DebConf15/Bids/Germany/Treuchtlingen
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[edit] Introduction
Treuchtlingen is a small city in nothern Bavaria. City page, Wikipedia page. It's 70km away from Nürnberg and 150km away from Munich.
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Treuchtlingen switched to Linux on Workstations in June 2002 and is currently actively using Debian. The city wants to host us as a way of giving thanks and bring exposure to a linux-using-city. Medium-term, the region might consolidate IT and Treuchtlingen could use all the attention they could get to push Debian regionally. The city would be our contractual partner and would handle accomodation, organisation of venues, etc.
It's a very small city (as of 2011 its population was of 12,778), but it has shops and the general city facilities. There are four supermarkets in the city, two in the inner city, where we would be staying. There are a bunch of computer and electronics shops in the city. Although not very big, they would likely satisfy simple needs like "I forgot my wireless mouse". For more specialized needs not satisfied by the local stores, a train ride to Nürnberg takes about 1 hour. Car also ~1 hour. Local team will have at least two cars.
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[edit] Getting there
The two nearest airports are Munich (MUC) and Nürnberg (NUE). Both include flights by some cheap airlines, like AirBerlin, RyanAir or Vueling. MUC also has some EasyJet flights.
MUC is the second busiest airport in Germany, and has direct flights to a lot of international locations Wikipedia page. A train ride from MUC to Treuchtlingen can take between 2 and 3 hours.
NUE is smaller, but it has flights to most european connecting hubs (KLM's Amsterdam, Air France's Paris, Lufthansa's Frankfurt, Vueling's Barcelona, Swiss' Zürich, among others). Wikipedia page The train ride from NUE to Treuchtlingen takes between 60 and 80 minutes.
There's a lot of work going on with the trains in this area and it's expected that the speed for the connection will improve for 2015.
[edit] More about the city
[edit] Accessibility
Although the city is not the most handicapped friendly city in Germany, it still has ramps on most of the corners. Since it's such a small city, getting from one place to the other should be simple. There are a few hotels that include accessible rooms.
[edit] Language
In airports, most people speak English. In Treuchtlingen, most people will speak "School English", i.e. not enough to hold a long conversation, but enough to help strangers in need.
[edit] Smoking regulations
General bavarian laws apply, smoking inside is not permitted.
[edit] Venue
There are several different buildings that we could use. We would get them sponsored by the city of Treuchtlingen. The most promising venue is the local school. It has different rooms that could serve as talkrooms and we could use classrooms as hacklabs and/or bof rooms.
Map showing the location of different possible venues and hotels
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There are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding the venue, mainly because details have not yet been worked out.
[edit] Unanswered questions
- What kind of places are available suitable for hacklabs, workshops, BoFs and talks?
- How many people fit in each of them?
- How flexible can that be handled?
- ~-Can smaller auditoriums be merged into a bigger one?-~
- Are tables/chairs fixed, or can we arrange them to fit more people/give more room to the people that we need?
- 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?
- Access to all areas with ramps and/or elevators? (Note: carrying somebody over some steps is not usually an acceptable option.)
- Are there people with experience handling handicapped people, who checked that?
- Are blueprints with exact distances available to us (to be kept confidential on request)?
- What kind of audio equipment is already present at the auditoriums?
- Wireless or stationary mics?
- clip-on kind of mics or cary in your hand mics?
- How many of them?
- Will the hacklabs be allowed to stay open 24x7? What time schedule do they offer?
- What kind of security will be there?
- Are there any limitations regarding the consumptions of food / alcohol? Where do what limitations apply?
- How far is it to the nearest convenience stores / all-night restaurants?
- Please provide pictures of the venue/accommodation.
[edit] Food
- How much are the meals per person per day?
- 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?
- 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?
[edit] Network connectivity
- Is the area already wired with regular network infrastructure? (much preferrably: 100Mbps or 1Gbps switched)
- How much does it cost and how difficult is it to get a big internet connection? (10/20 Mbits at least)
- How much work does it imply to cover the area with wireless links?
- If we use someone else's infrastructure, how easy / flexible can that be handled, regarding routing / firewall / ip-range / public access / other stuff?
- Do we have restrictions on allowed ports?
- Are we traffic-shaped? Or can we set a traffic shaper if we need so?
- 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.)
- Are the buildings interconnected?
- Can the buildings reasonably be expected to be interconnected by 2015?
- Will all buildings have their own small DSL line?
- IPs would change between venues (maybe RichiH can help sponsor DSL lines and then route on single prefix to all of them)
- Watching streams from "local" talks when they go up & down through DSL would suck....
[edit] 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?
[edit] Accommodation
The city is small, and therefore there is no hotel that would be able to host all DebConf attendees. The city would be our partner in contacting the different hotels and pensions in the city center, we would only need to give them the names of the people that would stay in each place, the reception would be handled by each hotel on its own.
Between hotels and pensions we could accommodate 380 people, most of this is in double rooms, but there are also some bigger rooms. There's also camping and motor home places.
We are aiming for a distance of less than 1km from the farthest hotel to the venue, although people coming by car may be able to go to some of the hotels that are a bit further away.
The costs vary a lot depending on the hotels, the prices range from €15 to €50, but most are around €30.
The map (same as before) shows most of the hotels in Treuchtlingen, it's possible that a few smaller ones are missing, but most are there.
Regarding language, it's possible that the smallest pensions don't have English speakers, but the bigger hotels should.
Two of the hotels have accessible rooms: Gasthof Zum Goldenen Lamm and Gasthof Zum Güldenen Ritter are handicapped accessible.
[edit] Other issues
[edit] Fun and Free time
There are many outdoors sports available: kayaking, mountainbiking, hiking. There's a waterpark with pools with slides and waves, thermal waters, sauna, spa, etc. There are a couple of museums and parks.
[edit] Day Trip
We would likely go to somewhere else in Bavaria. Nothing thought of yet.
[edit] Local Sponsors
The city of Treuchtlingen would help with venue and organization, they are very interested in hosting us.
[edit] Timing
If we use the school as a venue, we will need to do it during Summer Holidays (from August 1st till September 13th).
