[Zope3-dev] Zope3 IsarSprint - Oct 4 to 10, 2004 - Weihenstephan/Munich

[Helmut Merz]

Hello everyone,

as we are just organizing this year's autumn meeting of the 
German-speaking Zope User Group (Deutschsprachige Zope User 
Group - DZUG) we thought it would be a good idea to combine 
this with a Zope-related sprint...

Since we all are working with Plone and some had already 
taken in the famous Snow Sprint in Schruns this February 
(thanks to Jodok Batlogg again :-)) the first idea was to 
focus on Plone - but then we thought it even more 
interesting to join the Zope3 train that is - from an 
application developer's view - at the moment still somewhat 
behind the Zope2/Plone train but catching up quickly and 
promising to get ahead soon.

So this is what we thought about the objectives and 
organization of the sprint:

(1) Application-oriented
I think the basic technology should be stable soon and in 
any case until October, so that it would be a good time to 
make Zope3 really "application-ready". OK - maybe it is 
already ;-) - but in order to give Zope3 a real boost we 
need an "out-of-the-box" CMS and a few ready-to-use 
application components around it. Goal: Use Zope3 at least 
in some simple customer projects just by applying some 
basic customizing...

(2) No tutorial
I remember Jim some time ago telling on this list that he's 
tired of giving Zope3 tutorials at sprints - I think this 
is OK and we also should not spend the precious time at the 
sprint with introductory sessions. So a prerequisite for 
people taking part as developers should be that they have 
installed Zope3 and worked through the documentation, 
tutorials, and how-tos available. (In addition to 
developers it would be fine to also have some people at the 
sprint that act as "on site customers" to give input on the 
features needed.)

(3) Well prepared
I also won't like to spend much time on discussing topics 
and features to work on and forming teams during the sprint 
- this should be done before! So we would have to set up 
some discussions space (probably a wiki) and a mailing list 
for discussing everything online.

Where is Weihenstephan?

The sprint will take place at the facilities of the 
Technical University of Munich in Weihenstephan. This is a 
part of Freising, a small town some 25 km north of Munich, 
close to the Munich airport. As the river Isar crosses both 
Munich and then Freising we thought it's a good idea to 
call the sprint the "IsarSprint" (And there will also be an 
opportunity to visit Munich). Weihenstephan is also the 
site the oldest brewery of the world...

When?

The sprint will start on Monday, October 4 - this is the day 
after the last day of the Oktoberfest, so you might get a 
chance to visit this famous event... - and will end on 
Sunday, October 10. During the DZUG meeting on Oct 8/9 
there will be the opportunity to present Zope3 and our work 
during the sprint to a greater public.

Of course we will help you with accomodations, maybe we can 
even come up with some "all-included" package - more about 
this during the next two months. We will also try to get 
some money to sponsor travel expenses and accomodation for 
a few of the participants...

What next?

Block the IsarSprint week in your calendar - give some 
(hopefully positive) feedback on this list or privately - 
tell us that you desperately want to take part ;-) - so 
that we can start to work on the details...


Regards
Helmut

on behalf of the organizing team:
Thomas Wagner (theseus at ze.tum.de), Hadwig Sternschulte 
(sternschulte at ze.tum.de) (Technical University of Munich)
Max Jakob (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 
jakob at informatik.uni-muenchen.de)
Maik Ihde (Haarmann Hemmelrath, Munich, 
maik.ihde at haarmannhemmelrath.com)
Helmut Merz (cyberconcepts IT-Consulting, Diessen, 
helmutm at cy55.de)