Belgian Beer Sprint
| When |
Jul 09, 2012 12:00 AM
to
Jul 13, 2012 12:00 AM |
|---|---|
| Where | Antwerp, Belgium, EU |
| Contact Name | Nejc Zupan |
| Contact Phone | +38640730735 |
| Add event to calendar |
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Sprint Topics
We are gonna split up into three distinct teams.
Team "Doku"
Continuing work from last year's Sauna Sprint, this team is gonna use EE/CS students (~10 of them will be attending) to observe where beginner documentation for Plone fails. Students will act as guinea pigs with different levels of knowledge (from basic HTML knowledge to Python coders) going through a variety of real-world use-cases. This gives us as a community a unique opportunity to work on those nasty bits of documentation that make Plone so hard to get involved with.
Team "Api"
Continuing work from the Plone Konferenz in Munich, this team is gonna work on the plone.api. They will collaborate closely with Team Doku to see what parts of our documentation are inhumanely complex because the APIs in use are complex and will try to improve the situation. With plone.api we strive to have a unified single point of entry for tasks Plone developers need to do often.
Team "Tiny"
Almost a year has passed since iElectric started his GSoC of giving TinyMCE integration project for Plone some love. He and an army of co-contributors did a great job in updating TinyMCE to latest version, fixing a ton of bugs, adding tests, refactoring code, etc. It's now time to push their work into the mainstream, so people can start using it. Let's use this sprint as an opportunity to do just that: merge all pending patches from different developers, squash the remaining high-priority bugs and get this thing out!
Treats
Now, all of the topics above are somewhat sucky. It's not a joy working on documentation, even more so on entry-level documentation. It's also not a nicest thing in the world to attempt to fix an API. And it's definitely not anyone's idea of fun to work on TinyMCE Plone integration. So we've come up with a trick: we are gonna bribe any and all sprinters with proper belgian beer. During the event we will make sure a few different beers will be supplied continuously. It is also certain that there will be a beer tasting night, where we will do our best to offer you a wide range of different beers. And then some!
Sponsors, Donators and Partners
Like the last three sprints we organized, we want to cover all but travel expenses for EESTEC students joining us on this sprint. We also plan to provide free accommodation for Plonistas on a budget. Above that, food and beer will be covered for *all* sprinters, so everyone can focus on being productive. Our budget is around 4k EUR and all funds will be raised from kind Plone companies that will act as sponsors. All money goes into covering sprint expenses, it goes without saying that no-one is getting paid for organizing.
Sprint Venue
The sprint will mainly be hosted in an old fortress just outside of the city: “Fort 6”. In 1864, Belgium decided to construct a circle of fortresses surrounding the city of Antwerp to defend it from attacks. Antwerp was of strategic importance due to it's harbor. Soon after, the fortresses became useless because of the development of heavy artillery and were no longer used. The University of Antwerp managed to become the owner of one of them and it hosts several associations, including the student association of computer science, mathematics and physics. It is also the place to be for all student parties, which are hosted in an old bunker under the ground. We will use that place to host the sprint, it was used before for LAN parties so it can be used to fit in a lot of computers and people. We're gonna have a ~50 mbps connection to the web.
Belgian beer and other niceties
A great reason to come to Belgium is the fact that it’s a beer paradise. With over 1100 different beers varying between pale lagers, Lambics, strong blonds, red-browns, dark beers, ambers, white beers, Trappist ales, abbey beers, Trippels, saisons, stouts and fruit beers, it seems unlikely that you won’t find your taste. Before calling all the Belgians severe alcoholics with their 18 million hectoliter annual beer production, know that more than half of it is sent out for export, proving the world’s appreciation for Belgian beer. With a lot of beers, come a lot of breweries: some of them are international giants, others are family businesses and microbreweries, there’s even monks brewing beer in their abbeys. Don’t think it’s only about the beer itself though; each beer has its own distinguished glass ranging from tulip shaped glasses to chalices, hexagonal glasses to champagne flutes and goblets to uncategorizable glassware like the ones used to serve “Kwak”. Not only being famous for our beer, but also for our fries, waffles and chocolate there truly is no reason why you shouldn’t come have a taste of Belgium.
About Antwerp
The city of Antwerp is a great place to do sightseeing, shopping or take a relaxed stroll around town. Because Antwerp is rather small, everything is close together and can be reached very easily, either by public transportation or on foot.
When you take the train to Antwerp, the first thing you see is the magnificent central station, which has been renovated a couple of years ago. It is one of the most beautiful train stations of Europe.
The Antwerp cathedral is one of the must-see buildings. It is in the heart of Antwerp, close to the Groenplaats, the Grote Markt and the Meir.
Then there is the City Hall on the Grote Markt and Meir, the main shopping street of Antwerp.
Recently, a museum, called ‘MAS’, has been built in the neighborhood ‘Het Eilandje’ (literally ‘The Island’), which is one of the popular neighborhoods in Antwerp. It is next to the Schelde, which is the river flowing through Antwerp. It’s a great place to sit outside of a bar, watching the boats and magnificent sights.
The Court of Justice is also an amazing new building. It has been built a couple of years ago and looks very futuristic with the rooftops sticking out (these actually have a function, as they generate electricity using solar power).
There’s a lot more of awesomeness to discover in Antwerp that isn’t included here. Also, none of the pictures do the actual buildings justice, you really have to see them for yourselves!