[Foss4g2009] Workshop Logistics

[Bruce Bannerman]

...sorry, forgot to send to the list...


=================


Paul,

Even with a VMWare image, I expect that we'll run into issues such as
incompatible drivers etc.

At least most of these types of issues are addressed with the latest
Live Linux DVDs.


Anyway, we don't have to hammer this issue now, as per Cameron's later
email. Our focus needs to be on sorting out the budget.


Bruce


On Wed, 2008-10-22 at 11:18 -0700, Paul Ramsey wrote:
> I think Gavin's three-pronged approach might not be bad, particularly
> if you use it to expand the offerings you have while not expanding
> your infrastructure costs.
> 
> The hardest thing about the workshops is the computers. They cost lost
> of money, they take lots of time to wrangle around. If you can get
> workshops running in empty rooms set up with class room tables, and
> the teachers taking all responsibility for the materials, you've just
> added to your offerings without increasing your workload.
> 
> I've done BYOComputer workshops, just specifying "windows required"
> and providing MS4W. It's worked "OK", but usually 10% of the attendees
> just can't get it to work. Security settings, or DLLs that MS4W
> expects but they don't have, something fails. So there is a set of
> people who are less than happey.
> 
> Live DVD *will* have some problems. We had some workshops at 2007 on
> LiveDVD (I think?) and again, there was a percentage of attendees who
> just couldn't get the things to boot. Or, rather, a percentage of the
> machines we had *rented* would refuse to boot them (Dave solved this
> by swapping the sessions to rooms which had computers that like the
> DVDs, if I recall). Which means that if we had BYOC, there would have
> been people who couldn't boot.
> 
> The reason I suggest VMWare is mainly because I expect (in an totally
> unproven way) that the rate of failure on arbitrary hardware will be
> lower than with Live*D.
> 
> If you commit to a *totally*vmware* strategy, you could change the
> pricing model of the workshops quite dramatically, by saying $X per
> workshop + $Y if you require a computer, otherwise bring a computer
> with VMWare installed and the following minimum hardware.
> 
> Paul
> 
> 
> 2008/10/22 Bruce Bannerman <bruce at bannerman.id.au>:
> > On Mon, 2008-10-20 at 06:34 -0700, Paul Ramsey wrote:
> >> I'm not sure if 2008 did any workshops in computerless rooms, but if
> >> they did I'd like to hear how that went. The "low impact" workshop is
> >> a category we haven't had before, but it allows the organizers to add
> >> a workshop without the overhead of handling machinery.
> >>
> >> Another option for workshops which it might be time to explore is the
> >> BYOLaptop + Virtual Machine approach. With VM players like VMWare
> >> free-to-download, this is potentially a doable thing. Just have to
> >> make VM images small enough to burn on a DVD.  Only downside is, we
> >> generally want to teach on Windows, to keep it "real" for the majority
> >> of attendees, but we can't burn 300 copies of Windows VMs onto DVDs.
> >
> >
> > If we have to go down this route, I'd prefer to see Live DVDs with a
> > Linux distro e.g. Ubuntu.
> >
> >
> > Bruce
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Foss4g2009 mailing list
> > Foss4g2009 at lists.osgeo.org
> > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/foss4g2009
> >
> >
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