On Sat, 2003-12-13 at 11:00, chris_thing-e wrote:
Perhaps now is a good time to go back to basics and reaffirm the objectives of this conference, the outcomes desired, the audience required, the agenda and the methods for achieving the desired results (why should people want to go to this conference?).....venue, lunch is important for the comfort of the audience and to establish the credibility of the conference and it's organisers,(unfortunately it is also a differentiator too high up some audiences list too - do you really want thos people? - but there is a minimum accepted level too) and of course time and date re availability of audience, but only after the basics are agreed....( the IOE is a good choice, albeit not easily reachable on a national basis) - (school halls are serious on a DOE or scout meeting level!)-( if the choice of organic is critical then the battle is lost!)
The main function of holding such a conference is to establish a regular annual conference for FLOSS in education. It leads on from the one organised in April. It provides opportunities for those working in education who have been using FLOSS extensively for some time now to communicate there experiences with others and for those who want to find out more, the opportunity to do so. There will be opportunities for hands on for those who haven't experienced things like KDE/Gnome desktops etc. There will also be attendance by people with political influence who can be shown why FLOSSIE makes political and economic sense.
Apart from all else time is running out for organising to the currently chosen date.
I think there is enough time, I was just a bit concerned about attendance but I'm a lot less so now. Mind we don't want to become complacent.
Please get your act together and stop this spurious chat.......for good or bad I will stop recomending that policy makers use this email list as a measure of the grass roots interest in OSS while this chatter continues...I hope we all have more serious things to do.
I can't see the problem here. This "chat" has probably increased the number of people confirming that they are coming 10 fold and given me many other recruitment leads. Let's not be too mechanistic about this. People like to chat and word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool there is.
If I'm off track please let me know and I will disengage from this list....
Why do people have to disengage because they have a different view or think other people's comments are irrelevant? The whole point of discussion and debate is to get different views! Let's be tolerant, FLOSS is a broad church! I think people also need to understand that this is a voluntary effort that has to be fitted in with work and we have decided and are committed to the date and venue. If that turns out to be a duff decision we'll have to take that into account next year. There was a rationale behind the decision based on a lot of experience of this type of thing. If I have it wrong, its my money at stake! If we do do better than break even, excess money goes to AFFS and Schoolforge to further the FLOSS cause in education, if we make a loss, I take the hit. -- ian <ian.lynch2@ntlworld.com>