[OpenAFS-devel] Re: LISA 2005 & AFS & k5 ???

[Ken Hornstein]

>Based on what people said, it sounds like I should
>save my travel bucks up.  So, where/when is the next hackathon?
>Any chance of organizing one in the US in the next 6 months?

Once to some of the OpenAFS developers I semi-jokingly suggested
holding a US hackathon at my house next year.

I know this sounds like a strange idea to say the least, but I recently
complete a large renovation on our house, and as Derrick can attest, I
have plenty of room.  There's a large room we could use to hold the
actual sitting-around-and-working-on-stuff portion of the hackathon,
and I have enough spare bedrooms that we could have a number of people
actually stay at our house for those people who want to economize on
travel (we'd have to figure out how this would work in practice,
because there is a finite amount of space).  There are enough hotels
nearby so housing wouldn't be a problem, and I live in Northern
Virginia about 10 minutes from Dulles Airport.  For those eccentric
individuals who prefer trains, train connectivity is available (you can
connect from the main train station to a Metro station, and I could
pick you up from there).  Sine Nomine isn't too far away, so it's
possible we could work something out with them in terms of the
mechanics of arranging the hackathon (I have no idea if they would be
interested in doing this or not: I'm just thinking out loud here).
Obviously, the conference fee would be minimal (it would just be on
a cost recovery basis, and I suspect the actual costs would be pretty
low).

Sadly, having a hackathon at NRL is mostly out because getting foreign
nationals into NRL is a pain.

Possible downsides:

- Right now my network connectivity is ISDN; I keep hearing I can maybe
  get DSL, but that is not definite.  So at the worst it would be ISDN,
  and at the best it would be DSL.  If high-speed network connectivity
  is a MUST, then this would be a deal-killer.  The current network
  connectivity is useful for interactive, but not wonderful.

- This would require spousal approval; Heidi has not completely ruled it
  out when I talked to her about it before, but I don't think she thought
  I was completely serious.

Anyway, I am still semi-serious, semi-joking at this stage.  I think it
_could_ work, but I have no idea if there is any interest, or if people
think this is a good idea or not.  If you think this is a good idea (or
not), then speak up!  Otherwise I'll just assume that there's not enough
interest to put in any effort into making it happen.

--Ken