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Splendid! :)

Some suggestions for interesting topics:
General (as far as its not secret ;) ):
* Crash course on how an Eigenharp works physically and logically (keys etc.)
* what is actually exchanged between Eigenharp and Basestation
* what happens between Basestation and EigenD
EigenD Programming:
* introduction (agents, atoms, real-time vs low prio contexts, what has to be taken into consideration when running in rt context, which concepts and helper constructs for data exchange between rt/low prio context exist)
* introduction of datatypes for agent inputs/outputs
* categorization of existing EigenD2 agents by protocol: who understands whom in which aspect and how do these protocols look like (especially interesting: new pitch/key position concept in EigenD2)
* proposals how to implement agents for the different protocol types most easily - which abstractions exist where we can build on and how are those supposed to be used (cfilter etc.)
* how does the discovery of agents work -> what does an agent have to provide so that it is recognized and can be used
* concepts of Belcanto: which Belcanto related features can an agent offer and how are those implemented
* explain update concept: what does an agent have to offer so that the "auto-update" of setups works

Workshops:
* simple synth agent: a simple sound generator is first written "from scratch" and then with the aid of cfilter (shows how to interpret note streams and how to output audio)
* let's write an agent that illuminates selectable notes in an octave as playing reference that takes the kgroups into consideration (shows how to use the new pitch/positional note-stream concept, how to illuminate leds on key groups etc.)
* "MiniD": a minimal up from scratch application that uses low level communication with the EigenD driver to generate midi or osc messages from it and changes the state of the Eigenharp (e.g. illuminates some keys)

Perspective (again, as long as it's not secret):
* roadmap: which agents does Eigenlabs plan to add in the mid term future (without any guarantees or fixed schedules of course - just so we don't work on the same stuff)

Nice ideas!
Some other topics for user contributions (these could be some of these "white board" topics - perhaps it would be good to collect some potentially interesting ones up front so people can prepare themselves a little bit for the case their topic get's voted):
* Belcanto live playing workshop (if Antonio wants :) )
* playing technices of alternative layouts (could offer to give some practical demonstrations to understand the merits of the horizontal layout on Tau and Alpha and at least show the concept of the Wicki layout)

Wow, great suggestions here barnone and NothanUmber, we'll definitely take these into consideration. I'm personally seeing the whole setting as something very informal, but we haven't discussed the format yet amongst us. Having spoken and participated in a huge amount of Java developer conferences, it's the largely unprepared and open format BOFs (Birds of a Feather) that always got me the most value. When passionate people start talking, often all that's needed is an appointed moderator that also acts as knowledge source. Discussions very rapidly become extremely valuable and interesting. Since we're about 13 participants, the group size is perfect for such an approach.

I'm personally also very excited that Antonio will be there since he's probably got the most live playing professional experience on the Eigenharp in the world. It's obvious that he'll have a lot of interesting things to say and show. He has also done very neat things with Belcanto that I've never thought of, so I think it would be great to have him show off his scripts and setups.

@dhjdhj we're not going to be discussing anything that strays from EigenD and its core concepts, there's already too little time for that. We all know your direction and preference, you've been very vocal about it. This conference will not be going anywhere near that. We have a certain vision that you don't seem to adhere to, which is cool, but we will continue to stick to the road that we've been paving for many years now, an approach that does resonate with a lot of other Eigenharp users and developers. If we start to fragment our attention and focus, we'll never get anywhere.

We're just in the middle of putting that (an agenda) together and will post something here next week(ish). Given the limited time, we probably have to be quite focused, so here's our current thinking:

Theme Of The Conference - Writing and Deploying An EigenD Agent From Scratch

*Talks from Eigenlabs people about the technical architecture, development environment, threading issues and Agent structure. Basic technical do's and don'ts to keep code working.

*A talk about the religious (for want of a better word) issues - what makes a moral Agent, how the system is intended to work and develop in the future and what not to do.

*an interactive discussion about future API's and OSC standards, particularly for Agents and Stage widgets.

*We're going to propose a list (probably of about 20) of new Agents that we think would be really cool. You'll be invited to discuss this list here in the next couple of weeks and contribute to it/ argue about it. This list will be for Agents that we're interested in supporting the development of, ie, we'll help out on these as much as we can after the conference and if they're good enough we think they'd end up in the mainline codebase. They will range from the almost trivial 'starter style' Agents right through to some much tougher and challenging ones.

*We'd like to suggest that as part of the conference we form a number of programming pairs amongst participants, and that each pair pick one of the Agents from the list to have a go at. We'll then, interspersed between talks, have coding sessions where the Eigenlabs team will be on hand to work with you. We'd like these sessions to form around 50% of the time if possible.

*There will be a couple of 'general interest' talks. I'll probably do a little one on the engineeringand history of the physical instruments and there will be a workshop visit to Uphill Farm where Wayne will take apart an Alpha, Tau and Pico and show you how they're made along with an interactive discussion of how they work. You'll be able to see some of th early prototypes as well.

*We'll eat together each lunch and evening (which will I'm sure create a lot of discussion) and after supper get together to play. Neil(who is a great pianist) has offered to be musical director for this so we could, if people want, try and do something vaguely coherent with such a large assemblage of Eigenharps. Could be fun, and ideas are welcomed. I think it would be a nice idea to have a little (not too much) structure in this - I'd really like to avoid us ending up in a giant formless jam, did too many of those in my youth! Depending what ideas are going here, we could perhaps schedule something in the days as a playing break as well.

Further suggestions welcome - I'll be putting together an Agenda on the Wiki next week...

John

Ok, getting excited now.

"- I'd like to get some time set aside to play with some of you guys!"

Yes, let's make sure we have enough time to enjoy ourselves as well!

Hi Randy

Yes, and we're planning to do some live broadcasting as well if we can make that work. I think some of the Q&A sessions could be of great interest.

John

Ditto, booked my trains today also :-)

John - If technicals interfere, I'd rather a good quality YouTube video than a poor quality live. Plus, many f us won't be in a time zone to view live.

Randy

Hi everybody,

as a preparation step for the DevCon I pulled the current sources from the EigenDV2 branch and built them. (So far so good, worked). Now I recognized that the storage structure for binary agents changed in the last few days (one plugins folder instead of plugins+modules), so copying over the missing audio agent from 2.0.34 would require some more steps (if still compatible at all..).
So - will there be a 2.0.35 binary release until the conference starts, will we get the binaries for the audio agent up front directly at the conference or will we work with 2.0.34 instead of LATEST at DevCon (in which case I'd go back to the old sources)?

All the best,
Ferdinand

P.S.: If I naively just copy the Workbench.app from 2.0.34 into the Apps folder of a self built EigenD2 based on the latest sources it just makes BOOM (instant crash of Workbench at start time) if I click on the Workbench menu entry - so presumably if we don't go back to 2.0.34 we'll need a new Workbench also?

dyld: Library not loaded: @executable_path/libpic_2_0_34_experimental.dylib
Referenced from: /Users/ferdinand/dev/EigenD2/EigenD/tmp/app/Workbench.app/Contents/MacOS/./Workbench
Reason: image not found
Trace/BPT trap
Seems to explicitly search for a lib with a version string in the name (which is called *2_0_35* now of course). Workbench is able to show the setup of the LATEST build when started manually from the 2.0.34 directory.

Oh, I like good surprises :)

Wanted to prebuild to shorten waiting time. But if everybody has to get and build new sources then we'll all have to wait and can listen to exciting stories and concepts in the mean time :) (assuming that I'm not the only one who comes with not-exactly-top-notch hardware, compiling V2 from scratch takes about one hour on my notebook..)