Spring Conference

January 10, 2017January 10, 2017

Spring Conference: Hotels

Where would you like to stay…

The Tickets for the FLOSSUK Spring Conference, held in Manchester between the 14th-16th March, are now available and some of you will be planning your travel. We thought we’d take a moment to discuss the location and some of the available hotels in the area.

The Venue is at the Studio on 51 Lever Street Manchester and there are a number of nearby hotels (within 1 kilometre or 15 minutes casual walking) that can be used. The FLOSSUK Council have chosen the Britannia on Portland Street as their hotel of choice.

The following list is not comprehensive and there are others available on many popular sites such as Booking.com or Hotels.com. In particular there are apartment and hostel accommodation for those travelling in larger groups or on a budget.

Abode: http://www.abodemanchester.co.uk/
Arora: http://manchester.arorahotels.com
Britannia, Portland Street (Council Hotel): https://www.britanniahotels.com/hotels/the-britannia-hotel-manchester/
Britannia Sachas Hotel: https://www.britanniahotels.com/hotels/the-britannia-sachas-hotel-manchester/
Garden Hotel: http://www.gardenshotelmanchester.com/
Ibis Hotel: http://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-3142-ibis-manchester
Le Ville: http://levillehotel.com/
Mercure Hotel: http://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-8325-mercure-manchester-piccadilly-hotel
Midland Hotel: https://www.qhotels.co.uk/our-locations/the-midland-manchester/
Novotel: http://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-3145-novotel
Premier Inn, Picadilly: http://www.premierinn.com
Travelodge, Ancoats: https://www.travelodge.co.uk/hotels/280
Travelodge, Picadilly: https://www.travelodge.co.uk/hotels/581

There is a map (that will be updated with the hotels, conference locations and any suggestions we have for food, drink, shopping and entertainment) and it can be seen below or found here (http://bit.ly/flossuk2017gmap):

If you would like to add details to this map then please do so with the link provided (note that due to editing settings you may be required to request access to do so).

Please note that the Call for Papers and Workshops is still open and will remain so until the 24th January 2017.

December 31, 2016December 31, 2016

Spring Conference: Raspberry Pi Workshop

Les Pounder to Present a Free Hackers Workshop

At this year’s Spring event in March we will have a traditional day of workshops on the Tuesday before the main conference (Tuesday 14th March). This event is a paid day of tutorials and introductions to essential tools and techniques. This year, however, we will also be hosting a free event sponsored by FLOSSUK on the same day and at the same location.

Les Pounder who writes a monthly column on the Raspberry Pi and Maker community, is a maker, sysadmin, Raspberry Pi tutor and You Tube blogger. Les will present a day of hacking using cheap hardware, free software and commonly available items that can be bought cheaply from the high street.

More details of the workshop and what you will need to bring will be published closer to the event itself.

The BigLesP

Les is a self-taught maker and hacker. He hosts regular Raspberry Jam events in Blackpool and helps teachers across the UK to learn more about physical computing and the maker culture.

Les loves to tinker with broken toys and build projects using cost effective equipment to show that learning to hack doesn’t have to be expensive. Les can be found on his blog where he documents his adventures in low cost hacking using the Raspberry Pi and the BBC MicroBit Controller.

Les is a big fan of using shops such as Poundland (pronounced Pounderland in the Les Pounder verse) to build low cost fun items to both hack and learn. Aside from showing the physical skills he also documents the code and process for making hacking cheap, cheerful and lots of fun for all ages.

Please use the following links to learn more about Les:

FLOSSUK is dedicated to promoting open systems and freedoms in software, data, infrastructure, digital rights and hardware. Having Les run an event for us that is free to attend and open to all helps us to further reach out to the broader community.

Note that there will also be free places for students and those suffering financial restrictions available on our main conference days.

November 17, 2016November 17, 2016

VM Brasseur to Keynote in 2017

It is a great pleasure to announce that VM ‘Vicky’ Brasseur will open the 2017 FLOSSUK Spring conference with a keynote specially prepared for the event.*

Vicky is well known in the international open source world and has presented at a number of events so it is a real honour to have her at FLOSSUK.

In VM (aka Vicky)’s nearly 20 years in the tech. industry she has been an analyst, programmer, product manager, software engineering manager, director of software engineering, and C-level technical business and open source strategy consultant. Vicky is the winner of the Perl White Camel Award (2014) and the O’Reilly Open Source Award (2016).

Vicky occasionally blogs at {anonymous => ‘hash’}, often writes and is a moderator for opensource.com, and frequently tweets at @vmbrasseur.

You can find out more about the event by navigating here and also view the Call f or Papers which is accepting submissions until January.

* More details of the Keynote will be announced in the coming weeks