The Islandora Conference is two weeks away and we want to share some pre-conference information to help our attendees plan ahead to get the most out of the event.
Social Events
Monday evening at 6:00 we invite you to join your fellow attendees for a barbecue outside the Robertson Library at UPEI. And let's all hope it doesn't rain.
Tuesday we will be hosting Bar Trivia at Marc's Studio. Appetizer trays provided, drinks available for purchase. All are welcome, but we'll need a headcount, so there is a sign-up sheet here.
Wednesday will be the big conference dinner, with live music and excellent Island cuisine at Fishbones.
All of the above are included in the cost of your registration.
Location
The conference is taking place in the Atlantic Veterinary College building at UPEI. The Hackfest will be at the Robertson Library. A map of conference locations (click to expand):
The street address of UPEI is: 550 University Ave, Charlottetown, PE C1A 4P3
Parking in Lots A & B is free and open to the public during the summer.
PEI
Meetings & Conventions PEI has offered some special deals on local goodies for our attendees. All the details are here.
Please note that here are a lot of little bonuses at local hotels, like free wine or extra nights, so check if your hotel is on the list!
Interest Groups Meetings
During the Hackfest on Friday, August 7th, we will be hosting face-to-face meetings of the various Islandora Interest Groups, for current or potential members. The schedule of meetings is:
10:00 - Preservation
11:00 - Fedora 4
1:00 - GIS /Documentation (two rooms)
2:00 - Dev Ops
3:00 - UI
4:00 - Metadata
These will take place at the Robertson Library in the Language Learning Lab (don't worry, there will be lots of signs!). Unlike the Hackfest, registration is not required.
Workshops
A sign-up page for the workshops is available here.
Your choices will not be set in stone, but we would like to get some general numbers to plan for, so your participation is much appreciated.
We also have some homework for Wednesday and Thursday, in general and for a few of the specific workshops:
General
Install an Islandora Virtual Machine on your laptop, and bring it with you.
You will get far more out of the workshops if you can play along on your own laptop. We recommend a bare minimum of 4GB of RAM to run the standard Islandora VM. Installing it in advance and making sure you can run it is highly recommended. The Islandora 7.x-1.5 VM is available for download here.
We can provide help before the workshop to get the VM up and running if you are having difficulties. An informal "installfest" will take place at 4:30 on Tuesday, August 4 for anyone who wants a little guidance or troubleshooting.
If you are not able to bring a laptop that can run the VM, please let me know. I can set you up with an online sandbox that will suffice for most of the Admin and Intermediate level workshops.
Specific
If you are planning to attend Islandora Development 101:
This workshop (and likely many of the other Developer Track workshops) will work with HEAD, so the 7.x-1.5 VM will not match up. Please install the Islandora Vagrant.
If you are planning to attend Fedora 4:
The workshop will include a hands-on section using using a Fedora 4 virtual machine image, so please follow these instructions to get the VM up and running on your laptop before the workshop.
NOTE: The VM uses 2GB of RAM, so you will need a laptop with at least 4GB of RAM to run it. Depending on your laptop manufacturer, you may also need to enable virtualization in the BIOS.
Download and install VirtualBox: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
Download and install Vagrant: http://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
Download the 4.2.0 release of the Fedora 4 VM: https://github.com/fcrepo4-labs/fcrepo4-vagrant/releases/tag/fcrepo4-vagrant-4.2.0
Note that you can either clone the repository to your desktop using git or just download the ZIP [https://github.com/fcrepo4-labs/fcrepo4-vagrant/archive/fcrepo4-vagrant-4.2.0.zip] and unzip it
Using a Command Line Interface, navigate to the VM folder from step 3 and run the command: vagrant up
Note that this step will take a while as the VM downloads and installs a full virtual environment
Test the VM by opening your web browser and navigating to: http://localhost:8080/fcrepo
That’s it! Please let David Wilcox know if you run into any problems - you can, of course, install Fedora 4 manually, but this method will make sure we are all using the exact same environment during the training.