This was the 13th DemoCamp invitation by the Eclipse Foundation and the 8th DemoCamp held in Vienna. It went very well. In the last four years we have built a community of Eclipse enthusiasts and there are a few companies who actively support their employees in participating in the DemoCamp. The "word is spreading", and after two years I finally managed to bring a colleague to the DemoCamp, which is a huge success as people from my employer are usually not participating in any community activities.We are organizing the DemoCamp in our free time and it is worth it but there are times when the tide is high and there is little time left for extra work involved in running an event for 60 to 80 people. Our Platinum sponsor agent°ex supports us a big deal, still there are many things which need to be done. And we would like to do more like invite more speakers from abroad, have some games, give away free T-shirts and so on. To do that we need help. If you are enthusiastic and want to be part of this, contact us. Your local Eclipse Community needs you!
3 comments:
This blog entry touch on an important point, voluntary participation in communities for contribution to open source which is something I have myself thought about, not just only to contribute but even more to learn and grow a bit myself. The problem is just how to find time left over for it in parallel with a full time employment and demands for very high level of productive time, and a lot of overtime on top of that in periods (I am in such a period myself now). If I participate in this would I like to do it for a longer time, not just for the moment not long enough to really be able to get somewhere with it also. Frankly I don't understand how so many can find so much time to participate in this as they do and I am a bit jealous on they that can. Of course, if the employer could support it, preferably with some paid time also, would it be easier and I think there would be payback for it to the company. Eclipse is my most important development tool and there are a lot of other good open source also which I not would like to be without and I am thankful to all they that contribute to them, but I just can't find time to participate more active within it myself. At least not yet.
Thank you Jonny. I agree that long term commitment is crucial for successful community work. It took five to six DemoCamps for the community to stabilize. Also I agree, massive overtime work is killing every option to do anything outside of paid word. And we both know that this is bad because motivation goes down and skills degrade.
I see no solution for this problem besides a) fully respecting people who say they can not help due work load and b) spreading the load by involving more volunteers.
Sometimes have a mind passed my head, one that say that I should quit my current job where I mostly perform resource consulting in projects that don't want me because they think I am disorderly with all chat about quality, and then would I suddenly instead have more time left over for more interesting things where I really could make a difference, like for example by contributing to open source development. But it would not work without any other income, someone have to pay for the bills.
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