OctConf 2014
OctConf 2014 will take place in Montréal, Canada for three days from September 19 until September 21.
Please email Jordi (jordigh@octave.org) if you think you could attend. Also write your name below in the Participants section if you think of attending with high probability.
Location
Montréal, Québec, Canada
Montréal is lively city with English and French widely spoken plus many other minority languages. Most business can be conducted in either language. It has four large universities, two Anglophones, McGill, Concordia; and two Francophones: Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), and Université de Montréal. The Computer Research Institute of Montréal (CRIM) is a non-profit organization, one of the region’s only applied research centre, offering several services.
The Montréal fall has moderate temperatures, slightly leaning towards chilly. Bring a sweater. The city has a very serviceable public transportation network of buses and underground trains (metro), so it is convenient to get around without renting a car.
Venue
The CRIM will be offering us hosting.
How to get there
Take your flight to the Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.
From the airport, you can either take a cab to any location in the city, which is 40 CAD, or you can take the public 747 express bus, which is 8 CAD. It will take you to the Lionel-Groulx metro station and other stops downtown, from which you can continue your travel with the same ticket (it's valid for 24 hours). The metro system is relatively simple to navigate, and bus schedules are posted online and near metro stations.
You can also get a 3-day pass for 18 CAD that gives you full access to Montréal's excellent public transportation, including the 747 express bus.
Lodging and getting around
There are several hotels and cheaper lodging in Montréal, but there is nothing particularly convenient within walking distance to the CRIM. However, since the CRIM is right on a metro station, any lodging within walking distance to a metro station should do. Additionally, the 80 bus (schedule in French) goes by the CRIM, amongst others.
Your best bet therefore is to book a hotel or Airbnb and check Google maps for travel times by bus or metro to the CRIM. Airbnb lodging is usually cheaper, but make sure to get something that has had mostly positive reviews. Caveat emptor. This is the general neighbourhood in which you might want to get a place and be relatively close to the CRIM. Mile End is the neighbourhood in which the CRIM is. Two other particular options that seem good at a glance are Abri du Voyageur and Hotel Espresso. A higher end option could be the Delta.
As for getting around, the metro is not very complicated to navigate, although buses can be a bit trickier. Public transit employees will frequently speak English (but not always), and they're usually willing to help visitors get around.
If you really want some freedom to move around and you're feeling braver, you can of course also choose to rent a car or bicycle.
Dates
September 19-21, 2014. This is from Friday to Sunday. Participants are encouraged to attend for all three days, but anyone is welcome for any duration of time.
Schedule
We will schedule sessions in an unconference style. Basically, this means we will decide the schedule when we first get there. Any time when someone is not giving talk is open for code sprints.
| Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
| 09:00 | Introductions, greetings, setting the agenda | What is Octave? (Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso) | Session 1 |
| 10:30 | Break 1 | Break 1 | Break 1 |
| 10:45 | Project Infrastructure | CoolProp and What It Does (Kumar) | Session 2 |
| 12:30 | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch |
| 14:30 | Bug reporting woes | Hydra and GNU (Mike Miller) | Session 3 |
| 15:15 | GPL Issues | Octave for teaching AI, Signal Processing, and Computational Neuroscience (Jean Rouat) | Session 4 |
| 16:00 | Break 2 | Break 2 | Break 2 |
| 16:15 | 4.0 release discussion | GUI background command (Dan Sebald & Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso) | Session 5 |
| 17:30 | Performance loss over time (Rik) | Session 6 | Session 6 |
| 18:30 | Social event at Benelux brewpub |
Suggestions for Sessions
Code sprints and informal discussion will happen every day. The following are topics of interest for these sessions.
TBA
Slides
- Hydra and Octave - Mike
Code Sprint
The code sprint will be focused on improving line coverage of our test suite ('make check'). We're starting the sprint with just 48.1% line coverage. You can see the coverage report in HTML format at here. The report lets you browse through the code tree and see which paths are exercised or not.
To improve things we will be writing tests again. Look through the test coverage, and pick something that doesn't have tests yet. Announce in IRC which function you're going to write a test for. Write it. If you have push access, push your test. Otherwise, post a Mercurial patch that someone else can apply for you. Keep pulling from Savannah as we keep working on this. We are working on the development branch of Mercurial today.
The function 'nchoosek.m' in the scripts/specfun directory is a good small example of built-in self tests using the Octave testing environment. The test platform is documented in Appendix B (Test and Demo Functions) of the Octave manual. Basically, you only need to know regular Octave code to contribute.
Please prefix your commit messages with "codesprint:" if possible.
Participants
Funding
There is limited funding to cover the travel expenses of selected participants.