DebConf13/Vienna

Local team

Current:

• Gerfried "Rhonda" Fuchs (LinuxWochen Wien),
• Velimir Iveljic (debconf11),
• Vedran Omeragic (debconf11),
• Michael Schutte,
• Igor Galić
• Natalie Mayer-Hutchings (Frontdesk-Tante)
• Christian Hofstaedtler

All of us have been present at previous DebConfs. Rhonda is involved in helping out where needed since debconf6, though never deeper involved than volunteer yet. Velimir and Vedran worked on debconf11 local team already, doing their best on getting obstacles fixed. Of course we plan to get involved in the organization of DebConf12 to gain even more experience.

Choice of city

• Vienna, Austria
  • How many people live there?
    • 1,712,903
  • How easy/convenient is the proposed place to get all strange and regular kinds of hardware?
    • Very easy
  • Electronic/electricity shops
    • Yes
  • Computer stores (A "media market" like end user oriented store doesn't count)
    • Yes
  • Supermarkets, etc.
    • Yes
  • How easy is to handicapped people move there?
    • Vienna is very accessible, public transports and buildings are required to be accessible and in fact are so

• Which is the nearest airport?
  • Vienna International Airport (Wien-Schwechat, short VIE)
• Are there any cheap airlines flying near the chosen city?
  • Yes, Ryanair, flies to Bratislava and has bus connections to Vienna. The ride with the bus is about 30 minutes.
  • Austrian also usually has cheap tickets directly to VIE, if booked in advance.
• How long does the trip from the airport to the venue take?
  • From VIE to city it's a train ride of something like 20 minutes.
  • From Bratislava around 30 minutes.

• How friendly is your country towards foreigners?
  • Austria is generally used to large amounts of tourists and open to other cultures. This is particularly true for Vienna, which is certainly the most international city of the country.
• Visas: Which/how many countries' citizens require getting a visa? How hard (bureaucratic, probable) is it to get it?
  • As Austria is a part of the Schengen and a member of EU, regular Schengen visa rules apply. The list of countries that are exampt from visa regulations, as well as those which need visa can be found here: http://www.immihelp.com/visas/schengenvisa/requirements-exemptions.html
  • Are there any import regulations, which might affect DebConf? (e.g. a limit to number of notebooks / DVDs / other media you can bring in; hard regulations for money transfers; etc.)
    • Hardly. Even though EU has strict rules of what you can transport over the border, accessories of technical nature (in personal possession) can be easily trasported. If carrying larger quantities of technical equipment (two laptops for example) a proof of ownership may be required.
• Language: Do most people talk English? How hard is it for a foreigner to find their way around?
  • English is extremely widely spread and understood. And people are very helpful towards foreigners/tourists (Vienna is a very well known tourist location, so people there are used to it).
• Smoking: What are the local regulations about smoking?
  • Restaurants are required to have non-smoking areas these days, and smoking is forbidden in public buildings.

Conference Facilities

Most of these aren't checked yet and will be filled in later.

• How much does it cost to rent these facilities?
• How far away are the locations from each other? (auditoriums, hacklabs, restaurant, sleeping quarters, info

desk)

• • Venue, hacklabs and eating facilities are all in one building! (TU Wien, Freihaus)
  • What kind of places are available suitable for hacklabs, workshops, BoFs and talks?
    • We would have one/two big lecture room/s and a lot of smaller ones for hacklabs, BoFs, etc.
  • How many people fit in each of them?
    • In the largest one, around 300 people, the second largest, around 200..
  • How flexible can that be handled?
    • VERY!
    • ~-Can smaller auditoriums be merged into a bigger one?-~
      • No, but there would be no need to do it anyway.
    • Are tables/chairs fixed, or can we arrange them to fit more people/give more room to the people that we need?
      • The chairs in the big lecture rooms are fixed, in the smaller ones they could be re-arranged.
  • Is the venue ready for handicapped people? Note: Keep in mind that it's not only motion-handicapped - Is the area safe for people with any kind of handicap? (There are sight and hearing-impaired people, too.) Bonus: What people is it not good for?
    • • Since it is a University building with lecture rooms on upper flors, it is quite equipped for handicapped people (all of them).
    • Access to all areas with ramps and/or elevators? (Note: carrying somebody over some steps is not usually an acceptable option.)
      • Yes.
    • Are there people with experience handling handicapped people, who checked that?
      • Since some of us were already involved with organizing DebConf, we have experience with such things.
• Are blueprints with exact distances available to us (to be kept confidential on request)?
  • http://www.wegweiser.ac.at/tuwien/
  • Detailed blueprints: http://www.gut.tuwien.ac.at/wir_fuer_sie/immobilienmanagement/grundrisse_objekte/ (The Freihaus has the Building-Codes DA, DB and DC, which refer to the three subsections of the same building)

• What kind of audio equipment is already present at the auditoriums?
  • Lecture rooms are fully equiped with everything we could need.

• • Wireless or stationary mics?
    • Wireless.

• • clip-on kind of mics or cary in your hand mics?
    • There is this thing you put around your neck and a mic is hanging on it..
  • How many of them?
    • At least 2-3 per lecture room.
• Will the hacklabs be allowed to stay open 24x7? What time schedule do they offer?
  • Yes, we can use all of the facilities 24/7.
• What kind of security will be there?
  • University security is there per default, but we could arrange something else if needed.

