Re: Interest in a virtual IIO microconf?

["Ardelean, Alexandru" <alexandru.Ardelean@analog.com>]

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.
>