Interest in a virtual IIO microconf?

Interest in a virtual IIO microconf?

[Jonathan Cameron]

Hi All

Summary:

Is there enough IIO developer interest in spending a few hours talking about
IIO topics?  Note we may go deep in places but other topics need a wide range
of people and experience to be useful!

So, I have thought about trying to organize a workshop / microconf at one of the
big Linux conferences in the past.  However, I've not done anything about it
because :

1. Active IIO developers are geographically spread out, so chances are we
   would only get a small subset of people.  Whilst that's fine for having
   a few beers/coffee and a chat, it is not so good on an inclusive / useful basis
   for making any progress.  Whilst the Linux foundation and others do their
   best to encourage a wide range of people to attend these events, the reality
   is that going to a conference is expensive in money and/or time.

2. Whilst I have personally been going to more conferences in recent times than
   I did a few years back, they aren't always 'the right ones' for this sort
   of meeting.

3. It wasn't obvious that we would actually have a enough to talk about.
   This is more of an issue if it involved people jumping on planes with all
   the issues that brings.

4. I've mulled trying something virtual in the past but was unconvinced we could
   do it in fashion that would make it more productive than email exchanges.

Anyhow, a huge amount has changed this year.  I'm sure everyone is getting more
used to doing things online and it's clear that useful meetings of this type
can occur without getting everyone sat around a table.

Clearly lots of open questions around this:

* What would we talk about?

* Are enough people interested? 

* When?  Can we actually find a timezone or date that works for enough people?
  Particularly true given mixture of people who do IIO for their day jobs and
  those who do it out of work time!

  Note that, for a first such event I'd suggest we are looking at around 3 hours.

* Platform: We could try and associate with an existing event, but as it will be small
  we probably don't need the heavy weight logistics of something like Plumbers
  (side note - their online conferencing setup is very impressive).

  My personal preference is Zoom as it seems more reliable than alternatives
  (even though it's closed source etc... :( Video optional!

I have a few thoughts on topics (in no particular order)

1. Generic process stuff.  Should we change how the IIO subsystem is maintained?
   I know I have a few things I'd like to briefly discuss.  Note this is standard
   feature in pretty much every open source project microconf!

2. Major out of tree patches.  
   - What is out there?  Perhaps there is room to collaborate around some of this.
   - Do we have a path to upstream them?

3. Topics on the horizon?  Where should we go?
   - One topic in here is potentially around virtualization on embedded
     platforms and how IIO might fit within that.

4. Mentorship / support of new developers.
   - Would love to get some inputs on this from both people who do a lot of
     this and from those who have recently been on the 'newbie' side of things!

5. Usecases.  I'd personally love to hear a bit about what people are actually
   doing with all these devices!  I'd also be interested in pain points etc.

6. Userspace stacks.  More discussion around pain points etc than an overview of
   what there is.

7. Testing / emulation?  What do people have in place, and what can we do to
   improve it?

8+ What do other people want to talk about?

Some of these topics pretty much require particular people, so we may not be
able to do them usefully this time. Note the above list may well be
too many topics already so chances are we won't get through everything people
want to talk about.

Anyhow, thoughts?

We can leave the "when" question until we have an idea of whether it makes
sense to do this at all.  

Jonathan

p.s. As ever ideally keep discussion on list but if anyone wants to raise anything
privately feel free to email me directly.

Re: Interest in a virtual IIO microconf?

[Ardelean, Alexandru]

On Sun, 2020-06-28 at 13:36 +0100, Jonathan Cameron wrote:
> Hi All
> 

Hey,

I'd be interested in a virtual microconf.
Some more notes inline.


