GNU Radio Conference

GNU Radio
1

I want to have a separate thread for discussing the GNU Radio
conference details. Here is what we have so far:

When: Sometime in September, 2011
Where: Philadelphia, PA, USA probably on the University of Pennsylvania
campus
How long: 2.5 3 days

The first thing I would like to do is nail down the exact dates. There
are two ways we can go with this, and I’m polling the community here
to try to figure it out. We can either hold the conference during the
week or over a weekend. The weekend would look like (probably): Friday
afternoon, all day Saturday and Sunday. If we held it during the week,
I was thinking something like: all day Wednesday and Thursday and
Friday morning.

There are certain people who will find either time better than the
other depending on your work/life situations. So we want to make sure
that this happens during the most convenient time for the most amount
of people. Once we figure this out, I will work on securing a location
to host the event. A show of hands for how many people think they can
attend would also help me determine what size we need to account for.

Thanks,
Tom

2

Tom,

Can you give a brief sample agenda for the conference? I just want to
know if this is intended to be a forum where all the contributers talk
about GNU Radio or is it going to be tutorials and demos? If it is the
latter I would be interested in attending.

Thanks

Scott

Tom R. wrote:

week or over a weekend. The weekend would look like (probably): Friday

Thanks,
Tom

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3

A GNU Radio conference is an awesome idea, in my opinion, and I think
the September time-frame is a good one.

I like points 1-5 a lot, and I’ll second your idea of some sort of
hacking session. I’ve heard of companies/communities holding
‘hack-a-thons’, where a large group of developers marathons for 6-8
hours to close as many tickets as possible / add new features / etc.
If there are sponsors of any type, you could hold occasional drawings,
provide caffeine, food, etc., to keep the devs going.

If we are going to have that many developers in one place, it might be
a fun way to make a lot of progress on GNU Radio very quickly. Just a
thought =)

Cheers,
Ben

4

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Scott Johnston
[email protected] wrote:

Tom,

Can you give a brief sample agenda for the conference? I just want to know
if this is intended to be a forum where all the contributers talk about GNU
Radio or is it going to be tutorials and demos? If it is the latter I would
be interested in attending.

Thanks

Scott

Excellent question, thanks! Nothing certain right now, but I imagine
there is going to be a bit of a mix of both. I imagine these will be a
few of the tracks that we will have:

  1. Introduction and Tutorial to GNU Radio
  2. Applications - paper session on how people are using GNU Radio
  3. Hardware for SDR - come show your wares.
  4. An open spaces session - open discussions about what people want
    from GNU Radio and what projects people might want to purseu
  5. Advanced GNU Radio - discussion and showing some advanced features

Anything that I might call a “paper session” is just the standard
wording from other conferences; I don’t expect people to submit papers
and we will definitely not have a proceedings or anything (for this
one, at least). These are just presentations, and hands-on / live
demos should be encouraged.

We might also try to set aside some room and time for hacking. Maybe
get some like-minded people together to start a new project or
application while we’re all there.

Any suggestions?

Tom

5

A very good idea.

I recommend having a Google map where you can place markers (doesn’t
have to be your real position). That way we can see where is most
central to host this. I’m in the UK for example.

Incidently,
I’ve got to be honest. I don’t have the depth of knowledge about
radio as most people have on this list. I’ve been lurking on this list
for a couple of years because I find the idea of GNURadio a very
compelling, hands on way to learn about radio, which is something I
find facinating. There are subjects that are somewhat offtopic for
this list if the use of hardware is not involved I’d love to ask
questions and chat about but I really wouldn’t want to interfere with
GNURadio development which I see as very important… subjects such as
idiots running around with Trimeters on ghost hunting TV shows, static
electricity and so forth, finding straightforward books like the Body
Electric (Robert Becker) to tell the difference between fact and
fiction, which is becoming increasingly hard as misinformation gets
more common with the proliferation of small radio devices (the cell
phone, bluetooth, wireless power and so on). There are few places I
can think of where someone can talk with people who have both the
expertise and tools ready to try things out in radio than this list.
As I say, I find GNURadio facinating but I haven’t dare post to the
list for many years and I’ve held off on buying the hardware as I know
it could be well beyond my capabilities to do anything truely
interesting with it.

