Symphony.

Any more news? I'm wary that people will be booking flights, which get more expensive by the day.

I have an unsorted list of hotels which I still have to sort. Will post it here this week.

Here is the top 6 in the list with some additional information. You can find the hotels also on the map. They should all be big enough to fit all the attendees, but some of them lie really close together (1, 3, 5). And those are closest to the probable venue. There are no rooms booked yet, and if some of you agree on hotel I can call them and ask for a special group price.

For completeness, the others in the list were

• http://www.expedia.com/Cologne-Hotels-Ambassador-City.h23978.Hotel-Information
• http://www.expedia.de/Koln-Hotels-Ibis-Koeln-Centrum.h23653.Hotel-Beschreibung
• http://www.expedia.com/Cologne-Hotels-Barcelo-Cologne-City-Center.h19314.Hotel-Information
• http://www.expedia.com/Cologne-Hotels-NH-Koln-Mediapark.h2540882.Hotel-Information
• http://www.expedia.com/Cologne-Hotels-Four-Points-By-Sheraton-Central-Koeln.h24558.Hotel-Information
• http://www.expedia.com/Cologne-Hotels-Park-Inn-Cologne-City-West.h805820.Hotel-Information
• http://www.expedia.com/Cologne-Hotels-AO-Koeln-Neumarkt.h2966173.Hotel-Information

To cover the costs of the Symposium, we have decided to ask attendees and the community for donations. The costs include: venue, technical equipment, refreshments for the three days of the meet-up. Donations are handled via Pledgie. If you would like to support the meetup, please visit the Pledgie campaign page. The three days will be covered by photos, videos and blog posts. So even if you can't make it to the Symposium, you'll still get some value out of it :-) Thank you so much for your support!

To make the planning easier, I would like to ask you to register for the Symposium or to update you registration on the event page. Thanks!

In regard to topics: I would like to hear some best practices regarding release management when multiple environments are involved (DTAP) and when dealing with high-traffic websites.

This could cover collaboration (multiple developers on the same project) as well as deployment (structure changes, data migration) and scalability (symphony not being a single point of failure).

@klaftertief, thanks for putting all this information together and setting up the donate page.

I was waiting to see if there were any concrete recommendations from the German Symphony developers on the one hotel that would be a good place for us all to stay at, if that's possible. I'm anxious to book my flight and hotel sooner than later.

For what it's worth, art’otel cologne, by Park Plaza looks good to me.

Thanks for donating!

For what it's worth, art’otel cologne, by Park Plaza looks good to me.

That was my impression as well. (I just looked at the pictures, like you did. Actually I don't know Cologne or this hotel at all.)

Stephen, I guess everybody is just waiting to follow you. :-)

haha. :-) Then, the sooner I book my flight and hotel, the better.

I'm looking at a flight from Vancouver on Wednesday, 28 Sep, arriving in Cologne at 6pm on 29 Sep. I was planning to stay a couple weekends. So I'm thinking about flying out on Monday morning, 10 Oct. So, I'll have some time to travel around and see the sights, maybe Weimar, Dessau and the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin.

Or just hang around with the GSDN and build some sites.

This sounds like a very good plan!

Can you check hotel rates and give us feedback on that? (As far as I have seen, the art’otel cologne may not be the cheapest place. But that might not matter compared to the cost of the flight... For me it would be OK.)

I was waiting to see if there were any concrete recommendations from the German Symphony developers on the one hotel that would be a good place for us all to stay at, if that's possible.

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Stephen, I guess everybody is just waiting to follow you. :-)

That was the idea :-)

The list was meant to be a starting point for discussions. Or to give inspirations for a strong leader.

Okay, then. Could we plan for sticking around the Cologne area for the Symposium 30 Sep - 2 Oct, then take a studio tour of Germany to visit the workplaces of the German Symphony Developers Network? It's a long way to go for just three days, so I'm wondering whether it would be good to book a flight to Cologne, but perhaps flight out of Berlin, with planned stops in Munich, Braunschweig, Erlangen, Bonn... Would I have enough time to hop down to Italy?

A studio tour would be nice. Italy? I love it, but I have never been there in October. I do know that most of the "tourist hotels" start the winter break around the beginning of October. Maybe the Italians can tell us more. One way or another, I like this idea. I have a car, and I should have the time. Let's discuss the details via email.

flight to Cologne, but perhaps flight out of Berlin

It we take a tour, a flight out of Munich might be best. We could move from the north to the south. And if it's Italy as well, again Munich is a good place to take off.

Sorry guys, I can't speak for sure about Italy. I guess you won't have any problem with big cities (Rome, Milan).

I do know that most of the "tourist hotels" start the winter break around the beginning of October. Maybe the Italians can tell us more.

Frankly I don't know, but I'll let you know more within a few days :) As Marco said, I don't think there will be any problems though.

I can confirm there is no winter break in Rome. :)

Well, if you "hop down" to Italy it might be a good idea to fly out of Milan. :) Otherwise you'll spend more time on the road than actually enjoying the places.

But it's worth it only if you have enough time. It's an at least 8 hour drive. I still haven't decided whether to drive or fly (from Milan)...

There won't be a problem with hotels. If you decide to come by car, I'd recommend a very nice hotel near Como (lake Como). A double room (sleeping 1 or 2) costs around 75 eur and it's 4*. The hotel is convenient because it's about 40 minutes away from Milan by train (and 10 min from Como) and it has a large parking lot to leave your car.

But there certainly are nice hotels in Milan as well - I just don't like entering the city with my car.

Although the event has an official home on this site, I took the liberty of adding the Symposium 2011 to Lanyrd. The Symposium 2010 is there too for reference. This is a great place to aggregate discussion (using #symposium2011) and to post up photos and slides post-event.

This is a great place to aggregate discussion (using #symposium2011) and to post up photos and slides post-event.

I'm sure it will be much appreciated by those who can't join you all for the fun, myself included. Perhaps I should start a thread, Vicarious Symposium 2011 ;)

14 weeks to go! Stephen, did you think art’otel cologne was the favourite?