+++ /dev/null
-:date: 2011-07-10 20:00:00
-:tags: debian, neuroscience, conference
-
-.. _chap_debian_booth_hbm2011:
-
-NeuroDebian@HBM2011.ca
-======================
-
-On June 26-30 the annual meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping
-(HBM2011_) took place in Quebec City, Canada. Encouraged by our :ref:`positive
-experience at last year's SfN in San Diego <chap_debian_booth_sfn2010>` and
-enthusiasm of our scientific adviser, `James V. Haxby`_, we hosted another
-NeuroDebian booth. The setup was pretty much the same as last year: Some chairs
-and tables, lots of people, our `tri-fold flyers`_, a Debian mirror and some
-virtual machine images to show Debian in action. This time we also had an LCD
-display attracting visitors with the :ref:`package swarm
-<chap_neurodebian_package_swarm>`, some demos, and our `recent paper`_. We had
-many curious people have their first exposure to Debian, long-time users
-expressing their gratitude to Debian, and our upstream developers getting
-together to discuss various topics. Having registered the booth as
-"NeuroDebian", we had the additional pleasure of explaining visitors the
-concept of a project *inside* Debian, in contrast to a derived distribution.
-But that is nothing new really, so let's talk about the differences from last
-year's booth.
-
-First of all, we had more people at the booth. Dominique Belhachemi volunteered
-to help us out -- and that was very much appreciated. Although HBM has only
-about a tenth of the attendees that SfN has, we had significantly more traffic.
-While last year people were primarily interested in knowing about the project,
-this time many of them wanted to give it a try immediately. People came with
-their laptops, got the VM images and started playing with Debian. After a day
-or so, some came back and asked for recommendations on particular software --
-after having been exposed to the wealth of the Debian archive.
-
-.. _HBM2011: http://www.humanbrainmapping.org/hbm2011/
-.. _recent paper: http://www.frontiersin.org/neuroinformatics/10.3389/fninf.2011.00008/full
-
-What also had increased was the number of developers, or rather research labs
-developing neuroimaging software that came to the booth to discuss how to get
-their software into Debian and how to arrange ongoing maintenance of these
-future Debian packages. As we have our plates already quite full, we have been spending some time
-on mentoring interested developers to learn the art of Debian packaging and
-making them familiar with Debian's procedures and standards (e.g. working on
-`#609820`_ with Yannick Schwartz, upstream, at the booth).
-
-.. _#609820: http://bugs.debian.org/609820
-
-.. image:: pics/hbm2011/BusyBooth.jpg
-
-Two promising new developments need to be mentioned. First, we were approached
-by companies that develop hardware for brain-imaging and psychophysics
-research. They were curious to learn about Debian as an integrated platform
-that offers free software solutions that an increasing amount of their
-customers demands (e.g. PsychoPy_). Apparently, the movement towards open
-research software has finally made it into the business plans of companies, as
-they seem to start perceiving compatibility with free software systems as a
-competitive advantage. We explained how software gets into Debian, and how its
-release cycle is managed. To foster their motivation we also pointed them to
-the existing open-source software that is already available or even present in
-Debian. Let's see whether we see more "Debian-certified" research products in
-the future.
-
-.. _PsychoPy: http://packages.debian.org/psychopy
-
-Lastly, we started talking with folks from the INCF_ to explore possibilities of
-collaborating on INCF projects using Debian as the integration and development
-platform. The INCF is an `OECD-funded`_ organization that develops collaborative
-neuroinformatics infrastructure and promotes the sharing of data and computing
-resources to the international research community. At least one INCF project is
-already relying on the efforts of the NeuroDebian project. We are going to continue
-this discussion during a workshop in September. A report will follow...
-
-.. _INCF: http://incf.org
-.. _OECD-funded: http://www.oecd.org/document/38/0,3746,en_2649_34319_35217721_1_1_1_1,00.html
-
-
-.. figure:: pics/hbm2011/DDs.jpg
-
- Debian people at the booth (f.l.t.r): `Michael Hanke`_, `Yaroslav Halchenko`_,
- `Stephan Gerhard`_, `Dominique Belhachemi`_. Not shown: `Swaroop Guntupalli`_.
-
-.. _Stephan Gerhard: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=debian@unidesign.ch
-.. _Michael Hanke: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mih@debian.org
-.. _Yaroslav Halchenko: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=debian@onerussian.com
-.. _Dominique Belhachemi: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=domibel@debian.org
-.. _Swaroop Guntupalli: http://haxbylab.dartmouth.edu/ppl/swaroop.html
-.. _James V. Haxby: http://haxbylab.dartmouth.edu/ppl/jim.html
-
-Acknowledgments
----------------
-
-This booth has been made possible by the generous support of Prof.
-`James V. Haxby`_ (Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA).