Is there somewhere for more informal chat, that is, other than the IRC
which I expect to be very quiet most of the time.

-j

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 7:35 PM, Ben H. [email protected] wrote:

If we are going to have that many developers in one place, it might be

Tom,

Any suggestions?

Where: Philadelphia, PA, USA probably on the University of Pennsylvania

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6

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Jago P. [email protected] wrote:

A very good idea.

I recommend having a Google map where you can place markers (doesn’t
have to be your real position). That way we can see where is most
central to host this. I’m in the UK for example.

That might be a good idea for a future conference location selection.
There were many reasons that we selected Philadelphia as the location
of the first one, though. First, I’m based out of Philadelphia and am
visiting faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. This means that
I’m both local and well-placed to get University support and space for
a project like this. Having been involved with the planning of other
academic conferences, being on-site is a huge help in coordinating and
making sure things are done properly.

The other reasons include that, in the US, the East coast has a large
amount of users and GNU Radio enthusiasts, making their trip shorter.
Plus, Philadelphia is a major airport and easy to get to from almost
anywhere in the world (having traveled from Philadelphia to many
places, I know the convenience of living here). I know that there are
many users around the world and that the East coast of the US isn’t
necessarily the hot spot of GNU Radio activity, but it’s hot enough.

If this is successful and people want to continue, we would likely try
different locations in the future. But for getting the first one set
up, the locality was key.

electricity and so forth, finding straightforward books like the Body

Is there somewhere for more informal chat, that is, other than the IRC
which I expect to be very quiet most of the time.

-j

Part of GNU Radio development is work on new signal processing
capabilities or improving current capabilities. These are areas that
are not discussed very much on this listserv, but I would encourage
people to ask questions about them.

Tom

7

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Ben H. [email protected] wrote:

If we are going to have that many developers in one place, it might be
a fun way to make a lot of progress on GNU Radio very quickly. Just a
thought =)

Cheers,
Ben

Thanks, Ben. Yes, we will try to make sure there is room and time set
aside for people to hack. I too have known various businesses who have
had very good luck (in terms of product output and improved morale)
with hack-a-thons. I don’t think this is going to be the focus of the
conference, though. Then again, depending on space availability, we
might try to keep a room for an extra day for people to stick around
and work on some projects together. I’ll keep that in mind.

Tom

8

As far as the timing is concerned, I would prefer during the week -
but in which case something like Weds-Fri would work out very well for
me.
So count this as my hand being up as far as I can likely attend. In
the meantime I’ll see if I can’t come up with something appropriate to
present as well.
Looking forward to it,
Doug

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Tom R. [email protected]
wrote:

week or over a weekend. The weekend would look like (probably): Friday

Thanks,
Tom

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9

I think it’s a great idea to have a GNU Radio conference and I’ll do
my best to be there. Personally, I also prefer an agenda with a good
mixture of presentations and active sessions
(tutorial/workshop/hacking), like the one proposed by Tom.
September is fine and both weekdays and weekend are good.

Alex

10

NOTICE that there is also a NOAA conference at Miami and I bet there
will be
SDR chatter.
I have reserved tickets…

