As I have mentioned a number of times before, the commercial side of OpenNMS has yet to accept any outside funding, yet we survive by being profitable. Basically, this means “spend less than you earn”. We also try to get the best value for our money when we do have to spend it.

David and I need to be in Europe in May, and in order to get the most value for the somewhat expensive airfare we decided it would be cool to visit some of our European customers and partners, and perhaps along the way we could hold a few day-long seminars on OpenNMS. Intra-European travel is actually pretty inexpensive (trains, Easyjet, etc.)

The seminar is called “A Day in the Life – An OpenNMS Use Case”. We have created the following scenario:

A company is getting ready to release a new web-based application. It will rely on a number of servers (web, database, etc.) as well as networking equipment. This seminar will cover how to monitor that application using OpenNMS, from install, through discovery to configuration and troubleshooting.

In order to cover our costs, we will be charging €250/student for the day long course.

We are looking for places to hold this training. We’d need a room big enough for, say, 10 people, a projector for slides, and (optional) an internet connection for demos. If you have such a place and would like to host this seminar, you can send two people for free.

We arrive in the UK the weekend of the 10th, so we are hoping to hold a seminar in London on that date if we can find a sponsor. We are also trying to line up sponsors elsewhere. The tentative schedule is as follows:

12 May: London [Confirmed]
14 May: Frankfurt [Confirmed]
15 May: Milan [Confirmed]
16 May: Apeldoorn, The Netherlands [Confirmed]
19 May: Geneva [Confirmed]

The Geneva date and location is the only thing that is confirmed at the moment. I’ll update this post when we know more. The two places we are in real need of a sponsor would be London and France, as we are in talks with people at the other locations. There may also be a trip to Norway in the works toward the end of that trip.

I am hoping that we can use this opportunity to provide some training to folks who can’t make it to the US, as well as to meet (and in some cases meet again) OpenNMS users in Europe.

Please drop me an e-mail if you would be interested in sponsoring one of these seminars or if you would like to attend.

2008-03-16 Update: The location and date for The Netherlands is confirmed.

2008-03-18 Update: The locations for Frankfurt and London are confirmed. More details soon. Also, I screwed up on the dates and had to shift them out by one.

2008-04-02 Update: Registration is now open. Space is limited.