vp:Speaker Info Package

From LinuxTag Public Wiki

Revision as of 20:13, 8 May 2011

Dear Speakers,

thank you for participating at LinuxTag in Berlin! To provide you with all important information, we compiled a short booklet that hopefully answers all of your questions about LinuxTag in a single document. Please read it carefully.

Locations

Venue

LinuxTag, Messezentrum unter dem Funkturm

Entrance South (Süd), Hall 7, next to Deutschlandhalle

Messedamm, 14055 Berlin

phone: +49-30-3038-81331 (Speakers' Office)

Please register at the information desk in the entrance area. In case you need any help visit the Speakers' Office (stand 111 in hall 7.2b).

Conference Hotel

Hotel Gates

Knesebeckstrasse 8-9, 10623 Berlin OpenStreetMap

phone: +49-30-31106-0

For more information on the conference hotel read the detailed wiki page.

Speaker Registration and Access to the Venue

Main entrance of LinuxTag is at Hall 7 next to the Deutschlandhalle. The venue is open from 9:30 am until about 7 pm in the evening.

We changed the way speaker register at LinuxTag dramatically. When arriving at the venue from Wednesday, May 11th, please contact our staff at the information desk in the entrance area. They will provide you with your ticket to access LinuxTag, your speaker badge and a brief overview of the venue. Our staff will verify your contact details including a mobile number. Please be assured we treat this information with due confidentiality.

It is mandatory to show up at the information desk as we have to register your arrival in our conference mangement system, so we don't have to send out search and rescue teams :) After registration, please stop by at the speakers office, so we can provide some additional goodies such as one complimentary ticket for LinuxNacht, the social event on Thursday.

In case you arrive on Tuesday, May 10th, we kindly ask you to contact our speakers' office at the venue. We have manned the speakers' office starting from 3 pm for speaker registration. The LinuxTag team is at the conference center starting from Monday, but we ask you politely to register not earlier than Tuesday afternoon, 3 pm.

Getting around

Arriving by Plane

Berlin has two international airports: Most international flights arrive at Berlin Tegel (TXL), which is north to the city center. It is about 10km from the venue. Berlin Schönefeld (SXF) is to the far south-east of the city. It takes a good hour from there to the venue. The former third airport, Tempelhof, has been shut down.

The trip from Tegel to the venue takes approximately 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the connections. Easiest way is to take bus X9 to station “Zoologischer Garten” or bus 109 to station “Charlottenburg”. In both cases, transfer to any S9 or S75 train westbound in direction of “Spandau”. Leave the train at “Messe (Süd)” which is the stop for the venue. There may be slightly quicker connections, but they require more transfers. So if you are in a real hurry, check website like http://bahn.de/ for connections between “TXL” and “Messe (Süd)”.

If you want to go from Tegel to the speakers' hotel first, take bus X9 to "Ernst-Reuter-Platz". It takes you less than three minutes from the bus stop to the hotel.

Arriving from Schönefeld and heading to the fairground takes a little more than an hour. Outside the arrival hall there is a train station. You can take every train that runs to the city, however, regular trains (Regionalexpresses) are slightly faster than the suburban trains (S-Bahnen). The S9 trains go directly to the venue without transfer to station “Messe Süd”. If you take other trains than S9, you have to transfer to the line S9 or S75 westbound. You could do that at the stations “Friedrichstraße”, “Hauptbahnhof” or “Bahnhof Zoo”.

To go from Schönefeld to the hotel use the directions above, but exit at "Savignyplatz" and walk about 10 minutes to the hotel.

Arriving by Train

All national trains stop at the central station (“Hauptbahnhof”). From there transfer to the S9 or S75 lines westbound. To go to the venue, exit at “Messe (Süd)”.

Arriving by Car

To go to the venue, head for the western part of Berlin. The A115 (Avus) terminates more or less in front of the venue: Take the exit just before you enter the A100. To go to the venue, calibrate your navigation systems to “Messegelände Berlin”, maybe “Jafféstraße” and consult our detailed map. There is plenty of free parking available in front of the entrance next to the “Deutschlandhalle”.