• Are there any limitations regarding the consumptions of food / alcohol? Where do what limitations apply?

There are none.

• • How far is it to the nearest convenience stores / all-night restaurants?
    • The TU Wien is in the center of the city and there is a lot of Supermarkets and fast food restaurants that are open until late, around.

• Please provide pictures of the venue/accommodation.

The big lecture room: http://www.tuwien.ac.at/fileadmin/t/tuwien/fotos/tu-indoor/FH1.JPG

Food

• How much are the meals per person per day?
  • Rough estimation is 15€ per day per person for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
• Is the eating place near the talks place / the hacklabs?
• What kind of food would be served?
  • In what fashion? (service to the table, limited buffet, open buffet, etc.)
• Would food for vegetarian / vegan / lactose-intolerant / gluten-sensitive / religious (of any denomination) people be available?
  • We can arrange all kinds of food.
  • How much meals do we need to order to get those kind of "special" meals?
  • Will it cost extra to get those special meals?
• In a two week period, how many more or less equal meals can we expect?

Network connectivity

• Is the area already wired with regular network infrastructure? (much preferrably: 100Mbps or 1Gbps switched)
  • Yes. There is a separate event/conference VLAN that can be made available in most parts of the university campus. Usually GBit Ethernet, but a few ports might be limited to 100 MBit due to local infrastructure issues (cabling, deployed switchtypes, etc.).
  • For widespread wired network access in lecture rooms additional switches should be brought by debconf (there are ethernet jacks in the lecture rooms, just not enough for 100s of people ;))
• How much does it cost and how difficult is it to get a big internet connection? (10/20 Mbits at least)
  • Connectivity already in-place via the university backbone and uplink. (Redundant "1+ GBit" (ask wollviech on IRC if you really want exact numbers ;)) to GEANT2 and Level3 via Aconet)
• How much work does it imply to cover the area with wireless links?
  • None -- you can get temporary conference accounts to access the universities wireless services; attendees with valid eduroam-accounts can use those, too. Most places in the Freihaus are serviced by several APs.
    • No 802.11b support, as supporting it would slow down 802.11g and 2.4ghz 802.11n clients considerably and mess with channel setup.
• If we use someone else's infrastructure, how easy / flexible can that be handled, regarding routing / firewall / ip-range / public access / other stuff?
  • IP-range and routing provided by university: IPv4: One /24, one /25, additional ranges may be possible but cannot be guaranteed. (Native) IPv6: /64 or /48 delegations as needed.
    • PI space would be difficult to route natively. Tunneling possible, would have to be implemented by debconf.
  • Firewalling: Antispoofing ACLs and reasonable rate-limiting on new UDP/TCP/pending TCP connections. Ratelimits can be adjusted on a per-IP basis if necessary. Certain ports filtered (see next point). Further firewalling, if required, should be implemented by debconf.
  • Do we have restrictions on allowed ports?
    • Yes, certain ports are blocked; a reference for them can be found here. (Translation for blocking-direction: "Beide" = bidirectional block. "von außen" = Ingressfiltered.)
  • Are we traffic-shaped? Or can we set a traffic shaper if we need so?
    • Your uplink into the internet may be shaped by the university to 100 MBit if the situation requires it.
• Would it be possible to set up the network before Debcamp? (a day or two, earlier would be nicer, in order to handle problems gracefully. Additional weeks for wireless.)
  • Yes, several weeks in advance, within reason (there may be other events occupying certain rooms for a few days).

Special rooms

Both for server and video rooms:

• General conditions for the rooms
  • Size
  • Have they/do they need air conditioning?
  • What electrical load can they handle?

Accomodation

• How much does it cost per person per night?
• Is the place where people are going to sleep near the conference facilities?
• Is it able to handle a varying number from 200 to 500 people?
• Is it able to handle non-native speaking people? (i.e. do the people at the sleeping facilities speak English?)
• Will there be a need of a "Debconf" info-desk, or would the local (hotel or such) people be able to handle that themselves? (See InfoDesk for details on duties)
• Will it be possible for couples to stay in their own rooms?
• How many room keys would be available?
• Are there other hotels around?
• Are there rooms ready for handicapped people? How many?

Fun and Free time

• What activities can be done during the free time?
  • There is a wide variety of things that can be done in Vienna, as it is a well known tourist destination.

• What would be a possible Day Trip?
  • At the moment there are dozens of options:
    • Take a boat to Bratislava and take a tour and/or explore the city
    • Rax/Schneeberg
    • Neusiedlersee
    • Kahlenberg/Am Himmel
• Is the proposed location ready to receive people with disabilities?
  • Most of these places are very accessible, but needs to be checked first.
• How expensive would that be?

First we need to choose one of these options, and afterwards discuss the prices.

Local Sponsors

• Do you have a list of prospective sponsors that might be interested in the conference? Money, hardware, connectivity, etc.
  • Technical University on Vienna, which pretty much runs on Debian and as of recently Ubuntu on working stations for students located throughout the University buildings.
  • Possibility of other universities
  • Telecoms
  • Some local firms
  • Transportation companies

Timing

• When (and why) would be the best time to host DebConf at your location?
  • As usual, some time in July and/or August. Universities and Student Dorms are mostly empty during that period and should be easy to convince.
• What is your backup plan if your preferred venue isn't available at that time?
  • Another university/FH (Universität Wien, WU Wien, etc..)