OSGeo :: Vienna Code Sprint 2014 :: Blog

Status update 7

Stephan Meißl — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Hi sprinters, more than two weeks have gone by since the Vienna Code Sprint and I hope everybody has fully recovered from the intense week after a safe trip home. In this final status update I’d like to share some highlights as well as some personal lessons learned.

We did two press releases in German to reach out to local media, [one at the beginning] (http://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20140324_OTS0043/entwicklerinnentreffen-von-freien-und-offenen-geographischen-informationssystemen-in-wien) and [one afterwards] (http://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20140401_OTS0094/vienna-code-sprint-2014-zu-freien-und-offenen-geographischen-informationssystemen-ein-grosser-erfolg).

For the international audience we sent two entries to OSGeo News, again one at the beginning as well as one afterwards. The later one includes a more comprehensive list of highlights and achievements. Both entries (1, 2) have also been sent to the announce mailing list.

There are some further interesting statistics besides the wireless usage:

Quite unexpected, we used less than 1 kilo of coffee beans per day
Extrapolating from the beer kegs we consumed more than 50 liters of beer per day
We had no problems to cope with more than 30 pastry pieces per day

If you’re interested in photos and comments try a search for #viennacodesprint14 on [twitter] (https://twitter.com/search?q=%23viennacodesprint14).

We did really well with our budget and will return a considerable amount to OSGeo to support future sprints.

Since I was asked for, please find below some personal lessons learned from an organizing point of view:

Renting a beer tap was very much appreciated but don’t return it too early
Bringing food to the venue instead of always going out saves time
Going out one or the other day was welcomed as well
Organizing is almost a full time job during the event and almost half time at least two weeks before
Reach out to sponsors early enough and don’t be disappointed if less than 5% respond even if you mainly mail personal contacts
Have a concrete plan for lunches and dinners for every day (minor adjustments will work but more than 50 participants definitely need a plan)
Make sure to communicate the plan early enough to the participants
A bigger supermarket in close walking distance really helps a lot
Don’t forget to buy tickets for public transport when going out
Make sure to make restaurant reservations in a non-smoking area. Yes Mike, I screwed this one up, sorry ;)
There are always higher requirements in the wireless network (see usage statistics)
Make sure to have enough power extensions available
Breakout rooms are quite convenient for groups to meet without disturbing everybody else
Better overestimate the budget needs to have some room

Maybe those points are a helpful input to a Code Sprint Cookbook. Please feel free to copy them for your needs.

I want to thank everybody who participated at the sprint and made it a great event.

Once again I want to shout out a big thank you to our sponsors. I still have a few coaster left, ping me if you’re interested.

Last but not lease I want the say many thanks for all the positive feedback!

cu Stephan

Wireless usage statistics

Stephan Meißl — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In exchange for the returned feedback sheets about the wireless network our venue sponsor provided some usage statistics. In total we have downloaded around 140 GB of data and the client connection durations add up to 4900 hours from more than 300 unique clients.

The figure below shows the number of connected clients over time using 5 minutes intervals with the highest peak on Tuesday afternoon with more than 120 simultaneously connected clients.

The second figure shows the cumulative throughput of all clients over time. During the day we used constantly between 5 and 10 Mbps with peaks above 17 Mbps.

The total download volume per client reveals some heavy users where the winner downloaded almost 13GB but also a fairly big number of clients with rather low download volume.

As I’m not a statistics expert please let me know if you’re interested in any other analysis I’ll gladly try to provide.

Photos

Stephan Meißl — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

First photos from the sprint…

Getting Around in Vienna (with the Kind Assistance of Geospatial Open Source Software)

Stephan Krause — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Hi sprinters, ITS Vienna Region is a silver sponsor of the OSGeo Code Sprint 2014. In many ways, geospatial open source software has helped us providing our services, so the Code Sprint is a great occasion to give a little bit back to you.

Who we are and what we are doing

ITS Vienna Region is a division of Verkehrsverbund Ost-Region (VOR). VOR coordinates the public transport in and around Vienna.

ITS Vienna Region provides intermodal traffic information for the northeastern part of Austria on its web site anachb.at. There’s an AnachB app for Androids and iPhones, too.

