V.O.I.C.E Virtual OS/2 International Consumer Education

January 2006

A A A

Active GUI element

Static GUI element

Code

WPS object

File/Path

Command line

Entry-field content

[Key combination]

more

by Thomas Klein, © January 2006

Warpstock Europe 2005 took place in Dresden, Germany, and was a success. The organization of such an event is not an easy task. Shortly before the event, Thomas Klein interviewed Robert Henschel, chairman of the organization team.

VOICE:

How are the preparations going? Are you on time? Feeling stressed?

Robert Henschel:

It looks quite well. We could do with some more advertising.

VOICE:

Are all positions staffed or do you need more volunteers? Are you missing any hardware?

Robert Henschel:

There are enough volunteers because they were simply recruited from my relatives and acquaintances. Some people who are doing presentations don't have a laptop to bring. But I'm setting up a system for them--only one machine, but that should do it.

VOICE:

Have you been to any previous Warpstock events--as a visitor, speaker, or as part of the organization team?

Robert Henschel:

I've been to Karlsruhe [Germany, Warpstock Europe 2000, ed.] and to Arnhem [Netherlands] last year, as well as the last four Warpstocks in the US.

VOICE:

As a visitor. . .?

Robert Henschel:

No, in Arnheim I did the presentation about SVISTA and this year in Dresden [Saxony], I'll do the presentation on PalmOS devices and OS/2 which I already did in Hershey [Pennsylvania, USA, Warpstock 2005] as well.

VOICE:

Oh, you've been to Hershey? What was it like?

Robert Henschel:

Well, in the US there are fewer attendees in general than with our events in Europe. Also, the average age of visitors is higher than compared to what we are used to here [in Europe]. But this year's event at Hershey was better in all aspects than Denver [Colorado, USA, Warpstock 2004]; there seems to have been more visitors as well. But the atmosphere at the event and the mood of the people was certainly better than last year.

VOICE:

Can you give us a brief history of how the first idea of "Warpstock Dresden" evolved into an official, international "Warpstock" event? Who was involved?

Robert Henschel:

That was quite funny. Roderick [Roderick Klein, VOICE President, Mensys, editor's note] had asked me at some point if there was a chance of hosting the event somewhere around here. That was on a Tuesday, as I remember. . . and the next Friday we had our user group meeting. On that occasion I asked the attendees if "someone had rooms." Uwe [Uwe Hinz, editor's note] then asked the people of the institute where he is employeed and they simply agreed. Of course, they wouldn't do it for free, so we rented the rooms from them. . . although it's surely cheaper than at a hotel, for instance.

VOICE:

And how did it become an "international event?" Did Roderick rise to the occasion and take over command, or head up advertising?

Robert Henschel:

Ehh, no. . . that was me again, I'm afraid. Together with five to six folks from our user group we managed the whole thing. On my own that wouldn't have been feasible, so the user group was of enormous help.

VOICE:

Did the preparations go the way you expected, or was it worse than that?

Robert Henschel:

Well, in June [2005] I had already organised the OS/2 developers conference here. That actually was a one man show. There were 35 people in all. I was quite satisfied with how it turned out. Adrian [Adrian Gschwend, Netlabs, editor's note) was more than pleased to see so many OS/2 developers in one place. Definitely a Warpstock Europe event requires a lot more of work and there are many more visitors. I thought of it being a little easier but I'm sure that's also because of me being a "control freak" who doesn't like to give away important tasks.

VOICE:

What can we expect to see; what are the highlights for yourself (besides the presentation you are doing, of course)?

Robert Henschel:

Highlights? Well, eh. . . my presentation basically is only about a collection of programs, tools and best-practice tips for one's everyday work with PalmOS devices, about hotsync and so on. I think Adrian's presentation on Netlabs and the community, or the presentation about the QT3 toolkit both promise to be very interesting. A definite "must" for developers.

VOICE:

That's rather something for C programmers I guess, eh. . . "real" programmers?

