Dear coreboot developers, users and interested parties,
we are currently trying to organize a coreboot conference and developer meeting in October 2015 in Germany.
This is not intended to be a pure developer meeting, we also hope to reach out to manufacturers of processors, chipsets, mainboards and servers/laptops/tablets/desktops with an interest in coreboot and the possibilities it offers.
My plan (which is not final yet) is to have the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) in Germany host the conference in Bonn, Germany. As a national cyber security authority, the goal of the BSI is to promote IT security in Germany. For this reason, the BSI has funded coreboot development in the past for security reasons.
The preliminary plans are to coordinate the exact date of the conference to be before or after Embedded Linux Conference Europe, scheduled for October 5-7 in Dublin, Ireland. Planned duration is 3-4 days. This means we can either use the time window from Thursday Oct 1 to Sunday Oct 4, or from Thursday Oct 8 to Monday Oct 12. The former has the advantage of having cheaper hotel rooms available in Bonn, while the latter has the advantage of avoiding Oct 3, a national holiday in Germany (all shops closed).
ATTENTION vendors/manufacturers: If your main interest is forging business relationships and/or strategic coordination and you want to skip the technical workshops and soldering, we'll try make sure there is one outreach day of talks, presentations and discussions on a regular business day. Please indicate that with "(strategic)" next to your name in the doodle linked below.
If you wonder about how to reach Bonn, there are three options available by plane: The closest is Cologne Airport (CGN), 30 minutes by bus to Bonn main station. Next is Düsseldorf Airport (DUS), 1 hour by train to Bonn main station. The airport with most international destinations is Frankfurt Airport (FRA), 2.5 hours by train to Bonn main station. There's the option to travel by train as well. Bonn is reachable by high-speed train (ICE), and other high-speed train stations are reasonably close (30 minutes).
What I'm looking for right now is a rough show of hands who'd like to attend so I can book a conference venue. I'd also like feedback on which weekend would be preferable for you. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me directly c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006@gmx.net or our mailing list coreboot@coreboot.org.
Please enter your participation abilities in the doodle below: http://doodle.com/bw52xs4fc7pxte6d
Regards, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger