Memorial for Dan Williams

Memorial for Dan Williams

[Steven Rostedt]

Hi Monika,

I'm not sure where we ended with trying to have a co-located memorial
session between Linux Plumbers and Open Source Summit. We really cannot
have it on Wednesday night due to the evening event that day.

We plan on having it Tuesday night if we can get a room for it. It will be
an open event where anyone may attend. As I would suspect that most people
attending Open Source Summit on the first day (Wednesday) would likely have
already arrived in Prague Tuesday night, there could be some announcement
that invites Open Source Summit attendees that knew Dan to join the
memorial that evening.

Thanks,

-- Steve

Re: Memorial for Dan Williams

[Kees Cook]

[-mmasciangelo,lpc]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2026 at 02:41:52PM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> We plan on having it Tuesday night if we can get a room for it. It will be
> an open event where anyone may attend. As I would suspect that most people
> attending Open Source Summit on the first day (Wednesday) would likely have
> already arrived in Prague Tuesday night, there could be some announcement
> that invites Open Source Summit attendees that knew Dan to join the
> memorial that evening.

Is getting remote attendance something we need to also coordinate with
them, or should we just do something ad-hoc if it is needed for remote
folks? (i.e. Dan's family mentioned interest in remotely attending if
in-person didn't work, IIRC. I defer to Dave on this; he communicated
most recently with them.)

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook

Re: Memorial for Dan Williams

[Dave Hansen]

On 9/10/26 12:42, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2026 at 02:41:52PM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
>> We plan on having it Tuesday night if we can get a room for it. It will be
>> an open event where anyone may attend. As I would suspect that most people
>> attending Open Source Summit on the first day (Wednesday) would likely have
>> already arrived in Prague Tuesday night, there could be some announcement
>> that invites Open Source Summit attendees that knew Dan to join the
>> memorial that evening.
> Is getting remote attendance something we need to also coordinate with
> them, or should we just do something ad-hoc if it is needed for remote
> folks? (i.e. Dan's family mentioned interest in remotely attending if
> in-person didn't work, IIRC. I defer to Dave on this; he communicated
> most recently with them.)

I think we can totally do something Ad-hoc like Zoom on a laptop. The
full room remote setup might be nice if we can get it, but I don't think
we would need to scale beyond a handful of family members.

Re: Memorial for Dan Williams

[Steven Rostedt]

On Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:42:13 -0700
Kees Cook <kees@kernel.org> wrote:

> [-mmasciangelo,lpc]
> 
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2026 at 02:41:52PM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > We plan on having it Tuesday night if we can get a room for it. It will be
> > an open event where anyone may attend. As I would suspect that most people
> > attending Open Source Summit on the first day (Wednesday) would likely have
> > already arrived in Prague Tuesday night, there could be some announcement
> > that invites Open Source Summit attendees that knew Dan to join the
> > memorial that evening.  
> 
> Is getting remote attendance something we need to also coordinate with
> them, or should we just do something ad-hoc if it is needed for remote
> folks? (i.e. Dan's family mentioned interest in remotely attending if
> in-person didn't work, IIRC. I defer to Dave on this; he communicated
> most recently with them.)
> 

Hmm, this may be difficult unless we give people a LPC remote pass (which
usually costs $50). I have no problems giving the family a free pass, but
if there's others that want to attend, we may need to do it by a case by
case basis.

Also there's the issue of the portion of the memory that will not be
recorded (that is, no remote attendees). Remember, everything in BBB is
recorded, so there's no real use of the server without recording.

-- Steve

Re: Memorial for Dan Williams

[Steven Rostedt]

On Thu, 10 Sep 2026 18:12:31 -0700
Monika Masciangelo <mmasciangelo@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> Hi Steve,
> 
> Tuesday will be the best option with having it open to everyone.  Few
> logistical questions to determine the space:
> 
> Will we need a full AV set up with streaming to BBB?  Will virtual
> attendees be able to remote in and say a few words on screen?  Will there
> be an onscreen (PP or video) presentation?

Dave has said that Dan's family may try to attend in person, and if not,
they would like to find a way to attend remotely. We are up in the air
about having BBB enabled, as BBB always records and we do not want this
recorded (so that people can express their feels more openly).

Dave is the person on point to steer this, he may have some input on it.

> 
> As for timing, approximately what time should we  schedule the memorial?
> Will that timeframe include the reception portion of the event and what
> time should the reception end?

I was thinking of starting it either 15 or 30 minutes after the last
Plumbers session. The last sessions should end at 18:30, although the Power
Management MC is scheduled a little passed and ending at 18:40. Perhaps
19:00 would be a good time to start.

I'll let Dave answer the specifics about the reception and speakers.

> 
> With opening it to everyone, do you think we will have more than 100 in
> attendance?  What is the budget for the reception appetizers and drinks?

I'll let Dave answer this.

> 
> Based on the answers we can see what space will work best and make sure we
> get everything planned out for Dan’s memorial.

Thank you Monika!

-- Steve

Re: [lpc-contact] Memorial for Dan Williams

[James Bottomley]

On Fri, 2026-09-11 at 08:44 -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Sep 2026 18:12:31 -0700
> Monika Masciangelo <mmasciangelo@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> 
> > Hi Steve,
> > 
> > Tuesday will be the best option with having it open to everyone. 
> > Few logistical questions to determine the space:
> > 
> > Will we need a full AV set up with streaming to BBB?  Will virtual
> > attendees be able to remote in and say a few words on screen?  Will
> > there be an onscreen (PP or video) presentation?
> 
> Dave has said that Dan's family may try to attend in person, and if
> not, they would like to find a way to attend remotely. We are up in
> the air about having BBB enabled, as BBB always records and we do not
> want this recorded (so that people can express their feels more
> openly).

Actually that's just a technical detail about the way remote A/V works,
so every remote A/V tool technically records.  However, we could spin
up an ephemeral BBB instance and shred it after the event to ensure
there are no traces left if that would make people happier?

> 
> Dave is the person on point to steer this, he may have some input on
> it.
> 
> > 
> > As for timing, approximately what time should we  schedule the
> > memorial? Will that timeframe include the reception portion of the
> > event and what time should the reception end?
> 
> I was thinking of starting it either 15 or 30 minutes after the last
> Plumbers session. The last sessions should end at 18:30, although the
> Power Management MC is scheduled a little passed and ending at 18:40.
> Perhaps 19:00 would be a good time to start.
> 
> I'll let Dave answer the specifics about the reception and speakers.
> 
> > 
> > With opening it to everyone, do you think we will have more than
> > 100 in attendance?  What is the budget for the reception appetizers
> > and drinks?
> 
> I'll let Dave answer this.

Plumbers can cover this since we seem to have an excess of sponsors
this year.  The usual cost of a cocktail reception in Prague (at least
for stag do's) is about €25-50 per head.  I'm assuming the congress
centre is on the higher side of that, so for 200-400 people we'd be
looking at about $10-20k

Regards,

James

Re: [lpc-contact] Memorial for Dan Williams

[Dave Hansen]

On 9/11/26 05:53, James Bottomley wrote:
> Actually that's just a technical detail about the way remote A/V works,
> so every remote A/V tool technically records.  However, we could spin
> up an ephemeral BBB instance and shred it after the event to ensure
> there are no traces left if that would make people happier?

I'm not super worried about it either way. Basically as long as a
recording doesn't end up on YouTube, I'm OK with it.

> Plumbers can cover this since we seem to have an excess of sponsors
> this year.  The usual cost of a cocktail reception in Prague (at least
> for stag do's) is about €25-50 per head.  I'm assuming the congress
> centre is on the higher side of that, so for 200-400 people we'd be
> looking at about $10-20k

That's a very generous offer and very much appreciated! Let me touch
base with a few other folks on what kind of event they had in mind.