We operate and contribute to the so called Graph Integration Platform (GIP), a comprehensive intermodal graph of the Austrian transport networks including roads, rails, subways, tramways, ferries, hiking trails and biking tracks and everything else.

What we can do for you

You can use our services to find the best way to get around in Vienna and its surroundings walking, using public transport, bikes or cars. Our goal is to provide up-to-date information about all traffic modes and thereby encourage people to use the more environmentally friendly ones.

What you do for us

For our services and in our background processes, we use lots of free and open source GIS software (and lots of commercial software as well, I have to admit).

The levels of service calculated by our traffic state simulations, for instance, are provided to the City of Vienna interactive map (operated by MA14, your venue sponsor) and to the public as a WMS layer using MapServer.

Our upgraded, new user interface will be based on OpenLayers. A public beta with a slightly different design is operated by Verkehrsauskunft Österreich (VAO), the upcoming integrated platform for intermodal traffic information in Austria.

In the backend, we use PostGIS for hosting a copy of our network graph and referencing traffic messages and detector locations onto the links. Accurately locating data on the network is essential for providing up-to-date information about traffic volumes, congestions, accidents and other disturbances on the roads.

One of our most popular services is the bike routing interface. It uses data about slope angles for calculating the routes and provides height profiles for the results. The underlying data have been generated by referencing DEM data onto the network graph using the Python bindings of GDAL/OGR.

There’s a lot more to tell, probably too much for a blog post :-) . So, finally:

Thanks to you and all those who contribute to free and open source geospatial software and a happy code sprint to everybody!

Status update 6

Stephan Meißl — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Hi sprinters, the preparations are in their final stage and in just one week the welcome party will be in full swing. This is my final status update including directions to the code sprint venue as well as an invitation to a small ice breaker on Sunday evening for those already in Vienna.

The venue is not far from the center of Vienna (~25min via train and subway) and can be reached easily from the Vienna international airport via train.

From the airport take the train S-Bahn S7 going to Wien Floridsdorf and exit at Praterstern (~30min). Make sure to avoid the CAT as it doesn’t bring you to Praterstern and I consider it too costly for gaining just 10 minutes.

From Praterstern take the subway U-Bahn U2 going to Seestadt and exit at Stadlau. Now either take a 15 minutes walk to the venue or take the bus Autobus 86A going to Breitenleer Straße/Arnikaweg or 87A going to Hermann-Gebauer-Straße and exit at Genochplatz.

From Praterstern instead of the U2 you can also take the subway U-Bahn U1 particularly when going to the Hotel Hillinger. Take the U1 going to Leopoldau and exit at Kagran. Now take the tram Straßenbahn 25 going to Oberdorfstraße or the bus Autobus 26A going to Großenzersdorf and exit at Polgarstraße for the Hotel Hillinger or continue to Konstanziagasse for the code sprint venue.

If you’re in Vienna already on Sunday you’re invited to join us for a small ice breaker starting from 7pm at Green - Cafe-Wok-Grill-Restaurant which is located next to the sprint venue. You will see the signs when you enter the plaza of Star22.

On Monday we will start 9ish with some sort of “official” opening around 10.

As always don’t hesitate to contact me in case of any questions. I’m looking forward to welcome you all in Vienna next week.

cu
Stephan

Support by OSGeo

Stephan Meißl — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In their last board meeting the OSGeo Foundation Board of Directors approved our application for funding. Many thanks for the great support which will help to make sure that we won’t run out of coffee … and cookies … and …!

New bronze sponsor

Stephan Meißl — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

We are proud to announce and welcome our fifth bronze sponsor: GFOSS.it

Status update 5

Stephan Meißl — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Hi sprinters, things are progressing nicely and we started working on the general schedule including social activities. We will be visiting the venue again on Thursday to clarify last details. Please let me know any points you want us to address there.

In the evening of the first day of the sprint we will invite all sprinters to a big welcome party. More details shall not be revealed yet but we try to make it a memorable event.

On Wednesday evening we invite interested participants to a guided evening walk - “The City of Vienna at a glance”. An on-site registration will be needed due to a limit number of 25 places.

The downtown tour introduces the imperial city, Vienna´s great history, its unique architecture, and todays life-style.

