Developers Workshop

Description
netlabs.org and the OS/2 User Group Dresden are currently looking into hosting an OS/2 and eComStation developers workshop. We know that there is a Warpstock and a Warpstock Europe every year, but we want to find out if a more developer oriented event could be organized.

First Survey
We think that the first step is to find out if developers would be interested in such a workshop at all (regardless of where and when it would be held!). To get some feedback from developers in the OS/2 community, we did send out 97 eMails. We asked the developers 6 questions:

Q1 Are you developing for/on OS/2 based systems?

Q2 Are you interested in meeting other developers in person, exchange information and talk about OS/2 and eComStation development methods and tools?

Q3 Would you attend a workshop that only covers OS/2 and eComStation development topics?

Q4 To make it worth attending such a workshop, what topics would you like to see covered?

Q5 Comments.

Q6 Would you like to receive future mailings regarding an OS/2 and eComStation Developers Workshop?

Here are some statistics. From the 83 good eMails, we got:

Here are the answers to the 6 questions: Note 1: One person made clear that he does not want to receive any further eMails. This person only answered question Q6! Note 2: This data is current as of December 24th. (survey was sent out December 16th)

Q4 Suggested topics: Q5 Comments: If you feel like you have some information about the whole idea of a developers workshop to add, please DO NOT EDIT the numbers above, but rather add you comments below. Thanks.
 * Using IBM OCL (C++, Visual Age)
 * Using OpenWatcom
 * Pascal and all it's compilers and libraries.
 * ODIN
 * XworkPlace development
 * Writing USB drivers and using USBCALLS.DLL
 * Writing USB driver
 * Writing simple GUI applications
 * OS/2 as an OpenSource System (stable core, enhancements at ring 3 possible)
 * Cross platform development with OpenWatcom (cross compiling from OS/2)
 * Cross platform technologies on OS/2 (XUL, Java, Perl, TCL/TK, X, GTK...)
 * See what the new IBM-Lenovo deal can do for OS/2
 * SOM/WPS/OpenDoc development and object technologies under OS/2
 * Porting to OS/2
 * Overview of projects in the works
 * LibC and GCC setup, features and usage
 * IFS programming
 * TCP/IP programming
 * Device I/O, device driver programming
 * General contacts to other developers
 * Setup and Administration of a CVS Server
 * Porting Device Drivers from Windows/Linux to OS/2 for example with LXAPI32.SYS
 * OS/2 device drivers, especially 32 bit device drivers programming
 * NdisWrapper for OS/2
 * General development roadmap for OS/2 (replacement of what subsystems....) (What is missing, how to fix stuff)
 * debugging on OS/2 (what debuggers are available; OMF/A.OUT;
 * overview of usable programming languages for OS/2
 * development of fully DBCS enabled applications, including IME.
 * Do online courses.
 * Online proceedings would be most useful

Second Survey
The results from the first survey show an interest in a developer oriented workshop. We deliberately excluded questions about the city and time for such a workshop from the first survey. This may have discouraged people from sending back a reply. Those questions will go into the second survey.

People that indicated that they want to receive further emails, will get the second survey via eMail. We are currently not sure if we should also distribute it in developer oriented mailinglists.

