User:Pellaeon/sandbox

Taipei is the capital of Taiwan (ROC). Taiwan is a democratic country with friendly people, its official language is Chinese, though the accent is different from Mainland China (PRC) and we also use (slightly) different characters for writing. There are vibrant IT industry and communities in Taiwan, the IT industry finds it beginning in the 1980s, when many of the existing IC (Integrated circuits) companies shifted to the booming IT field. In the 1980s, Taiwan has been the leading role for Chinese computer user interface development. Taiwan also has vibrant FOSS communities, our major FOSS conference, Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters (zh:開源人年會, or COSCUP) has been held since 2006, with nearly 1800 participants in 2016. Hackathons, meetup from various communities are held frequently.

Taipei is also a cultural center of Asia. If you're interested in Chinese culture, the National Palace Musuem holds items brought from the Forbidden City by the Kuomingtang Army during their retreat to Taiwan in the Chinese Civil War. Before the Kuomingtang rule is the Japanese colonial era, many parts of Japanese culture has lasted till this day.

Also the transportation of Taipei is very convenient. We have high density Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) here. It not only covers Taipei city, but also connects New Taipei city (Greater Taipei area) and Taoyuan city.

Raise the awareness of upstreams
For free software / open source software communities, although we have thriving community events, most efforts from Asia aren't noticed by most of the western communities, which might be caused by the tendency to not be working with upstream. (For example, in GNU/Linux desktop environments, we rely on input "modules" for typing CJK language, instead of simple keymapping which is integrated in desktop environments.) We hope this event could bring people to work with upstream, rather than reinventing our own wheels.

We could also invite IC designers in Taiwan (for example, MediaTeK, Realtek, VIA) working with Linux kernel, to encourage them taking the open source approach. This could mean better hardware support on Linux.

Visas, customs and entering the country
There is a visa waiver program for many countries. Please see the table below.

Citizens of the following countries can stay for 90 days without a visa:

Citizens of the following countries can stay for 30 days without a visa:

Source: http://www.boca.gov.tw/content?mp=2&CuItem=1443

What you can bring to Taiwan: http://eweb.customs.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=15227&ctNode=10030

Due to the isolated geographic nature, going to Taiwan via airlines is the recommended approach. The major international airport (TPE) is located in Taoyuan city. And by the time of 2018, direct MRT line from airport to Taipei City center would be completed. There are direct flights from major international airports like Frankfurt (FRA), Amsterdam (AMS), Los Angeles (LAX) and London (LHR), as well as airports in Asia. Connections from other parts of the world go via Beijing (PEK), Hong Kong (HKG), Shanghai (PVG), etc.

Local team
Please add yourself in alphabet order if you are part of the team!

Contact Details

 * IRC Channel: #debconf18-taiwan on OFTC
 * IRC Contact: paulliu on oftc

National Chiao Tung University (國立交通大學)
For anyone who wants to add a survey of different location for discussion, we can add them to hackfoldr first.

Local Companies

 * Accton
 * Acer
 * Adventech
 * ALFA
 * Appier
 * ASUS
 * D-Link
 * EDIMAX
 * HTC
 * Inventec
 * KKBOX
 * MediaTek Inc.
 * MiTAC
 * QNAP
 * Quanta
 * Realtek Semiconductors Corp.
 * Synology
 * Unitech
 * Wistron
 * ZyXEL

Institutional / Government

 * NCHC - Contacted. Will sponsor but cannot know how much because it is still too early.

Community

 * debian.org.tw
 * LXDE
 * Mozilla Taiwan Community
 * OCF.tw
 * TOSSUG
 * Ubuntu Taiwan

Power

 * Most of the electrical sockets are NEMA 1-15 ungrounded (Type A). You can bring/purchase a conversion socket if you have a NEMA 5-15 plug, or a "travel plug converter" if you have anything else.
 * Some (and almost all in the venue) of the electrical sockets are NEMA 5-15 grounded (Type B). This plug is compatible to NEMA 1-15 plug, with a ground pin to prevent you from being electrified.

Potential dates
The potential dates are within July 1 ~ August 31, since all venues are universities, so summer vacation is the only time frame for us to get classrooms and dormitory rooms.

Fun and Free time

 * Chinese treasures: NPM
 * Japanese Otakus: TaipeiMall
 * Night markets: many locations.
 * Zoo: Taipei Zoo