Meeting in front of St. Stephen´s Cathedral, Vienna’s main 900 years old landmark, we will stroll along Graben and Kohlmarkt, passing former court confectionary Demel and the most exclusive shops in Vienna. Crossing the courtyards of the Imperial Palace “Hofburg” you will hear about the great times of former Austrian monarchy, see where Empress Elizabeth (Sisi) married Emperor Franz Joseph, where the Vienna Boys’ Choir sings mass on Sunday, and where the famous white Lipizzaner stallions of the Spanish Riding School perform. You will enjoy the great view from Heroes Square to some of the magnificent buildings of the famous Ringstraße. We will continue walking towards State Opera and the legendary hotel Sacher and will end the tour at Albertinaplatz.

As always don’t hesitate to contact me in case of any questions.

cu
Stephan

Status update 4 - Invitation organization meeting

Stephan Meißl — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Hi sprinters, lots of things have happened here in Vienna since my last status update, please find a brief summary below. Besides I’d like to invite everybody to a planning and organization meeting via IRC (#tosprint on freenode) on Thursday, February 6, at 6pm CET. It’s a bit early in the states but I hope not too early.

Probably the most interesting update is the successful negotiation of hotel blocks. Please see the wiki for detailed information including number of rooms and beds. Feel free to coordinate room shares via the wiki.

The second big update is that the GRASS GIS PSC decided to officially join the code sprint providing great opportunities for joint activities.

Let’s hope we’re not blasting the capacities of our venue as at the time of writing already 64 participants have registered. I’m sure we can squeeze in additional chairs but the wireless bandwidth… ;) Seriously, it’s really great to attract so many excellent developers.

Finally, many thanks and welcome to the following new sponsors:

Austrospace as gold sponsor
TYDAC as gold sponsor
FOSSGIS e.V. as gold sponsor
Oslandia as bronze sponsor
rapidlasso as bronze sponsor
Azavea as bronze sponsor

cu
Stephan

New bronze sponsor

Stephan Meißl — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

We are proud to announce and welcome our forth bronze sponsor: Azavea

GRASS GIS Community Sprint joins Vienna Code Sprint 2014

Luca Delucchi — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

We are glad to announce that the GRASS GIS PSC decided to join the Vienna Code Sprint 2014. We are looking forward to a great week with a lot of interproject discussions and joint activities. See the GRASS wiki page and the GRASS Developers mailing list for more info related to GRASS participation in the Vienna Code Sprint.

Currently already 55 participants have registered. Thus make sure to get your name in and add it to the participants list. Meet you in Vienna!!

Hotel

Stephan Meißl — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’m happy to finally announce the successful negotiation of a hotel block or better two blocks at the two hotels closest to the sprint venue, Hotel Hillinger (see image below) and Hotel Wiener Kindl . For details please see the wiki.

New gold sponsor

Stephan Meißl — Tue, 14 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

We are proud to announce and welcome our forth gold sponsor: FOSSGIS e.V.

Many thanks for sponsoring the code sprint with exactly 2016€, seems like a special number to the FOSSGIS e.V..

The FOSSGIS e.V. together with the [OpenStreetMap Community] (http://www.openstreetmap.de/ “OpenStreetMap Community”), OSGeo, and the Beuth Hochschule für Technik Berlin organizes the FOSSGIS-Konferenz 2014 which takes place in Berlin the week before the sprint. If you understand some German we highly recommend to attend the conference.

[] (http://www.fossgis.de/ “FOSSGIS e.V.”)

New gold sponsor

Stephan Meißl — Sun, 22 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We are proud to announce and welcome our third gold sponsor: TYDAC

New bronze sponsor

Stephan Meißl — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We are proud to announce and welcome our third bronze sponsor: rapidlasso

QGIS Hackfest joins Code Sprint

Stephan Meißl — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to our generous venue sponsor, the City of Vienna, we were able to invite the QGIS community to join the Code Sprint with their Hackfest. We are glad that the QGIS PSC decided for Vienna and we are looking forward to a great week with a lot of interproject discussions and joint activities. See the QGIS developer mailing list for the official announcement.