Robert Henschel:

Yes,. . . it [Qt3] is exceptionally well suited for creating complex GUIs. Then, there's Christian Langanke's presentation about XWLan: The new version of XWLan by the way will use the Genmac set of drivers which will enable almost everyone with an OS/2 notebook and a WiFi adapter to use it in a comfortable way. . . and the recent 802.11g adapters will be reasonably supported as well. Oh, and there's "Doodle's screensaver goes Cairo" which is very interesting as well. Doodle himself is doing the presentation.

VOICE:

In your opinion are there any differences from previous Warpstocks? If so, which one is the most important to you (besides that this year's event does not take place in a youth hostel)?

Robert Henschel:

(laughs) Right. There's quite a bit of difference. From the point of view of ambience it's similar to Karlsruhe, while the "mood" will more be like in Arnheim. The number of visitors, I guess, will match those of last year's event, and the number of presentations as well. Looking at the admittance fees, you'll notice that there's no big change there either--we're even a bit cheaper compared to last year, which is quite surprising.

VOICE:

On the exhibitors list of the events website, I noticed a company that originated within the university. Can you tell us more about it? Is there even OS/2 in it somewhere?

Robert Henschel:

Yes, this is very interesting. . . although OS/2 is not involved--that would be too good to be true (laughs). Oh, by the way this reminds me that I have to make an official announcement about it. . . that company is a spin-off of the IFW Institute. On Friday or Saturday--after the presentations--we'll get an exclusive show: Well, they mostly deal with magnets and they also own the record for the strongest permanent magnetizer. We'll get a live demo of models of MagLev vehicles that use liquid nitrogen to increase magnetic power. That reminds me, this is perfectly suited for people which require an "extra reason" to come to Dresden. I'll have to discuss details again with the company's CEO who I talked to a week ago.

VOICE:

In Diepenbeek [Belgium] rooms were spread across the building, some with long distances between them while Arnheim was rather compact. What can we expect from the Dresden location?

Robert Henschel:

We've got five rooms. Three of them are so close together that it takes only 20 seconds to reach any of them by foot. Exhibitors and user groups are each located in seminar rooms and the large auditorium for 150 people is just a stroll away. All rooms are in the same building.

VOICE:

Talking about user groups and exhibitors--what are their rooms like? Classical auditoriums with the ascending rows of seats?

Robert Henschel:

No, no--the seminar rooms are flat rooms. The commercial exhibitors space is in the hallway in front of one of the seminar rooms. These rooms--one which accomodates the user groups--seats 30 to 40 people. We'll put some of the desks out and it will leave us enough space. . . I hope. In the beginning, I was afraid of not getting that large space filled--now I am worried that there might be too many people! (laughs)

VOICE:

What about the events infrastucture? Were you provided access to the campus network or did you have to bring along a solution on your own? Will there be an Internet cafe?

Robert Henschel:

Okay--first: The IFW is not university. It is located on the campus but it's a separate Leibnitz Institute. The IFW is providing us with a subnet of our own although we only have HTTP and HTTPS for outbound connections. But we actually only have to plug in our 5 WiFi routers and that's it. On the other hand, we'll have our own server for up- and downloading photos. It'll be a server with a fixed IP adress and I hope it will work the way we plan. For now it works quite well--at least the "ping" did. (laughs) Anyone having a notebook with WiFi can access the Internet without problems. Visitors without a notebook will use an Internet cafe in Karlsruhe which is located in a seminar room. There'll be 8 to 10 PCs.

VOICE:

. . .running eCS?

Robert Henschel:

Hmm, I can't say, as these are not our machines and we're not allowed to install anything on them.

VOICE:

Okay, so this means Linux. But at least none of the "evil" operating systems from Redmond [Washington, USA]?

Robert Henschel:

I can't even deny that. . . but we could use the live demo CDs of eCS. Anyway, everyone can go there almost any time to check e-mails and so on, as long as the room is open. There are helpers on the site who take care of the equipment and the room so that we're allowed to leave it open the whole time.

