Re: [opensuse-project] oSConference: Theme & Program Planning (Offensive Word Found In Message)

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On 4/8/2011 at 03:54 PM, in message <20110408215402.GF10983@hera>, Pascal Bleser wrote: On 2011-04-08 22:53:02 (+0200), Klaas Freitag wrote: Am Freitag, 8. April 2011, 07:59:03 schrieb Pascal Bleser: On 2011-04-08 10:23:51 (+1000), Helen South [...] Isn't it a good occasion to present all our current projects and discuss them with peers, in order to 1) let the community (-> slideshare ;)) know what we're doing 2) collect some ideas, opinions and feedback ?

Bretzn/appstream, connect, Build Service, webpin2, WebYast, zypp, security, marketing, ambassadors, tumbleweed, evergreen, studio, maintenance, factory, ... and that's really just off the top of my head in a couple of seconds.

How about taking more time for those topics, time to present but also time to discuss, brainstorm, and potentially win active contributors for those projects. Ok, good points. I agree. The only issue I see is to get new people in. If we do the conference too much centric around ourselfes (which is NOT what you suggest, I know that) no new people will show up and we end up entertaining ourselfes. Given that our community has grown already that would'nt be bad actually. And I am convinced that if we do it smart, we can manage to talk about our backyard and make it attractive to new enthusiasts. I think that requires some self confidence but this thread is a sign that we have it. Great.

Fair point.

There are always several objectives, and we all have our opinion and wishes on what we'd like to see happening at the conference.

We should try to identify those clearly.

What I can see just from these two emails:

1) attract new contributors (what you're referring to as "newcomers")

2) share expertise and knowledge, make workshops, brainstorm, which is more of an "inwards" perspective on us, what we do, and what we want to do (which includes what we suck at, what's badly missing, cool new ideas, and gather expertise from the very knowledgeable people in the project)

We can certainly also identify the following point (which is not the same as 1):

3) trigger collaboration with other projects and distributions

Then, of course, and IMHO probably the most essential point when meeting in real life:

4) get to know each other, "physically", also known as "around a couple of beers" :)

Let's not forget about that last point, which is extremely important, as it communication and collaboration a lot more effective afterwards. It removes "fears" or hampering "respect". It is also the most rare of chances, as most of us are living far away from each other and might only have that one occasion to meet. And, after all, the kind of project we're part of is at least as much a people thing than it is a technical thing :)

Going from there, let's try to think of * how to market/advertise/broadcast the event (1) * what "sort" of contributors we would like to attract (1) (and, hence, what topics/workshops to present) * hot topics (2) * future topics (2) * projects we want to collaborate with (3) * social events (4)

Maybe we should hold these on a wiki page, complete it with more tasks/domains/ideas, make individual mail threads on the list for each.

Pascal, I attempted to capture your ideas onto the current wiki page: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Conference_Planning_2011#Conference_Objectiv...

There is something we usually do a lot as (software) engineers, at least in my experience as a highly qualified one, and which is completely missing at the conference but also in the project in general: discuss ideas and share experience.

All too often, ideas and implementations happen either in the head of a single person or, at best, in an office in Nürnberg or Prague, instead of discussing it on a mailing-list and/or on IRC. What I mean is that there are many very, very qualified people in our community (in many domains), and we don't take profit from that capacity.

So let's try to do that (amongst many other things) at the conference on a few topics.

(and the above isn't meant as a blame, I'm guilty of acting that way too)

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Make some tracks around our own projects. I mean, we had that last year as well, but obviously from another perspective.

Yes and no. There were some, of course, but almost all of them were "read-only": someone presents something, then there are a few minutes for Q&A and then it's done.

While it's certainly interesting, we should have most of those as more workshop-alike sessions, with an introductory presentation and then have enough time (or another session later) to share ideas, experience, etc...

Doing this can create a very productive session. I've seen this implemented in several different ways, the most successful method requires the presenter to do as much or more preparation than a "read only" presentation. When it works well the presenter and audience walk away much more satisfied, when it doesn't work well it can be a total disaster.

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Or, to put it differently: more of a read/write conference than a read-only one. Yeah, thats convincing :-)

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Theme: "rwxrwxrwx" (read, write and execute for the owner, the group, and the world ;))

Or "ogu=rwx".

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I like that very much. I would support that, even though that needs some explanation for 'outsiders', but that can be done.

Yes, it can. It's pretty geekish but hey... :)

IMHO it captures our objectives... or... well, the objectives/wishes I have, at least, I wouldn't want to draw conclusions from there :)

cheers -- -o) Pascal Bleser /\\ http://opensuse.org -- we haz green _\_v http://fosdem.org -- we haz conf

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