The number of available places has been increased and we are now planning for 50-60 participants. Currently already 43 participants have registered. Thus make sure to get your name in and add it to the participants list.

Venue

Stephan Meißl — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Today I had the chance to visit the venue of the Code Sprint. I have been there for the first time and I can say it’s a really nice place. The building is brand new and has a couple of nice restaurant and shops around. I took a couple of images to give you an impression.

The first is a panoramic shot of the big room:

This is again the big room as seen from the main door. In the middle back you can see the door to the smaller room:

This is just outside of the rooms and a smaller room which we might also get the chance to use if needed:

Finally I took some images from outside. On the upper two you can see the entrance (right below the flags) as well as the windows of the rooms (just right of the entrance). The lower two show the building from the other side where you also have some restaurants and shops.

I’m really looking forward to a great week.

Many thanks again to the City of Vienna MA 14!

New bronze sponsor

Stephan Meißl — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We are proud to announce and welcome our second bronze sponsor: Oslandia

Status update 3

Stephan Meißl — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Hi sprinters, we have great news from Vienna.

The biggest news is that the QGIS PSC voted for joining the Vienna Code Sprint as first choice for their next Hackfest. Stay tuned for further details. We will meet on IRC #tosprint today at around 4pm Vienna time for some discussion. Please join if you’re interested.

Many thanks and welcome to our first sponsors:

Airborne Interactive as gold sponsor
ITS Vienna Region as silver sponsor
The metaspatial Institute as bronze sponsor

In the next status update I hope to be able to announce a hotel arrangement.

Finally, make sure to add yourself to the participants list as places are filling up.

cu
Stephan

New gold sponsor

Stephan Meißl — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We are proud to announce and welcome our second gold sponsor: Austrospace

First silver sponsor

Stephan Meißl — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We are proud to announce and welcome our first silver sponsor: ITS Vienna Region

ITS Vienna Region offers a real time traffic info service for all means of transport. Enter your start address in the below widget to get routed to the Code Sprint venue.

First gold sponsor

Stephan Meißl — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We are proud to announce and welcome our first gold sponsor: Airborne Interactive Ltd

First bronze sponsor

Stephan Meißl — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We are proud to announce and welcome our first bronze sponsor: The metaspatial Institute

Status update 2

Stephan Meißl — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Hi sprinters, please find below some recent updates from Vienna.

First of all we have a new website, yay. Thanks to Daniel and Marko for helping with the domain and design. Please feel free to send pull requests if you want to say something on the website’s blog.

I’ve started to contact potential sponsors. Please let me know if you know somebody I should contact our point them to the website directly. Many thanks.

We are getting really excited as places are filling up. We have already 20 participants registered most of them with a “very likely” likeliness of attendance. Thus make sure to add yourself early enough before we maybe have to start a waitlist.

We are working on something big maybe unveiled in the next status update, stay tuned.

cu
Stephan

New OSGeo URL

Stephan Meißl — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to Daniel Morissette the new website is now available under the official OSGeo URL http://vienna2014.sprint.osgeo.org

Please spread the word and point potential sponsors to this new URL.

New website launched

Stephan Meißl — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Yay, the OSGeo Vienna Code Sprint 2014 has a website of its own. The plan is to post updates more or less regularly as interesting stuff happens.

Status update 1

Stephan Meißl — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

All, let me briefly summarize the current status of the planning for the Vienna Code Sprint 2014.

The date is fixed for the week of March 24-28 2014. Question: Any objections to going for a full week?

The venue is reserved and blocked for us.

If you plan to attend, please add yourself to the list of participants on the wiki page indicating any special needs.

Finally please let me know any potential sponsors you think I should contact. I’m planning to approach them in the next couple of weeks, also at FOSS4G.

I plan to send updates more or less regularly as interesting stuff happens. I’m looking forward to welcome all of you in Vienna.

cu
Stephan

OSGeo Code Sprint 2014 comes to Vienna

Stephan Meißl — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The final decision has been taken to hold the OSGeo Code Sprint 2014 in Vienna, Austria, Europe. Thanks Philadelphia for agreeing to hold the 2015 Code Sprint.

We are quite exited and are looking forward to welcome you all in Vienna next March!

Here are some impressions from Vienna: