[FOSDEM] Fosdem schedule as pdf

[Pascal Bleser]

On 2012-01-26 10:08:48 (+0100), Marc Coevoet <sintsixtus at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,

Hi Marc

> I remember I printed some A3 pages with the schedule on it last
> year.  I suppose a version of this schedule will be available soon?

Possibly. I do that every year but it's a completely manual
process to craft that, and I'm not sure I'll have the time to do
that this year (takes several hours, and this time it requires
cramming 420 sessions into that instead of 320 as with previous
years).

I'll try, but I can't promise.

If anyone else would like to do that and contribute it, that
would be more than welcome ;)

I can provide any data about the talks (plain text list, csv,
whatever). It is actually even available as XML (in a custom
format that is specific to Pentabarf, the conference planning
system we're using) [1] or iCal [2] or xCal [3].
But as said, I can also provide it in another format.

[1] https://fosdem.org/2012/schedule/xml
[2] https://fosdem.org/2012/schedule/ical
[3] https://fosdem.org/2012/schedule/xcal

I'm sure quite a few people will read this and think "huh,
manually? hah, I can do better and I'll just make a script that
generates LaTeX", etc... -- believe me, it requires a lot of hand
crafting in order to fit 400 sessions in 25 rooms in parallel on
an acceptable page format ;)
Dumping the whole thing on a dozen A3 pages is easy, but
adapting the layout, shorten the titles of some talks, the names
of some people in order to get it on 6 A4 pages is tedious ^^

I have always done it in a LibreOffice spreadsheet: sounds
weird, but as everything requires manual adaptations to layout,
text, and column sizes, etc..., and as it absolutely needs to be
a grid, it is actually quite a good fit. (But maybe someone has
a better plan, I'm open to suggestions :)).

cheers
-- 
Pascal Bleser <loki at fosdem.org>       http://fosdem.org/
FOSDEM 2012 ::: 4 + 5 February 2012 in Brussels, Belgium
Free and Opensource Software Developers European Meeting
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