VOICE:

You took strong efforts to offer services in advance like the screensaver, or the merchandising. . . how about that? Did it match your expectation?

Robert Henschel:

Good question. We've got statistics about it, I'll need to check that. . . (turns away for a moment). . . let me put it this way: The shop. . . is a flop. Two weeks ago I took a look after it and there wasn't a single item sold. . . (turns away for a moment again). . . Oh! There is indeed something going on! Okay, so there's not much happening in the shop. I would have liked to put some of the items on the site for selling them, but the financial risks are simply too high.

VOICE:

You're using a shop at Spreadshirt, which means the items are only manufactured upon the arrival of an order. . . thus, you have no stock on hand, right?

Robert Henschel:

Exactly. This is "on demand." And as we also can't do sale or return, we simply can't afford the financial risk of sitting on a pile of unsold stuff.

VOICE:

And the screensaver?

Robert Henschel:

Well. . . that's something different! Upon startup, the screensaver fetches the current news from off the website which is logged at our server and gives us reliable data about it. Currently we're having some 100 to 150 downloads a day. So the screensaver seems to be popular. Oh, this reminds me that we indeed might have some T-shirts for sale at the event: We've ordered a set of serigraphed shirts for the helpers--high-quality, thus a little more expensive. There'll be about 10 shirts left which we'll take with us for sale at Dresden.

VOICE:

One of the visitors favourite topics is: Eating at the event. What about Dresden in that respect?

Robert Henschel:

Well--first: Lunch is included in your admittance fee except if you went for a rebated student's ticket. In the building itself there are some vending machines and also nobody should complain if you bring your snacks and drinks with you--so that is also feasible.

VOICE:

The cafeteria, I suppose, doesn't quite offer 3 different meals a day to choose from, along with an alternate vegetarian meal, or the usual salad bar?

Robert Henschel:

Oh, but of course! There is actually a choice of three meals at least!

VOICE:

Wow! Also on Saturday and Sunday?

Robert Henschel:

Well on Friday at least, because the approximately 500 engineers eat there as well--the cafeteria by the way is somewhat larger--but also on Saturday and Sunday (I guess) there'll be 2 different meals to choose from at least. But I can't say for sure now because we still need to have our meeting with the chef.

VOICE:

Finally, there's an official social event again. Can you tell us more about what is prepared for the occasion?

Robert Henschel:

Okay, so we'll have buffet dinner in the cafeteria first. This takes place after Adrian's presentation. We'll have a one-hour panel discussion. . . after his presentation about "Netlabs, the community, what one can do. . ." And this will take place in the cafeteria. But I have to admit that this cafeteria doesn't really look like what you might expect. It's not just a grey hall but a rather nice place with a pleasant interior. So there we'll have dinner and a live band which will entertain us but--let me point it out--without drowning out the attendees. By the way: The price was very closely calculated, we almost just break even.

VOICE:

Many improvements and important parts of OS/2 and eCS have originated in eastern Europe recently. The Czech user groups are very active and we all know the share the Russian developers have in the ongoing maintenance. Prior to this interview, we already discussed that "Eastern" user and developer groups might benefit from the Dresden location. . . did that turn out to have an effect on signups and topics? Is it an enhancement?

Robert Henschel:

Definitely. There'll be 5 to 6 people from Czechia [the Czech Republic]. One of them by the way--who'll be doing the presentation about DocBook--is actually a member of the DocBook steering committee. Then, there's several people from Poland with one of them giving a presentation about. . . (turns away briefly) "Advanced Client/Server WWW Programming." Well I think, it's definitely a great enhancement and I really took strong efforts to promote Warpstock Europe throughout the east. I also went to the Czech Warpstock and did a short presentation about Dresden, about how great it will be and the fact that it's only some 50 kilometers from the Czech border and so on. . . in August, I sent mails again to all user groups in Czechia and Poland that I knew. Two people from Russia will attend and one from Ukraina [the Ukraine]. That wasn't really simple with the need for a formal invitation and a visa. From St. Petersburg [Russia] there'll be Yevgenyi Gorbunov [aka "Eugene Gorbunoff", editor's note] of eCO Software who maintain a whole bunch of products like JRescuer and much more. From Moscow [Russia], we'll meet the guy who ported QT3 to OS/2.

