Don't miss this BeGeistert!

This time I am very happy to be part of the organization team for BeGeistert, the bi-annual gathering of BeOS and Haiku fans in Düsseldorf, Germany. That's because I get to see who registers, and I can tell you that I am almost bursting with excitement, since this BeGeistert will be a big one! Beside the regular BeGeistert visitors, this time there are people coming whom I've known for years only via the Internet and who I can now finally meet in person. And there are also a bunch of old-timers coming who didn't participate in the event in years. Even new contributors will show up for the first time, like some of this year's Google Summer of Code and Haiku Code Drive students.

As you may know, the group organizing BeGeistert is the Haiku Support Association, HSA for short, formerly known as the BeFAN club. They are in the process of transitioning from a local user group into an international organization with members from quite a few countries already. The HSA is funded through member fees and donations. Additionally Haiku, Inc. is helping to fund the Coding Sprint specifically, which takes place in the week following the BeGeistert weekend. This is possible because of the continuous support of the Haiku community and their donations to the project.

If all goes well this BeGeistert will be more worthwhile for regular users and fans of Haiku than the last event, since we plan to have a number of workshops. Hopefully, the coders can restrain themselves and delay the coding to the Coding Sprint, so that there is more room for socializing, presentations and workshops during the main BeGeistert weekend. Usually, there is no planning on what everyone is working on during the Coding Sprint. The last ones have obviously been dedicated to getting the Alpha out the door sooner. This one may see the integration of the Wi-Fi stack if all goes well, but I am sure that everyone will find plenty of stuff to keep themselves busy with. After all, we have a number of Trac tickets to follow up on, thanks to testing and feedback from you all.

Obviously, the successful release of Haiku R1/Alpha1 will be a reason to make this event one big celebration. If the release impressed you and initiated your interest in becoming a Haiku programmer or to contribute in other areas, then we will be able to offer a number of workshops to help get you started. For example, a workshop on translating Haiku applications with the new Locale Kit is planned, and an introduction to using Haiku's layout-management APIs and a workshop on general Haiku programming techniques will complete the offering.

I am very much looking forward to meeting everyone there and if you are considering to participate, please don't hesitate to register now, I am sure it will be awesome!