[FOSS4G-Oceania] FOSS4G Workshops and OSGeo-Live

[Cameron Shorter]

I should fess up to the fact that I haven't been to a FOSS4G workshop 
since 2009, so comments from John and Martin are based on more recent 
experience than mine.

I acknowledge that bring-your-own-laptop is desirable as well as being 
logistically a requirement.

Re Macs: I run an OSGeo-Live VM inside Virtual Box on my Macbook Air. 
All variants of computers can be run that way and most windows based 
computers can be booted from the USB.

If network access is going to be an issue, we might want to distribute 
all big downloads on a USB to workshop participants (including 
osgeo-live distribution, extra datasets, etc)


On 22/6/18 2:14 pm, Martin Tomko wrote:
> All good and valid points, but:
> - there are no workshop computers (addressing the point of: " installing
>      the OSGeo-Live on all workshop computers ") - we will not be supplying computer labs, just spaces. People must bring their own devices.
> - Followng from there, " encouraging workshop presenters to make use of OSGeo-Live/ encourage all participants to install OSGeo-Live onto the
>      laptop before coming to the conference " - these are points that I would not want to tackle centrally, enforce, or coordinate. And what if a workshop is on a "spatial OSS ecosystem on MAC OS?" (.
>
> Anyway, what I think may be a good thing and doable, is to indeed encourage the Workshop organisers to consider OSGEO-Live as their platform of choice in their instructions to their participants.
>
> I see the workshops as a decentralized set of events sharing a space provided by the conference ( this is what is the case at most conferences I go to). It is the responsibility of the individual workshop organisers to assure their own running of the event beyond core logistics ( rooms, projectors, catering).
>
> My 2c
> M.
>
>
> On 22/6/18, 2:05 pm, "FOSS4G-Oceania on behalf of Cameron Shorter" <foss4g-oceania-bounces at lists.osgeo.org on behalf of cameron.shorter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>      Am I right in understanding that workshop participants will be expected
>      to bring their own laptop? Consistent feedback in Lessons Learned from
>      past FOSS4G workshops is that getting a classroom full of
>      "bring-your-own-laptops" is both error prone and time consuming, often
>      taking the first hour of the workshop.
>      
>      Advice usually comes back to "it is best to have all the computers
>      pre-installed with software required". This puts a hefty burden on
>      workshop organisors and presenters to source computers and set them all
>      up with software.
>      
>      Something that many of the conferences have started doing is installing
>      the OSGeo-Live on all workshop computers. OSGeo-Live is a Lubuntu linux
>      distribution which comes pre-installed with ~ 50 of the best OSGeo
>      applications, along with sample data. It can either be booted from a
>      USB, or installed into a Virtual Machine. I'd suggest that we should be
>      considering this for our workshops too, and encouraging workshop
>      presenters to make use of OSGeo-Live.
>      
>      We should also encourage all participants to install OSGeo-Live onto the
>      laptop before coming to the conference, and we should have a stack of
>      spare OSGeo-Live USBs floating around for those people who haven't got
>      themselves setup.
>      
>      (I should declare here my personal vested interest in OSGeo-Live, as I'm
>      one of the founders of the project - it started as part of the FOSS4G
>      2009 conference in Sydney).
>      
>      --
>      Cameron Shorter
>      Technology Demystifier
>      Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant
>      
>      M +61 (0) 419 142 254
>      
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>      FOSS4G-Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
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>      
>      
>

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Technology Demystifier
Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant

M +61 (0) 419 142 254