Most people do not understand how tedious this process is [of getting a visa]--I already know because of the developers' conference. You need to know that it's not like here in western Europe where people simply cross a border. First, you have to write an invitation that must be approved by the local authorities. Next, this invitation must actually arrive at its destination. The invited person then has to take it to the consulate where it takes 14 days at least before it's approved. And then some time later, maybe, the person will be given the visa. . . and don't ask me how many rubles pass from one hand to another!

VOICE:

I think many people don't even know what life "over there" [eastern Europe] is still like today. Okay, there might not be power outages that much any more, but. . .

Robert Henschel:

But indeed there are! That firewire project from Kiev. . . why do you think there are so few updates lately? Because if you get 10 power outages a day, your machine can't get out of CHKDSK long enough for you to do any work.

VOICE:

That's not true, c'mon. . .?

Robert Henschel:

Sure, sure. . . like what I've said: You can't imagine the burden those people have to bear.

VOICE:

Maybe the "community" should take this into consideration when complaining about the guys of wvgui for "bad docs" or "no updates on the website" and so on. . .

Robert Henschel:

Well, ehh. . . the docs are indeed bad. I took me two days to get the Windows codecs to work under ODIN and allow me to watch Windows Media files with close-to-good quality.

VOICE:

That puts you ahead of me. . .

Robert Henschel:

Okay, I could have documented it on my own, of course, letting everyone benefit from the experience. But honestly, I didn't have the time for it because of Warpstock and all. . . but this is something you need to explain the community: Don't complain--do something! I think we've come to the point where the community also needs to change. Adrian will certainly talk about that in his presentation. . .

VOICE:

When you are not preparing a Warpstock event, what do you do as a profession or in your spare time--if it exists. . .?

Robert Henschel:

I'm still a student with a part-time job, and as such currently busy on my diploma thesis.

VOICE:

What does it deal with--or would you prefer to not say in public because someone might steal the idea?

Robert Henschel:

Ehh. . . basically I'm still working on the specific topic. . . but it will surely deal with high performance computing and optimizing software for Itanium-based computers.

VOICE:

What kind of reactions do you experience from people when they hear about "OS/2" or "Warpstock"? I mean--besides the people from your user group of course. Are they bothered?

Robert Henschel:

Warpstock basically only bothers my close environment, because those people were forced to participate. At the university, reactions are generally positive. Most people have heard of OS/2 before--okay, they can't deal with "eComStation" because it's simply too new. But anyway, in our institute I'm the only one who's allowed to plug in a notebook without restrictions because in matters of security it's not as "vulnerable". . .

VOICE:

Gee. . . and they simply believed you about that?

Robert Henschel:

Yes. A quick check on the usual websites--and that was it.

VOICE:

Last question: What about yourself? Are you looking forward to the event or are you maybe lacking the time to enjoy? Worried with organizer's problems?

Robert Henschel:

Well, but yes. . . like I say: If you have a long-term, detailed plan, all the helpers will have enough time to really enjoy the event and have time enough to attend those presentations they would have if they were normal visitors. I'll attend some presentations myself. I certainly won't sit at the registration desk, print name badges, and burn the CDs. Oh yes--I need to tell this: We'll have CDs at the event with all the presentations on it. . . if the speakers manage to hand in their material in time, of course. So no helper will be staffed at 110 percent. I hope we're gonna get it done the way we planned--so that everyone will be Warpstock helper for some hours and then has enough time for the presentations of his choice. I don't know if it'll be like that. At the developers conference at least it worked out well. Anyway, we're looking forward to Warpstock.

Thanks Robert. . . and we all look forward to it as well!