On Friday 06 April 2012 13:31:26 Michal Hrusecky wrote:
Bryen M Yunashko - 11:33 5.04.12 wrote:
On Thu, 2012-04-05 at 18:00 +0200, Jos Poortvliet wrote:
On Thursday 05 April 2012 17:27:34 jdd wrote:
Le 05/04/2012 16:54, Jos Poortvliet a écrit :
Problem is that we are pressed for time.
ok
So if you have an opinion on the theme of oSC 2012 (and you should if you're on this list and help organize it, it is YOUR conference) - say something until then!
I don't know if it's what you wait for :-), but what I can say is the following:
I was a gamer. I played with my childs warcraft, starcraft, and so on, including online games. I also played Monkey Island or Day of the tentacle, old timers knows them :-).
But since I'm involved in openSUSE (that is nearly from the beginning), I have no more time to play nor desire to do so. I play a real life game. I build packages and a ditribution, then a project. I play with other players that are real people, with real needs. I face real problems and solve them with the other project members help.
It's a virtual entreprise that is not virtual. May be. Virtual because my income do not rely on it - I do all this for the fun, not for the money. Hey it even cost me money (but less than the games :-). Real because sales are realworld sales - sales for free, but with real accounts, goals and people if not me that live from them.
So, YES, openSUSE is FUN, much FUN!
Have fun, boys and girls!
Ok, so you say for you this theme works...
Look, we have to decide what the conference should FEEL like. Last year we wanted lots of BOF's and a DO IT culture, so the artwork and posters said that, the talks were focussed on that etcetera. Now, what theme do we want? Fun is a possibility, that's what I'm saying - but there are other things possible.
I like the way JDD phrased that. In fact, I see his words as a perfect script for a video montage promoting the event.
So, beyond just "Fun", we do invest in these conferences for a reason. Not just to party, but to have an outcome, hopefully something specific. The first year didn't really have a theme, iirc, but second year we said "Collaboration across borders" and third year, we said "RWX" and Just Do It.
So, on a more indepth level, we have to ask who is our target audience and who do we feel will create the $outcome we desire? And what is it we want to "get done" at this conference?
I'm almost tempted to come up with the slogan "Getting things done!" and try to blend the past years into a both more collaborative and more discussion type event. Cut down even further on the number of read-ony presentations and give higher priority to longer BoFs.
A quick 45-minute BoF doesn't really achieve much in the way of "getting things done" if we're moving on to the next BoF and then the one after that. Making our BoFs more hack-ish would help. I had a hard time recalling all the facts and discussions to sum up after conference was over, and the particular nature of our BoFs really were "talk now, do it after conference" style.
So a session, let's say 1 1/2 hours long, where first half is spent on discussing things, and then second half focused on doing it. I guess instead of calling it BoF, we'd call it HoF (Hackers of a Feather). :-)
Well, that might work for few areas, but generally if I'll speak from developers point of view, you can't get a lot of done in 45 minutes. Day or two makes sense for small pet projects, but something bigger...
Regardless of that what I like about conferences is meeting people, discussing ideas, sharing ideas and encouraging each other to do more. And having a lot of fun, of course ;-) So mainly during conferences I hardly get something done, but I get pretty long todo for after the conference and a lot of enthusiasm to do something!
I think this, as we'd say in the Netherlands, hits the nail on the head. I actually think our goal for this conference could be to not get work done but supercharge people. Creativity, new things, new ideas - and let's be honest, we're all big geeks and get excited over that: that is our FUN. Moreover, we've had our share of bad discussions lately. Unfriendly and rude behavior, endless fights and most damaging: people are assuming the worst from others. That really makes me feel down, personally, and I know others feel similarly. That was actually the thought behind the 'fun' - let's try and bring the fun back. Focus on interesting, creative, new ideas. Prefer a talk about something fresh and crazy over a talk about an established technology. Prefer a workshop where you can learn new things like packaging in OBS over a talk about the state of OBS, get my drift? So, that would bring together the 'get things done' that Bryen mentions - focus on workshop and BoF style again; with the supercharging, creativity that Michal talks about. This can fit just fine under the theme of fun - we just have to make sure we 'frame' it properly, you know? It's about cross-pollination, hanging together talking about the awesome things we do and getting new ideas; learning new things and doing cool stuff. Fun. So the goal for the CfP committee would be to use those small rooms as much as possible - get small teams together thinking about crazy new ideas. Let people walk away from the conference with a feeling that they had a lot of fun doing interesting things, meeting interesting people and sharing interesting ideas. When it comes to sponsors - it's all about how you communicate things and I've been called 'the master of spin' for a reason so don't worry about that :D I have a sense that this would work for you all - but if anybody objects, it's not MY conference so please say so :D We're well past the deadline I came up with, but for the sake of "we should get the Prague team involved", let's keep talking and we'll make the final decision on the Friday afternoon Conference meeting in Prague. Imho a theme has to be carried as much by the local team as by the CfP committee and as the latter has not been selected the local team now has to decide :D
So for me conference is something like supercharge my todo list. I see conference as a place where things starts. So I would say go for something like 'Ready, set, go!' for theme...
But regarding the venue, we are going to have not so many big rooms for talks, but we will have plenty of small rooms to get together and get ready for doing something.