Public Transportation in Berlin

Berlin has an extensive and clearly laid out public transportation network consisting of U-Bahn (blue “U” signs), S-Bahn (green “S” signs), buses, and trams. The transportation network is split in zones “A”, “B”, and “C”. The conference venue, your hotel, and downtown Berlin are all located in zones “AB”. Therefore, you probably will need a ticket of class “AB” for virtually everything in Berlin except rides to the SXF airport, which is “ABC”. These tickets are valid for 2 hours and all transportation types and you may transfer from any of them to the other . They are available from yellow vending machines or from the bus driver. Make sure to stamp your ticket before entering the train. Check if it makes sense to buy one for more than a single ride or a singe day (7-day tickets are available). The public transportation system in Berlin ("BVG") has an extensive website at: http://www.bvg.de/index.php/en/

Delivering your Presentation

Most sessions are assigned a moderator. He or she will introduce you to the audience and is responsible that you finish your talk in time. Feel free to give them any information they shall tell about you (otherwise they might simply use the information you provided in your biography in the vCC when introducing you to the audience). This information should be passed to the session moderator as early as possible before the presentation.

It may prove useful to show up already at the beginning of the session your talk is scheduled in. Please note that there are usually several presentations in one session, but we would appreciate you meeting with your session moderator prior to the start of the first talk of each session. We will record on an experimental basis some talks with a digital camera and store them for later processing. Some talks may also be streamed live. For more details please see our website or ask at the speakers' office. If you have strong objections against being recorded, please contact us.

Your talk may not exceed 60 or 30 minutes, respectively (note: for a small number of events, a different time frame may have been arranged. In these cases please adapt the times accordingly) including questions, discussion, and a short break for most presentations (please cross check the program to avoid unpleasant surprises). With 60 minutes slot time, you have a net of about 40 – 45 minutes speaking time, so please make sure that your talk ends in time. The 30 minute slots should finish after about 25 minutes. Your session moderator will signal you about 10 minutes prior your scheduled deadline. Please be informed that your session moderator is ordered to end your talk if you're going to exceed your time frame.

We would like to give the audience the opportunity to ask you some questions after your presentation. Please reserve some spare time for these discussions, if possible. Should participants ask you a question without using a mobile microphone, please repeat the question, so everybody can hear it. However, we suggest that more in-depth questions should be discussed after your presentation slot. Outside the halls is plenty of space to sit and discuss after a presentation. Other options include booths at the exhibition or possibly the social event.

Notebooks and Projectors

There is one projector with an standard analogue VGA-jack available in every conference hall. We assume that you bring your own laptop computer if you need one for your presentation. Make sure your adapters match (especially if you are using Apple notebooks) with the projector and please choose a reasonable resolution. We recommend no more than 1024x768 pixels. Please check your display resolution beforehand at home. The tool “xrandr” may be helpful.

However, if you need a computer for your presentation and don't have one with you, please let us know at check-in time. We may provide you a notebook and a current Linux Live Distribution, based on availability. Make sure your talk displays correctly with the software running from a booted DVD. This applies especially to fonts and special presentation software. The preferred way to bring your presentation is on USB memory stick. Floppy disk drives or CD/DVD drives may not be available.

If you forgot to bring any essential hardware or other stuff, there is a “Media Markt” electronics store located at Kant Center in the Wilmersdorfer Straße, a few stations from the venue. The store is open Monday to Saturday 10 am to 8 pm. To get there from LinuxTag, go to S-Bahn station “Messe Süd”, take the S9 or 75 to “Charlottenburg” (driving time: 9 minutes), then walk to the store (4 minutes). Wilmersdorfer Straße is a pedestrian mall with many shops. You find there several clothing stores, a department store, and a shopping mall, the Wilmersdorfer Arkaden.

Internet Access

All conference rooms have wired Internet access. You will find a single Ethernet cable with a RJ45 jack at the stage. If you need to connect more devices, you may borrow a switch from the speakers' office. Please return it immediately after your presentation.

IP addresses will be assigned via DHCP with reasonable lease time. All lecture halls share an address segment with private IPs that are subject to masquerading (NAT). Neither ports nor protocols are filtered. Typically, the addresses cannot be contacted from the Internet. Our network team reserved some bandwidth for the lecture halls, but please be kind to your fellow speakers. If you need special arrangements like public IPs, please tell us during check in and we will direct you to our networking team.