We are currently looking for questions to include in the second survey. So far, we have the following: Dresden is mentioned here, because this is the city where people from the User Group Dresden can organize such a workshop easily. If you want to propose other cities feel free to add them!
 * 1) When should the workshop be held (day of the week)?  (subject to availability of meeting facility!)
 * 2) * during the week
 * 3) * on a weekend
 * 4) * weekdays close to the weekend (Monday and Tuesday or  Thursday and Friday)
 * 5) * Not sure, because this depends on other things and it is too far away to plan now
 * 6) * I do not care, because I will attend anyway
 * 7) * I do not care, because I will not attend
 * 8) When should the workshop be held (month)?  (subject to availability of meeting facility!)
 * 9) * May
 * 10) * June
 * 11) * July
 * 12) * Other: ______________ (month or quarter of the year)
 * 13) * Not sure, because this depends on other things and it is too far away to plan now
 * 14) * I do not care, because I will attend anyway
 * 15) * I do not care, because I will not attend
 * 16) Where should the workshop be held?
 * 17) * Dresden, Germany
 * 18) * I do not care, as long as it is in central europe
 * 19) * I do not care, as long as it is in ______________ (region)
 * 20) * I would help to organize the workshop if it is held in ______________ (city)
 * 21) * I do not care as long as I can get there by car/train in less then 12 hours
 * 22) ** and I live in: ______________ (city)
 * 23) * I do not care, because I will attend anyway
 * 24) * I do not care, because I will not attend
 * 25) From the following topics, what are the most important for you and should really be presented at the workshop? (mark NO MORE THAN 4)
 * 26) * Device Drivers for OS/2 (porting from Linux/Windows, device I/O, 32 bit drivers, ...)
 * 27) * USB development (writing drivers for special devices, Java-USB, USBRESMG...)
 * 28) * ODIN development (setting up a compile environment, how to fix stuff, general overview...)
 * 29) * SOM / WPS / XWPS development
 * 30) * application development with GUI libraries (IBM OCL, DynamicWindows, wxWidgets, you-name-it...)
 * 31) * detailed information about compilers (InnoTek GCC, IBM VAC, OpenWatcom, WDSibyl,...)
 * 32) * cross-platform development on OS/2 (cross-compiling, cross-platform libraries, ...)
 * 33) * IFS development, NetDrive PlugIns
 * 34) * development tools setup/usage (CVS, make, NLS, debug, ...)
 * 35) * reports on real word software development projects
 * 36) * OS/2 "advocacy" (in a positive way!, probably as a discussion session)
 * 37) * additional topic: ______________ (topic)
 * 38) The organizers of the workshop should think about financial help for people from eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine...) to participate in the workshop?
 * 39) * Yes, even if this means that a little registration fee needs to be charged for participants
 * 40) * Yes, but this should not add to the cost for regular participants
 * 41) * Yes, I would be willing to donate some money
 * 42) * No
 * 43) * I do not care
 * 44) If I participate in the workshop, I would like to give a presentation about:
 * 45) * ______________ (topic)
 * 46) Comments:
 * 47) * ______________ (comment)
 * 48) Optional information:
 * 49) * You have my contact information from the last survey.
 * 50) * Name: ______________ (name)
 * 51) * eMail: ______________ (eMail)
 * 52) * I would like to receive future mailings regarding an OS/2 and eComStation Developers Workshop.
 * 53) ** yes
 * 54) ** no

Asking for "How long should the workshop be?" does not make much sense before we know how many people will want to give a talk.

How to distribute the second survey

 * eMail to people who have answered the first survey
 * distribute in development oriented mailinglists and newsgroups
 * comp.os.os2.programmer.misc
 * de.comp.os.os2.programmer
 * netlabs.org community mailing list
 * edm2 mailing list

Results
The survey was distributed on Sunday, January 2nd 2005. Number of replies: 24 (February 8th 2005)

Q6 - Topics proposals. So far, 9 people have indicated that they would give a presentation.

If you feel like you have some information about the whole idea of a developers workshop to add, please DO NOT EDIT the numbers above, but rather add you comments below. Thanks.

Comments
Not the week after pfingsten, there I have a other metting. Dresden, ok. Days before weekend. I comes from hannover(Niedersachsen/Germany). Dietrich

The second survey should try to find out which topics are the most urgent. Some of the stuff is rather esoteric IMHO. -Cinc Good idea, I have added a question regarding topics. However, we would need people that present stuff on such topics! -Robert ;-) First things first. We may think about finding the people doing the actual presentations when we know which presentation is really wanted. If there's no presenter it just wont be held. -Cinc