to ORCA are tax-deductible in Germany (and maybe in other countries as well)
• To remain recognized as a public-benefit nonprofit association by the tax authorities, certain rules have to be followed, one of them is that we need to have these meetings about once a year.
• As X2Go: The Gathering is an event where the majority of ORCA members tends to take part in, it makes sense to hold the required annual meeting as part of the X2Go: The Gathering event. Also, as these events are open to the general public, doing so might attract potential new members.
• The meeting is likely to take place on Sunday, as shown in the schedule above. Current orca e.V. members will be invited to this event by individual e-mail.
• The language of this event item is German.

This event item has its own sub-agenda:

1. Eröffnung
   1. Begrüßung
   2. Feststellung der Beschlussfähigkeit
   3. Festlegung des Schriftführers
2. Bericht der Vorstände
3. Entlastung des Vorstandes (gesamt; im Verweigerungsfall einzeln)
4. Bericht des Kassenwarts
5. Entlastung des Kassenwarts
6. Abstimmung über Satzungsänderung bezüglich Gemeinnützigkeit
7. Abstimmung, ob im Falle der Nichtanerkennung der Gemeinnützigkeit eine Verlegung des Vereinssitzes bzw. eine Auflösung/Neugründung an neuem Standort in Angriff genommen werden soll
8. Abstimmung über Höhe und Fälligkeit der Mitgliedsgebühren
9. Abstimmung über zukünftige Vorstandsanzahl
10. Abstimmung über zu schaffende Ehrenmitgliedschaften
11. Neuwahl des Vorstandes:
    1. Kandidatenvorstellung
    2. (wenn gewünscht) Fragerunde
    3. Wahl
12. Neuwahl des Kassenwarts:
    1. Kandidatenvorstellung
    2. (wenn gewünscht) Fragerunde
    3. Wahl
13. Anträge
14. Sonstiges
15. Ende

• 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.

Passenger: Martti

Passengers: Juri, Stefan

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.

            July 2019         August 2019       September 2019
        Fr  5 12 19 26        2  9 16 23 30        6 13 20 27
        Sa  6 13 20 27        3 10 17 24 31        7 14 21 28
        Su  7 14 21 28        4 11 18 25  1        8 15 22 29
Alex:   >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the later, the more likely
Franz:                                                     N - but available via Skype
h1:         N N  N  Y         N N  Y  Y  N         N N  N  Y
Juri:       N Y  Y  N         N Y  Y  N  ?         Y Y  Y  ?
Mike#1:                                                    Y
Mike#2:     N Y  Y  Y         Y Y  N  N  Y         Y Y  N  Y
Mihai:      Y Y  Y  Y         Y Y  Y  Y  Y         Y Y  Y  Y
Mirko                                                      Y - but does not need a bed
Stefan:     N Y  Y  Y         Y Y  Y  Y  Y         Y Y  Y  Y
Uli:        N Y  N  Y         ? ?  N  N  N         N N  Y  Y

• Maybe we should visit UpH on Friday evening, and either order Pizza / Dinner from Linuxhotel / start a BBQ on Saturday evening → less disruptive for coding sessions
• Museum/Sightseeing trips either on Friday before UpH, or on Saturday during the coding session (for non-coders) or on Sunday morning in parallel to ORCA event
• Food: For the lunch orders, make sure to also list people that don't like fish
• We need more structure for the coding sessions; tasks need to be assigned rather than “pick from list”
• Nothing productive happens on Friday before dinner → don't plan anything there except tours, equipment setup, and dinner itself
• Nothing productive happens on Sunday after lunch → don't plan anything there except cleanup