Announce: Linaro Virtual Connect, 13-17 August 2012

Posted on Tuesday, August 7, 2012 in Blog By Linaro

Linaro divides its Roadmap into four yearly quarters punctuated by our Connect events, and this year our third quarter will be kicked off with a twist: instead of doing it physically at one location, we’ll instead be running a week of online discussions. Virtual Connect Q3.12 will run from** August 13th to 17th**, is open to the public, and will be entirely hosted on Google+ Hangouts on Air.

What’s a Virtual Connect?

Linaro Connects are events mainly made up of BoF-style discussions, where a lead directs conversation, but every member in the audience can directly participate. In Virtual Connect we will use Google+ Hangouts on Air to accomplish a similar model: up to 10 participants can directly engage in videoconference, and an unlimited number can watch the live discussion that will be streaming via YouTube or the Google + profile. Participants who want to ask questions and give input to the discussion can do so using IRC (Freenode channel #linaro-connect).

Software Requirements

You must have an up-to-date browser which supports Google’s Talk Plugin, and the plugin needs to be installed. Both Firefox and Chromium support Google+ Hangouts just fine. You also need a Google Plus account. A proper headset and microphone are strongly encouraged – you may be muted by the session lead if your background noise is too loud. You are also encouraged to use a webcam if you are joining the Hangout on Air so that you can be part of the streaming video.

Make a point of testing your browser before the session; feel free to contact Amber Graner or Christian ‘Kiko” Reis on http://plus.google.com/ to run a test session at any time. If necessary contact any Linaro engineer on Freenode IRC channel #linaro for assistance in setting up your environment.

Session Hours

Sessions run for 1.5 hours, with an additional 30 minutes of grace time being available if we happen to overrun. We will run three daily sessions on these times from Monday August 13th to Friday August 17th:

10:00 UTC (view local times)
15:00 UTC (view local times)
21:00 UTC (view local times)

Session Leads will be online 15 minutes before the allotted time, so you’re welcome to join early and wait for the fun to start.

Schedule

	Monday 13th
10:00 UTC	Analyzing vectorizer performance regressions in GCC 4.7 and 4.8	Michael Hope
15:00 UTC	Bootstrapping OpenEmbedded for ARMv8’s AArch64	Ricardo Salveti
21:00 UTC	Breaking New Ground Through Host-Side Test Automation	Andy Doan
	Tuesday 14th
10:00 UTC	Streamlining Manual QA Testing of ARM Devices	Paul Larson
15:00 UTC	Single Kernel Binary for ARM Devices: A Health Check	Deepak Saxena
21:00 UTC	Android and Traditional Linux: Differences and Convergence	Zach Pfeffer
	Wednesday 15th
10:00 UTC	The big.LITTLE MP Roadmap	Amit Kucheria
15:00 UTC	Bridging the Gaps in the Android and Linux Graphics Stacks	Jesse Barker
21:00 UTC	A closer look at Dalvik & native performance on the Cortex A9 and A15	Zach Pfeffer
	Thursday 16th
10:00 UTC	Exploring The Performance Impact of PGO and LTO on ARM	Michael Hope
15:00 UTC	Adding support for new Android platforms in Linaro, Summer Edition	Zach Pfeffer
21:00 UTC	Collecting Linux test results in QA Dashboards for LAVA	Paul Larson
	Friday 17th
10:00 UTC	Idling SoCs in a busy world: cpuidle, hotplug and beyond	Amit Kucheria
15:00 UTC	Bringing ARM STM support to Linux: A Status Update	Deepak Saxena
21:00 UTC	Functional Regression Testing for Graphical Environments	Jesse Barker

Tuning into Virtual Connect

To participate or watch a session, visit the Linaro OnAir Google+ profile. We’ll open each session 15 minutes before the allotted time. When the session is open, you’ll be presented with options to join or watch the Hangout, just like in this screenshot:

Clicking on the play button will start video playback in the browser, while clicking on the “Join this hangout” button puts you in the conference itself. If you choose to join, you’ll be placed directly into the session. Please don’t join the session after it starts and interrupt. The session lead is noted in each session entry; notice the lead’s cues as they direct the conversation towards the session agenda.

To help identify Hangout participants, we ask that you install the Lower Third app by adding it to your Hangout view and configuring it, as in this screenshot:

We also ask you join the Freenode IRC channel #linaro-connect (webchat available) where you can post questions and add comments as you like. We’ll be adding meeting minutes as we go to Etherpad documents also linked to from the session event entries.

What If I Can’t Make It?

All sessions will be broadcast live and recorded in the Linaro OnAir Youtube Channel, where they can be viewed later. Session minutes, including the IRC transcript, will be stored in Etherpad and linked from the video description and the event entry.

And if you liked the experience, pen in the dates for the next, non-virtual, Linaro Connect, which will be in Copenhagen during the week of October 29th, co-hosted with UDS. See you all there, and thanks!