[tor-project] Tor Dev Meeting in Jena/Germany?

[Paul Syverson]

I feel this dismissal is a bit quick: a local airport should not be a
sine qua non.  Definitely an important factor, but not enough to
dismiss locations out of hand.

As an example, for the last tor-dev in Valencia, I and the other NRL
folk originally were going to fly into Valencia, but then we realized
it was cheaper, easier, and just about as quick for us to fly into
Madrid and take a train. Definitely not more complex than some of the
purely airport navigations I've had to manage in places where I was
confused and jetlagged, and generally more fault-tolerant for missing
a connection or wandering confusedly to the wrong part of the
facility.

This involved mass transit to downtown Madrid, but was generally
pretty straightforward.  Taking a taxi would make it even easier.
We're doing the same thing again this year. Looking at the
who-could-doubt maps.google.com shows a train w/ one change straight
from the Frankfurt airport to Jena that is comparable in length to our
ride between Madrid and Valencia. So (handwave) it should be about
as easy.

Which travel/meeting factors matter most will vary widely across this
diverse group like everything else. (Going outside the US is at least
double the paperwork, approvals, headaches, and way more than double the
needed lead time of domestic U.S. travel for the NRL folk.  Others
have much more extreme limitations on their travel.) It's all
tradeoffs.  But Europe (+ Iceland) is possibly the only current
place that will not majorly increase the travel-restriction, internet,
monetary, travel-convenience-compromise, etc. overhead for a general
tor-dev meeting as Isis has already set out nicely.

We could limit to a half-dozen major European cities w/ direct flights
from North America and Asia, but I think adding a short hop by train
should not automatically override other factors.

We've already talked about having team (in the Vegas-plan sense)
meetings in various places rather than general meetings as Tor has
grown. But within teams we still have the same sorts of issues Isis
noted, and more.  A good topic for discussing in Valencia amongst the
evergrowing herd of cats might be having one annual meeting probably
in Europe, and then another in the U.S., maybe one in Australia or
Asia if number of people could justify. Now if we could just get new
Oculus Rift gear to everyone with the Gunner Avatar installed, that
could definitely work for those who can't be there.

aloha,
Paul

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 06:45:26AM -0800, Shari Steele wrote:
> Hey Jens.
> I think the lack of airport makes this a nonstarter as a location for a Tor Developer Meeting site.  There are simply too many people coming from too many far away places.  Thanks for offering it, though.  It looks like a beautiful area.
> Shari
> 
> 
> On Jan 11, 2016, at 2:50 AM, Yawning Angel <yawning at schwanenlied.me> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 11 Jan 2016 11:03:32 +0100
> > Jens Kubieziel <maillist at kubieziel.de> wrote:
> >> How to get here?
> >> Jena has no airport. The next airports are in Erfurt and Leipzig.
> >> However Berlin, Frankfurt/M. and Munich are a trainride (2-3 hours)
> >> away. Also several bus companies stop here (BerlinLinienBus,
> >> MeinFernbus etc.).
> >> So from my impression it is easy to get here, YMMV.
> > 
> > If I'm the only one that thinks travel would be excessive, then please
> > don't let me be the person that keeps this from moving forward (esp
> > since I will be moving internationally again RSN).
> > 
> > That said, going from East-Asia to Jena would comfortably exceed 30 h of
> > total travel time, and I don't see myself being in any condition to
> > navigate a train system to get to a hotel.
> > 
> >> What do you think? Should we move this idea forward?
> > 
> > But, like I said, I'm indifferent since I'm moving.  Though West Coast
> > US is on the candidate lists for some inexplicable reason, so travel
> > from there is likely to be fairly painful to most of Europe...
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > --
> > Yawning Angel
> > _______________________________________________
> > tor-project mailing list
> > tor-project at lists.torproject.org
> > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
> 



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