Developers Workshop 2009

The netlabs.org Developers Workshop 2009 will take place the weekend of 6. and 7. June 2009 in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland.

News Items

23. April 2009

Initial website online, finally.

Registration

Will come soon.

Workshop Program

Within the Voyager Project there was a lot of progress during the past months and this year's netlabs.org Developers Workshop will focus on topics around this project. The goal of the workshops is to get more know how about the project parts and components and exchange knowledge between the project team and the visitors on certain topics.

Unlike previous editions, the workshop will follow a new scheme. On Saturday we will present the state of the project and various parts of it in detail. On Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, we will have discussions about selected topics in workshop groups. For a final wrap-up, on Sunday afternoon we summarize the outcome of the discussions to the whole audience.

The topics we will talk about include things like semantic web, user interface abstraction and information description and linking.

For sure we will again provide enough space, wired or wireless network connection and lots of bandwidth.

Schedule

TBD

Workshop Location

Besides famous watch companies like Rolex, Omega and Swatch the city of Biel in Switzerland is the home of one more cool company: netlabs.org! This means that the Developers Workshop 2009 will again take place in the city where netlabs.org was founded in 1997. I'm proud to do the hosting at the Berne University of Applied Sciences, the place where I did my studies and where I worked as a system administrator and teacher for several years.

Biel is a small, but cute, city close to Bern, the capital city. It's the boarder to the French speaking part of Switzerland, so people in Biel speak German and French, at least most of them :-) If you have some more spare time I recommend you to do a walk in the beautiful surroundings of Biel, for example the Jura mountains or around the lake. There is plenty to discover and with a bit of luck we will have a nice spring time in April.

Links:

• Drei-Seen-Land - a nice page with a lot of information about our region.
• Biel/Bienne at Wikipedia.org. Available in many languages.
• Old town of Biel - some pics from the old town in my gallery

Hope to see you there!

Adrian Gschwend
founder of netlabs.org

Getting to Biel/Bienne

Biel is the gate to the French speaking part of Switzerland, located in the western part of Switzerland. It is well connected to the railway system in Switzerland and easy to reach from about everywhere.

By train:
There are night trains to Basel, called CityNightLine, this is mainly interesting if you want to get to Biel from Germany, Holland or Austria (it works from Denmark as well some days). You reach Biel within one hour from Basel by train.

For other train connections consult your local train office, if you have to travel to Biel from an airport check the homepage of SBB, the railway company in Switzerland. For Geneva and Zurich you have to add Airport in the search field. For Basel and Bern Belp you need to take the local airport bus anyway.

By plane:
There is no large airport close to Biel but in Switzerland almost everything is close by anyway. So you can choose one of these airports if you want to get to Biel:

• Zurich (ZRH) - The biggest airport in Switzerland, quite good connections to Biel (every 30 minutes). Takes about 1.5 hours by train.
• Geneva (GVA) - good for Easyjet. There is just one train per hour to Biel, around 1.5 hours by train.
• Basel (BSL) - also good for Easyjet. There are bus connections to Basel and from there it is one hour by train.
• Berne Belp (BRN) - this is a small local airport, close to Bern but you still need to get to Biel and that's probably not much faster than Zurich because the Bus connections from this airport to Bern are not that great. From Bern it will take 30 minutes to Biel.

The local airline in Switzerland is Swiss, which offers quite good trips from bigger cities.

By car:
The address is Quellgasse 21, 2502 Biel, Switzerland. There are parking places in front of the building, ask at the registration desk about how to open the locks for the parking places. You can get a map here, it's number 2 on the map.

Accomodation

There are several classes of hotels available in Biel:

• Lago Lodge - nice backpacker hostel directly at the lake of Biel. University is quite easy to reach by bus and the walk is not that far either.
• Bed & Breakfast - Some B&B offers in Biel, click on the part of the map top left.
• Hotel Continental - 3-star hotel close to the lake as well. The road is quite busy, so make sure you get a room towards the lake.
• Hotel Metropol - 3-star hotel, 15-20 minutes walk to the University or bus.
• Hotel Drei Rosen - 3-star Hotel, 10-15 minutes walk to the University or bus.
• Villa Lindenegg - a very special and cute hotel in an old villa, 2 minutes away from the University, you can't get closer than that!
• Mercure Plaza - 4-star hotel in the middle of the city
• Hotel Elite - 4-star hotel close to the railway station. Takes less than 10 minutes to the University.

If you can't afford a hotel we offer a room at the University where you can sleep with your sleeping bag and your mattress. The room is in the old manufacturing of Rolex and there are showers available too. It's probably not really comfortable but you don't have to pay anything for that :-) Please contact Adrian Gschwend if you want to do that, we have to know how many people do it like this. Email: ktk [at] netlabs.org
Update: I made some pictures about the location: http://ktk.netlabs.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=2636

Contact

If you have comments or want further information about the workshop, you can always reach us by sending an eMail to:
DevelopersWorkshop [at] netlabs.org
Adrian Gschwend is mainly responsible for organizing the workshop.