Marrakesh 2019

When: December 1st-8th 2019, with December 3rd-5th as 'core days'.

What: Seven total days of hacking, including a three-day 'core' workshop to continue and grow the Reproducible Builds effort.

As a follow up to the four previous reproducible builds workshops in Athens 2015, Berlin 2016, Berlin 2017 and Paris 2018, the reproducible builds folks met again in Marrakesh.

Extended format

Just like previous years, the heart of the workshop are three days of moderated sessions with the goals outlined just below.

The days before and after these three days have no organized activity, besides a short "stand-up"-like meeting, where we'll hopefully be sitting on the sunny roof-top, trying to find some shadow and briefly sharing our activities in the last day. In other words, those are "free days" where you can be excellent.

Goals

As in previous years, the exact content of the meeting has been shaped by the participants, these were our main goals as organizers:

Participants

There have been participants from Apache Maven, Arch Linux, Bazel, coreboot, Debian, F-Droid, GNU Guix, GNU Mes, Google, Huawei, in-toto, Indiana University (IU), Microsoft, MirageOS, muinín, New York University (NYU), NixOS, openSUSE, OpenWrt, Tails, Tor Project, University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and more…

Reproducible Summit 5 in Marrakesh 2019

Reports

A number of reports have been published:

Location

Marrakech, Morocco at Priscilla, Queen of the Medina

Priscilla, Queen of the Medina is run by the Queens Collective and is located directly in the medina of Marrakesh. The venue has been used for several Mirage OS development retreats (see reports there).

The Queens Collective stands for gender equality, female empowerment and the engagement of vulnerable communities locally through cultural activism. Please do reach out to us if you have any concerns whatsoever about your safety whilst attending.

The location is 7.98415°W, 31.63019°N, the address is 27 Derb el Ferrane Azbezt.

Marrakesh is one of the historic cultural centers of the country and many of the landmarks of Marrakesh are in close walking distance.

As you probably can guess from the pictures it's a nice and simple venue, more like a youth hostel. Also this is more the case for the main house (called 'Queens') with 18 beds, while the guesthouse next door (called 'Priscilla') has 12 beds and more privacy.

There are many alternate accommodation options nearby, the following are some which are less than 5minutes walking away:

To enable us to focus on our workshop and it's goals, freshly prepared local food is served for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

There's wireless network at the venue, though it's not broadband, but an LTE connection (or two). As you might guess, this is also to enable us to focus on our workshop and it's goals, discussions and collaboration ;)

Costs

The costs per person staying for a week for accomodation, food and using the venue are 350€, that's 50€ per day. If you choose alternative accomodation it is 35€ per day for food and using the venue.
We very much welcome attendees or their employers covering these costs. (Until November 15th 2019 we accepted requests for sponsored travel and accomodation. Until the 30th of November you could still register but you had to cover the expenses yourself.)

Photos of the venue

Every venue is best described first with a cat picture.
The roof-top hacklab.
The bottom-level main room showing 2/3 of it.
View on the middle level.
Breakfast.
Food at a special event.
Two inhabitants and a relaxed visitor.

Schedule

Besides that, the daily schedules was roughly as described above in the Extended format and Goals sections, gently adjusted by the timings of the food breaks. There were breakfast, lunch and dinner provided at the venue.

Other activities

To be organized by the attendees while in Marrakesh. There are plenty of options and advice available, but other activities need to be organized by those non-organizers, who would love to participate in an excursion to the mountains or the sea or the city of Marrakesh. The venue is glad to provide friendly help.

Code of Conduct

This event was run under the guidance of the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct.

The organisers are committed to providing an event where all participants feel safe. Attendees are expected to treat all people with respect and help create a welcoming environment. If you notice behaviour that fails to meet this standard, please speak up (aloud or in private to the organisers).

Organized by

Aspiration & Holger, Vagrant, Chris and Mattia

Sponsors

Ford Foundation
Google Open Source Research

We are welcoming further sponsors for this event! Please contact holger if you want to support this event.

Travel and getting there

Visas

According to the Wikipedia article on the Visa policy of Morocco, most of our attendees do not need a visa for entering Morocco but some unfortunately do.

Travel to Marrakesh and the venue

The nearest airport is Marrakesh Menara Airport (RAK). There is also Marrakesh Railway Station (train service from and to Tangier, reachable from Spain by ferry).

From the airport or railway station, take a taxi to Jemaa el-Fnaa (the *big square* in the city centre). There's also a much cheaper bus leaving 42m in sight of the taxis from the parking lot.

Then you can also follow this old map from 2017, the address is 27 Derb el Ferrane Azbezt. A video contains detailed descriptions. Or, if you have a magical device: the location is 7.98415°W, 31.63019°N. (But read on!)

If you haven't been to the venue before, we recommend (and we are happy to) pick you up at Jemaa el-Fnaa. The path is easy and safe but probably just a bit overwhelming upon first arrival.

Registration

Registration for attending this event is mandatory and done by sending a short email to holger, expressing that you want to attend and possible shortly stating your involvement or other reasons why.