Report: OsGeo CodeSprint in Bonn 2018
From 18-03-2018 to 25-03-2018, an OsGeo CodeSprint is taking place in Bonn at the extremely impressive BaseCamp hostel: https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Code_Sprint_2018. My colleague BearT and I (ScubbX) have been there since Monday and Sunday respectively. While I will be attending the FOSSGIS conference, which is taking place at the same time, from Wednesday, BearT had to leave on Tuesday for work reasons.
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The base camp building in Bonn[/caption]
What immediately catches the eye is the impressive structure of the hostel. From the outside, it looks like a large factory hall. As soon as you enter through the unassuming front door, you enter a world of its own: the entire hall is open and filled with campervans in different designs. A gallery is built along one side of the hall, where the kitchen and dining areas are located. But these places can also be used for code sprinting, as the GRASS-GIS team has demonstrated.
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The GRASS-GIS developers late at night[/caption]
On Sunday evening, a few code sprinters were already hard at work with their tools. Over the next few days, thematic groups were formed, but there were also some code sprinters who worked generally and contributed their know-how as needed.
It was great to be able to talk to the people who are developing the GIS tools that we use on an almost daily basis. Many questions were answered and many new functions were discovered.
On Monday evening, there was an OsGeo discussion session in which general topics and the relationship between community members and OsGeo were discussed.
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Breakfast, lunch and dinner were served daily. This integrated well into the code sprint, so that some people did not want to exchange their work tool for their dinner plate, but instead placed it next to it.
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In the evening, either a few beers were enjoyed while discussing more daring topics of open source GIS development, or people simply continued to work. On the second evening, most of the participants met with the conference participants who had already arrived for FOSSGIS in a bar in the centre of Bonn.