Quote:
"
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations (NOAA) National
Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS), Office
of
Satellite Products and Operations (OSPO) and the International and
Interagency Affairs Office (IIA) have started organizing the next
Satellite
Direct Readout (SDRO) Conference, to be held April 4-8, 2011 in Miami,
Florida. This will be a follow up to the very successful Direct Readout
Conference held in 2008. As with the 2008 conference, the main focus
will
be on current GOES and POES data access, distribution, and preparing
users
for the upcoming changes to the NOAA satellite programs. We will
present
users with information on the following services:

a… Automated Picture Transmission (APT)
b… High Rate Picture transmission (HRPT)
c… GOES VARible data (GVAR)
d… Argos Data Collection System (DCS)
e… GOES Data Collection System (DCS)
f… Low Rate Information Transmission (LRIT)
g… Emergency Managers Weather and Information Network (EMWIN)
h… GEONETCast Americas
i… other NOAA systems
The DRO educates users on our future direct readout and re-broadcast
services:

a… GOES-Re-Broadcast (GRB)
b… High Rate Information Transmission (HRIT)/EMWIN
c… Narrow-band GOES DCS
d… High Rate Data (HRD)
e… etc.
This will assure that organizations using our data or services will not
be
left unaware of upcoming technology enhancements.

The purpose of this Conference is to continue discussions initiated
during
the 2008 Satellite Direct Readout Conference for the Americas and to
expand
the scope to include all users worldwide. This year’s Conference theme
is:
Real-time Access for Real-time Applications. The goal is to meet with
users who receive data directly from NOAA’s environmental satellites and
provide a forum to help them prepare for upcoming changes as NOAA
transitions into new technologies for direct readout and broadcast
services.

This years conference is very important considering the restructuring of
the National Polar-orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS)
program
to create the Joint Polar-orbiting Satellite System (JPSS) as the
follow-on
civilian polar program. There will be new information on the GOES-R
ground
system development and their direct readout services. Also, we plan to
provide an update on the NTIA proposal for the re-allocation of the
1675-1710 MHz frequency band. As you are aware, this frequency is the
health and safety band that supports all environmental monitoring,
transmission of global observations and provides critical information to
decision makers to produce forecasts and warnings.

The conference format will consist of four general themes organized
around;
International Cooperation, Polar Systems, Geostationary Systems, and the
Applications/Training. Facilitated discussion sessions will also be
used to
address specific topics. The Conference web site is:
http://directreadout.noaa.gov/miami11/. Simultaneous Spanish and
English
translation will be provided at the conference.

Please mark your calendars for this important date. Your support for
this
conference would add to a straightforward transition into the new
generation
of environmental satellite direct readout data. Your cooperation will
be
greatly appreciated.

" End of quote

Patrik

----- Original Message -----
From: “Alexandru C.” [email protected]
To: “GNURadio D.ion List” [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2011 22:14
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] GNU Radio Conference

I think it’s a great idea to have a GNU Radio conference and I’ll do
my best to be there. Personally, I also prefer an agenda with a good
mixture of presentations and active sessions
(tutorial/workshop/hacking), like the one proposed by Tom.
September is fine and both weekdays and weekend are good.

Alex

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 5:19 PM, Tom R. [email protected]
wrote:

to try to figure it out. We can either hold the conference during the
attend would also help me determine what size we need to account for.

Thanks,
Tom

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11

Hi Tom, hi list,

What’s the status on the dates? At our lab, conference viѕits etc. for
2011 are currently being planned, so I thought I’d ping this thread.
I guess it’s unlikely someone will cross the atlantic “just” for a
week-end
of GNU Radio (I’m not saying “wouldn’t like to”), so if the dates aren’t
fixed yet, I would like to mention that putting said conference close to
some other conference (say, something COMSOC or similar) might increase
the chances of getting Europeans to participate.
For example, PIMRC 2011 is in Toronto (practically 'round the corner :slight_smile:
from 5-8 September.

Bye,
MB

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 11:19:04AM -0500, Tom R. wrote:

week or over a weekend. The weekend would look like (probably): Friday

Thanks,
Tom

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12

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Martin B. [email protected]
wrote:

from 5-8 September.

Bye,
MB

Thanks Martin, I’ll keep that in mind. I will try to work out soon
what the dates will be. And, yes, Toronto is pretty easy to get to,
and I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of flights to/from Europe to
Toronto have a stop in PHL.

Tom