> Summary:
> 
> Is there enough IIO developer interest in spending a few hours talking
> about
> IIO topics?  Note we may go deep in places but other topics need a wide
> range
> of people and experience to be useful!
> 
> So, I have thought about trying to organize a workshop / microconf at one
> of the
> big Linux conferences in the past.  However, I've not done anything about
> it
> because :
> 
> 1. Active IIO developers are geographically spread out, so chances are we
>    would only get a small subset of people.  Whilst that's fine for
> having
>    a few beers/coffee and a chat, it is not so good on an inclusive /
> useful basis
>    for making any progress.  Whilst the Linux foundation and others do
> their
>    best to encourage a wide range of people to attend these events, the
> reality
>    is that going to a conference is expensive in money and/or time.
> 
> 2. Whilst I have personally been going to more conferences in recent
> times than
>    I did a few years back, they aren't always 'the right ones' for this
> sort
>    of meeting.
> 
> 3. It wasn't obvious that we would actually have a enough to talk about.
>    This is more of an issue if it involved people jumping on planes with
> all
>    the issues that brings.
> 
> 4. I've mulled trying something virtual in the past but was unconvinced
> we could
>    do it in fashion that would make it more productive than email
> exchanges.
> 
> Anyhow, a huge amount has changed this year.  I'm sure everyone is
> getting more
> used to doing things online and it's clear that useful meetings of this
> type
> can occur without getting everyone sat around a table.
> 
> Clearly lots of open questions around this:
> 
> * What would we talk about?
> 
> * Are enough people interested? 
> 
> * When?  Can we actually find a timezone or date that works for enough
> people?
>   Particularly true given mixture of people who do IIO for their day jobs
> and
>   those who do it out of work time!
> 
>   Note that, for a first such event I'd suggest we are looking at around
> 3 hours.
> 
> * Platform: We could try and associate with an existing event, but as it
> will be small
>   we probably don't need the heavy weight logistics of something like
> Plumbers
>   (side note - their online conferencing setup is very impressive).
> 
>   My personal preference is Zoom as it seems more reliable than
> alternatives
>   (even though it's closed source etc... :( Video optional!
> 
> I have a few thoughts on topics (in no particular order)
> 
> 1. Generic process stuff.  Should we change how the IIO subsystem is
> maintained?
>    I know I have a few things I'd like to briefly discuss.  Note this is
> standard
>    feature in pretty much every open source project microconf!
> 
> 2. Major out of tree patches.  
>    - What is out there?  Perhaps there is room to collaborate around some
> of this.
>    - Do we have a path to upstream them?

Naturally, I have some interest in this topic.

> 
> 3. Topics on the horizon?  Where should we go?
>    - One topic in here is potentially around virtualization on embedded
>      platforms and how IIO might fit within that.

This [for me] is partially related to 2.

But somewhat unrelated [to 2.], we've been discussing internally some ideas
about "rapid-prototyping".
I know there was something that Intel did a while back on this.
We've had some other thoughts, but did not have time to finalize them.

> 
> 4. Mentorship / support of new developers.
>    - Would love to get some inputs on this from both people who do a lot
> of
>      this and from those who have recently been on the 'newbie' side of
> things!
> 
> 5. Usecases.  I'd personally love to hear a bit about what people are
> actually
>    doing with all these devices!  I'd also be interested in pain points
> etc.
> 
> 6. Userspace stacks.  More discussion around pain points etc than an
> overview of
>    what there is.
> 
> 7. Testing / emulation?  What do people have in place, and what can we
> od to
>    improve it?

There's also an internal idea we had, where we can extend the IIO dummy
driver [or create a new one], to load data and read-back [as a replay for
userspace].
We never got to do it, but would be curios of other did.


> 
> 8+ What do other people want to talk about?
> 
> Some of these topics pretty much require particular people, so we may not
> be
> able to do them usefully this time. Note the above list may well be
> too many topics already so chances are we won't get through everything
> people
> want to talk about.
> 
> Anyhow, thoughts?
> 
> We can leave the "when" question until we have an idea of whether it
> makes
> sense to do this at all.  
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> p.s. As ever ideally keep discussion on list but if anyone wants to raise
> anything
> privately feel free to email me directly.
> 

Re: Interest in a virtual IIO microconf?

[Lars-Peter Clausen]

On 6/29/20 3:51 PM, Ardelean, Alexandru wrote:
> There's also an internal idea we had, where we can extend the IIO dummy
> driver [or create a new one], to load data and read-back [as a replay for
> userspace].
> We never got to do it, but would be curios of other did.

Like this?

https://github.com/larsclausen/linux/blob/iio-high-speed-4.19/drivers/iio/dummy/iio_virtual_dma_loopback.c

Re: Interest in a virtual IIO microconf?

[Ardelean, Alexandru]

On Mon, 2020-06-29 at 21:06 +0200, Lars-Peter Clausen wrote:
> [External]
> 
> On 6/29/20 3:51 PM, Ardelean, Alexandru wrote:
> > There's also an internal idea we had, where we can extend the IIO dummy
> > driver [or create a new one], to load data and read-back [as a replay
> > for
> > userspace].
> > We never got to do it, but would be curios of other did.
> 
> Like this?
> 
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/larsclausen/linux/blob/iio-high-speed-4.19/drivers/iio/dummy/iio_virtual_dma_loopback.c__;!!A3Ni8CS0y2Y!pg9HY5sFRnsnrOhypNZawqWZ-uXb8sRU9AeDsBMvNgtFJ3UX1TRf34RhiHFYlmaWcw5ljQ$ 
> 

yes
looks interesting
for a short while i wonder if i missed it, then found i didn't
i'll admit my initial thought was a bit simpler, but this looks better