There is a wireless network with ESSID “LinuxTag” available in the lecture halls. There is no encryption and addresses are assigned via DHCP. This network uses NAT and can thus not be contacted from the Internet. We advise you not to use this network for your presentation as we have no service guarantees for it.

If you need some dedicated working space with Internet access, we recommend you using the designated DevCenter close to the keynote room 'London' in Hall 7.1b.

Amenities at LinuxTag

DevCenter

There is a designated working area in Hall 7.1b close to the keynote room 'London'. The so called DevCenter is open to everyone and offers desk spaces, power sockets, wired and wireless Internet access. In case you want to work with a small group we recommend you use this area.

Speakers' Lounge

Close to the speakers' office (Stand 111 in Hall 7.2a) is a small lounge exclusively for speakers. In case you need to do some last minute work on your presentation you are invited to join us there.

Lunch and Refreshments at the 'Zille Eck'

With great support from tarent, Linuxhotel and it-novum our catering team invites you to have a light lunch and refreshments at the "Zille Eck" close to Hall 7.1c. Please be aware this service is only available to speakers and volunteers from exhibiting projects - you have to present your badge at the door.

Special Events during LinuxTag

Opening Ceremony

We would like to invite all speakers arriving on Wednesday or earlier as VIP guest to our official opening ceremony on Wednesday, May 11th, 2011, 10:00am in the hall London. Please take a seat in the first rows as we'd like to give a short introduction and retrospective of recent and future development of Linux, Free Software, and Open Source. We may need your help for one or the other question.

LinuxNacht - the official Social Event

As usual there is a big party, the LinuxNacht on Thursday, May 12th, 2011. We are pleased to welcome you to the social event at the „Umspannwerk“, Ohlauer Strasse 43, 10999 Berlin-Kreuzberg (see ticket or website for directions). Doors open at 7 pm. Speakers of accepted talks collect their ticket at the speakers' office or directly from Marko Jung or Nils Magnus. If you are presenting as part of the workshop program, the commercial business forum, or need tickets for friends or partners, you have the option to buy additional tickets at the ticket sales booths at the venue entrance. Each ticket is 38 € and includes food, drinks and live music.

Leisure and Recreation

Berlin offers a vast variety of museums, monuments, galleries, shows, concerts, sights, and tourist attractions. The staff at the counter in front of the speakers' office is happy to provide you with more information concerning things to do in Berlin. We prepared a small excerpt of your options:

The conference venue is located in Charlottenburg in the former West Berlin. Close to the venue you will find some supermarkets and restaurants, as well as the Berlin cabaret theater “Die Wühlmäuse” around Theodor-Heuss-Platz. The closest shopping mall to the venue is the Wilmersdorfer Straße. Way more options offers the city center around Kurfürstendamm, Friedrichstraße, or Alexanderplatz.

Most of the historical landmarks are located in the city center (“Mitte”). If you take any eastbound S-Bahn from the conference venue and get off at the central station (“Hauptbahnhof”) you are at the German Government Quarter. Opposite to the station is the Kanzleramt, official home of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Next to it is the Reichstag building, Germany's parliament. The Brandenburg Gate, a short walk beyond the Reichstag is a landmark symbol for Germany's separation from 1961 until the reunification in 1990. Just south of it you find the newly opened American Embassy. Other embassies of France, United Kingdom, or Russia are close-by. If you continue this way past the Holocaust Memorial, you come to Potsdamer Patz, known for its modern architecture, movie museum, and multiple movie theathers.

Back at the Brandenburg Gate, the major boulevard Unter den Linden, leads you in about half an hour to Alexanderplatz, past the Humbold University, Opera House, Berlin Dome, and many other historical buildings. At Alexanderplatz you have a great view over the city from the “Alex” the TV tower (7,50 €). The restaurant in the sphere turns once every hour.

For evening nightlife check “Mitte” around and north of the stations “Friedrichstraße”, “Hackesche Höfe”, and “Alexanderplatz”. There are lots of small restaurants, cafes, clubs, and pubs.