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.

Mails send out:	97
Undeliverable:	14

From the 83 good eMails, we got:

No reply:	63	75,90%
Reply:	20	24,10%

Here are the answers to the 6 questions:

	Yes	No	total
Q1 Develops for/on OS/2	18	1	19
Q2 Wants to meet other people?	19	0	19
Q3 Would attend OS/2 only Workshop?	16	3	19
Q6 Wants future eMails?	19	1	20

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 21th. (survey was sent out December 16th)

Q4 Suggested topics:

• 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 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
• NdisWrapper for OS/2

Q5 Comments:

• Do online courses.
• Online proceedings would be most useful

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.

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:

1. When should the workshop be held (day of the week)?
   • during the week
   • on a weekend
   • weekdays close to the weekend (Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and Friday)
   • Not sure, because this depends on other things and it is too far away to plan now
   • I do not care, because I will attend anyway
   • I do not care, because I will not attend
2. When should the workshop be held (month)? (subject to availability of meeting facility!)
   • May
   • June
   • July
   • I vote for: ______________ (month or quarter of the year)
   • Not sure, because this depends on other things and it is too far away to plan now
   • I do not care, because I will attend anyway
   • I do not care, because I will not attend
3. Where should the workshop be held?
   • Dresden, Germany
   • I do not care, as long as it is in central europe
   • I do not care, as long as it is in ______________ (region)
   • I would help to organize the workshop if it was held in ______________ (city)
   • I do not care as long as I can get there by car/train in less then 12 hours
     • and I live in: ______________ (city)
   • I do not care, because I will attend anyway
   • I do not care, because I will not attend
4. The organizers of the workshop should think about (financially) helping people from eastern europe to participate in the workshop?
   • Yes
   • No
   • I do not care
5. If I can participate in the workshop, I would like to give a presentation about:
   • ______________ (topic)

We mention Dresden 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!

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.