Re: [lpc-contact] Memorial for Dan Williams

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Sep 11, 2026 at 07:23:29AM -0500, Dave Hansen wrote:
> On 9/11/26 05:53, James Bottomley wrote:
> > Actually that's just a technical detail about the way remote A/V works,
> > so every remote A/V tool technically records.  However, we could spin
> > up an ephemeral BBB instance and shred it after the event to ensure
> > there are no traces left if that would make people happier?
> 
> I'm not super worried about it either way. Basically as long as a
> recording doesn't end up on YouTube, I'm OK with it.

This should be Dave's call, but my personal feeling is that if there
are some critically important people who can only attend remotely
(including possibly some of Dan's family if some or all of them can't
travel) we should definitely do BBB.

If not, there will always be some people who might be uncomfortable if
there is active A/V; even if we don't record it, someone on the remote
end could.  That seems relatively unlikely to me, but it's more about
what other people might feel/perceive/fear.  Could it still be
worthwhile?

One compromise might be that we don't broadcast the BBB link, but we
only make it available to people who explicitly ask ahead of time.

Dave, what do you think?

						- ted

Re: [lpc-contact] Memorial for Dan Williams

[Dave Hansen]

On 9/11/26 08:48, Theodore Tso wrote:
...
> If not, there will always be some people who might be uncomfortable if
> there is active A/V; even if we don't record it, someone on the remote
> end could.  That seems relatively unlikely to me, but it's more about
> what other people might feel/perceive/fear.  Could it still be
> worthwhile?
> 
> One compromise might be that we don't broadcast the BBB link, but we
> only make it available to people who explicitly ask ahead of time.
> 
> Dave, what do you think?

Doing a BBB session, but keeping the link mostly private sounds like a
good compromise to me. We'd basically only share the link with people we
trust.

Re: [lpc-contact] Memorial for Dan Williams

[Jonathan Corbet]

Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com> writes:

> On 9/11/26 08:48, Theodore Tso wrote:
> ...
>> If not, there will always be some people who might be uncomfortable if
>> there is active A/V; even if we don't record it, someone on the remote
>> end could.  That seems relatively unlikely to me, but it's more about
>> what other people might feel/perceive/fear.  Could it still be
>> worthwhile?
>> 
>> One compromise might be that we don't broadcast the BBB link, but we
>> only make it available to people who explicitly ask ahead of time.
>> 
>> Dave, what do you think?
>
> Doing a BBB session, but keeping the link mostly private sounds like a
> good compromise to me. We'd basically only share the link with people we
> trust.

You can, of course, set a room so that you have to approve everybody who
enters.  That means somebody has to be paying attention, though.

jon

Re: Memorial for Dan Williams

[Dave Hansen]

On 9/11/26 05:44, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Sep 2026 18:12:31 -0700
>> Tuesday will be the best option with having it open to everyone.  Few
>> logistical questions to determine the space:
>>
>> Will we need a full AV set up with streaming to BBB?  Will virtual
>> attendees be able to remote in and say a few words on screen?  Will there
>> be an onscreen (PP or video) presentation?

The plan is to have something that is primarily in-person without BBB or
remote attendees.

>> As for timing, approximately what time should we schedule the memorial?
>> Will that timeframe include the reception portion of the event and what
>> time should the reception end?

There is no formal reception planned. There is likely to be a group of
people that will go get dinner after.

>> With opening it to everyone, do you think we will have more than 100 in
>> attendance?  What is the budget for the reception appetizers and drinks?
> 
> I'll let Dave answer this.

I don't think there will be more than 100 people. We will have a toast
at the end of the session, but do not plan on feeding people.

Re: [lpc-contact] Memorial for Dan Williams

[James Bottomley]

On Fri, 2026-09-11 at 05:55 -0700, Dave Hansen wrote:
> On 9/11/26 05:44, Steven Rostedt wrote:
[...]
> > > As for timing, approximately what time should we schedule the
> > > memorial? Will that timeframe include the reception portion of
> > > the event and what time should the reception end?
> 
> There is no formal reception planned. There is likely to be a group
> of people that will go get dinner after.

So what is the plan to actually tell people about this?  I was thinking
we'd put it on the LPC timetable, but I'm sure if we do that we'll get
over 100 people who knew Dan just from LPC alone.

Regards,

James