Dear all Randa [1] is a small and beautiful village in the swiss alps just two train stops away from Zermatt with its world famous Matterhorn! The next Randa Meetings take place from Saturday, 9th to Friday, 15th of August 2014. The association Randa Meetings lead by Mario Fux organises the 5th Hacking Meeting already.

What are these Randa Meetings? The goal of the Randa Meetings is to bring groups and people from the global free software, open source and open data community together for one week in a nice place to discuss, work and hack on the next big (or small) thing. Due to its origin so far mainly the KDE community has participated and we have hosted as much as 50 developers (the house has a capacity of approx. 100) [2].

The organisers of Randa Meetings provide the place and basic services such as food, drinks and accomodation (not for free but for a very low price, see below), meeting rooms and the probably nicest view you can have for a (developer) meeting. The content comes from the participants. So you can come with your group and discuss, map or hack on whatever is important to you.

So do you have a project you are working on within the OSM community? Bring your people to Randa in August and you will most probably have a boost for the project. The past meetings have shown that the great atmosphere and the peaceful suroundings are very positive for the productivity and focused work. And you can come for just a day or two or the whole week. It's totally up to you.

Family and friends are welcome, too! Randa is great also for your family. There are a lot of opportunities for hiking, mountain biking or just enjoying yourself in a great panorama. This year we know already from a few bringing their kids along with them.

What does it cost me? The accomodation is approx. 20 CHF/person and night (+/-5 CHF) and also depending on how much sponsoring we can obtain. Family members have to pay for themself (no sponsored stays). Food (full board) is provided at 15 CHF/person and day. Travel expenses are to be covered by the participants. For international participants on low budget we can provide a special fare train ticket on request (limited availability).

Interested? Get in contact with us! Pascal Mages (pascal.mages@sosm.ch) or Mario Fux (fux@kde.org). For further information visit http://randa-meetings.ch/

Looking forward to see you in Randa! Pascal & Mario

[1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/46.0999/7.7652 [2] http://community.kde.org/Sprints/Randa