-
-.. _Debian: http://www.debian.org
-.. _Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com
-.. _tri-fold flyers: http://neuro.debian.net/_files/brochure_debian-neurodebian.pdf
--- /dev/null
+:date: 2011-07-10 20:00:00
+:tags: debian, neuroscience, conference
+
+.. _chap_debian_booth_hbm2011:
+
+NeuroDebian@HBM2011.ca
+======================
+
+On June 26-30 the annual meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping
+(HBM2011_) took place in Quebec City, Canada. Encouraged by our :ref:`positive
+experience at last year's SfN in San Diego <chap_debian_booth_sfn2010>` and
+enthusiasm of our scientific adviser, `James V. Haxby`_, we hosted another
+NeuroDebian booth. The setup was pretty much the same as last year: Some chairs
+and tables, lots of people, our `tri-fold flyers`_, a Debian mirror and some
+virtual machine images to show Debian in action. This time we also had an LCD
+display attracting visitors with the :ref:`package swarm
+<chap_neurodebian_package_swarm>`, some demos, and our `recent paper`_. We had
+many curious people have their first exposure to Debian, long-time users
+expressing their gratitude to Debian, and our upstream developers getting
+together to discuss various topics. Having registered the booth as
+"NeuroDebian", we had the additional pleasure of explaining visitors the
+concept of a project *inside* Debian, in contrast to a derived distribution.
+But that is nothing new really, so let's talk about the differences from last
+year's booth.
+
+First of all, we had more people at the booth. Dominique Belhachemi volunteered
+to help us out -- and that was very much appreciated. Although HBM has only
+about a tenth of the attendees that SfN has, we had significantly more traffic.
+While last year people were primarily interested in knowing about the project,
+this time many of them wanted to give it a try immediately. People came with
+their laptops, got the VM images and started playing with Debian. After a day
+or so, some came back and asked for recommendations on particular software --
+after having been exposed to the wealth of the Debian archive.
+
+.. _HBM2011: http://www.humanbrainmapping.org/hbm2011/
+.. _recent paper: http://www.frontiersin.org/neuroinformatics/10.3389/fninf.2011.00008/full
+
+What also had increased was the number of developers, or rather research labs
+developing neuroimaging software that came to the booth to discuss how to get
+their software into Debian and how to arrange ongoing maintenance of these
+future Debian packages. As we have our plates already quite full, we have been spending some time
+on mentoring interested developers to learn the art of Debian packaging and
+making them familiar with Debian's procedures and standards (e.g. working on
+`#609820`_ with Yannick Schwartz, upstream, at the booth).
+
+.. _#609820: http://bugs.debian.org/609820
+
+.. image:: pics/hbm2011/BusyBooth.jpg
+
+Two promising new developments need to be mentioned. First, we were approached
+by companies that develop hardware for brain-imaging and psychophysics
+research. They were curious to learn about Debian as an integrated platform
+that offers free software solutions that an increasing amount of their
+customers demands (e.g. PsychoPy_). Apparently, the movement towards open
+research software has finally made it into the business plans of companies, as
+they seem to start perceiving compatibility with free software systems as a
+competitive advantage. We explained how software gets into Debian, and how its
+release cycle is managed. To foster their motivation we also pointed them to
+the existing open-source software that is already available or even present in
+Debian. Let's see whether we see more "Debian-certified" research products in
+the future.
+
+.. _PsychoPy: http://packages.debian.org/psychopy
+
+Lastly, we started talking with folks from the INCF_ to explore possibilities of
+collaborating on INCF projects using Debian as the integration and development
+platform. The INCF is an `OECD-funded`_ organization that develops collaborative
+neuroinformatics infrastructure and promotes the sharing of data and computing
+resources to the international research community. At least one INCF project is
+already relying on the efforts of the NeuroDebian project. We are going to continue
+this discussion during a workshop in September. A report will follow...
+
+.. _INCF: http://incf.org
+.. _OECD-funded: http://www.oecd.org/document/38/0,3746,en_2649_34319_35217721_1_1_1_1,00.html
+
+
+.. figure:: pics/hbm2011/DDs.jpg
+
+ Debian people at the booth (f.l.t.r): `Michael Hanke`_, `Yaroslav Halchenko`_,
+ `Stephan Gerhard`_, `Dominique Belhachemi`_. Not shown: `Swaroop Guntupalli`_.
+
+.. _Stephan Gerhard: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=debian@unidesign.ch
+.. _Michael Hanke: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mih@debian.org
+.. _Yaroslav Halchenko: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=debian@onerussian.com
+.. _Dominique Belhachemi: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=domibel@debian.org
+.. _Swaroop Guntupalli: http://haxbylab.dartmouth.edu/ppl/swaroop.html
+.. _James V. Haxby: http://haxbylab.dartmouth.edu/ppl/jim.html
+
+Acknowledgments
+---------------
+
+This booth has been made possible by the generous support of Prof.
+`James V. Haxby`_ (Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA).
+
+.. _Debian: http://www.debian.org
+.. _Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com
+.. _tri-fold flyers: http://neuro.debian.net/_files/brochure_debian-neurodebian.pdf
projects / neurodebian.git / commitdiff