virtual ODF interop fest ?

["Hanssens Bart" <Bart.Hanssens@fedict.be>]

Title: virtual ODF interop fest ?

Hi,


Maybe I'm going way to fast here, but I'd like to have your opinion on this idea, since materializing it would require a considerable effort and a few weeks (or months) time.

Inspired by the XAdES plugfests and open source project bugfests, I'm dreaming of organizing regular ODF interop fests :-)

Given the current state of the economy, global warming etc, timezones, jet lag etc... a virtual workshop would be more feasible
For example, a 24h interop run every 6 months, lead by OIC members but with participants from all interested parties (both
OASIS and non-OASIS members). Say, first week of May, and the next one in October / November.

Vendors / organizations could even organize local workshops or integrate this into their (product or other) events, scaling up the number of participants. The interop run could be started in, say, Asia, passing the bucket to the Middle-East after business hours and so on (people are free to participate as long as they want: one hour, 4 hours, ... whatever).
Afterwards, there's some cleaning up and summarizing to do.


This would require

- a chat service (plain old IRC sounds good)
- a website where people can sign up (perhaps with their geo-coordinates, so we can create a googlemap or something similar)
- a publicly available SVN server / mailing list, so that non-OASIS members can participate (perhaps a sourceforge project ?)
- at least one test case that can be passed on
As a gimmick, we could for instance start an ODF cookbook: fire up your favorite editor, add a page with your favorite recipe (this might includ bulleted lists, an image, some headings, ToC etc). This can be sent to the next tester, using another editor and create another version of the document and so on.
- in addition, we could invite people to bring a few of their own documents
(IIRC, Rob already kindly offered his expertise on the requirements of such test cases, after the work on the "state of interop" draft)
- participants willing to send in their final documents / bug reports to the OIC-comment list
- perhaps a waiver from vendors (some EULA's might prevent this kind of activity, but IANAL :-)
- a lot of publicity :-)


Best regards,

Bart