I got the following tip from a conference organiser who was renown for his success at orgsanising conferences and his uncanny ability to get 'bums on seats' year after: I happened to get talking to him during one of his conferences where I'd just given a presentation, and took the opportunity to ask him about this; "So what's your secret?", I enquired "...marketing effort? ...quality of your speakers presentations? ...or what?!" "Well, all the things you have mentioned so far do help, of course" he replied with a grin, "but none of these things are exactly a trade secret, are they. No in my humble opinion there's only one thing that guarantees a conference will be successfully repeated year after year" "...and what's that?" I persisted. "Give 'em a good lunch!", he replied with an even bigger grin. "Is that all there is to it?", I enquired. "Look it this way.", he replied "Most conference organisers make the big mistake of cutting corners when it comes to food and drink. So delegates get the standard 'rubber chicken' to eat and 'paint-stripper' wine to drink. "Now when they get back to their place of work what do they talk about. The quality of the speakers? No way. They moan about the poor quality of their lunch. So what happens next year? No one bothers to come. "But what if you gave them something really special to eat and a choice of good quality wines? Well they rave about to this to their colleagues, who fall over themselves in the rush to sign up for next year's repeat event!" Well, maybe a school-based venue might not be such a bad idea. Some do actually have pretty smart looking conference facilities. Then what you save on the venue hire you can afford to spend on outside speciality gourmet caterers instead. OK, so maybe the first year of a conference might run at as marginal loss. But thereafter success is guaranteed! I hope this gives 'food for thought' (with no excuses for the intended pun)! David Bowles TeacherLab / Education-Support

Not quite the ethos if you want to be taken seriously.... ...your original format is fine...tho think it needs more targeting and follow up if you want to get the numbers.....seen the list of people, but what would be the programme for the day and what do u expect audience to get from it.

Unfortunately trying to get a teacher audience to any event is notoriously difficult.....

-----Original Message----- From: Josef Davies-Coates [mailto:josef@uniteddiversity.com] Sent: 11 December 2003 01:41 To: ian Cc: yplows@aol.com; suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Flossie again

Ian,

I'm not sure how set in stone the plans for FLOSSIE are but...

1) Mid-week is not good. Better to hold it on a Saturday than a Wednesday. That way far more people would be able to attend.

2) School halls are normally empty on Saturdays and could probably be used for free (or cheap) instead of hiring out an expensive London hall. Surely that ties in nicely too - maybe we can convince the host school to change over to OS, or perhaps one that already has done could host the confernece? (don't know if there are any in London? with enough space?)

3) I don't drink coffee, and doubt the food will be organic, so would bring a packed lunch.

4) Why offer freebies (lunch, coffee) at all? (The no-frills EasyJet model works).

5) I would get someone like http://www.organic-express.com/home.htm to do the food, and if your going to supply tea and coffee, make sure that it is fair trade and organic (I can get it cheap if interested - got an account with a wholesaler)

I think £10 would then easily cover entrance (and maybe tea/coffee, but not lunch). Give people choice and think beyond Open Source. Linking up the event with other ethical consumption choices (i.e. having organic food and drink) would also add a air of respectability and show that your not just a bunch of geeks, but people with high morals, both willing and able to act on them.

Thoughts, comments?

Peace,

Josef.

ian wrote:

...

On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 23:17, Josef Davies-Coates wrote:

...

Hello Ian et al,

I would come if it was a lot cheaper (personally I can't strech much further thatn £10). I would also be able to convince lots of other people to come along too if it was a lot cheaper. My mum is a teacher

...

...

and I have quite a lot of education links.

I'll look into ways of reducing the cost. The difficulty is that the lunch and coffees come to £10 a head and there is the cost of hiring the hall. We could look at sponsorship though.

...

Best,

Josef.

ian wrote:

...

Sorry to bring this up again, but recruitment is not going particularly well. I don't want to have to cancel and it might just be that people intending to come are just waiting to book nearer the time. If you are in this category, please E-mail me and let me know so I have some idea of the possible attendance. If you are not going to attend for a specific reason eg delegate fee, date or whatever, that would be useful information too. Also if you can spread the word

...

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...

around through as many of your contacts, mailing lists etc as possible. If we can't get enough interest to run an annual conference

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...

its not going to make much impression on the powers that be that there is a growing interest in FLOSS in schools!

Regards,

-- Josef Davies-Coates Founder, uniteddiversity LLP

Tel: 0845 456 9774 Mob: 07764 75 99 70

mailto:josef@uniteddiversity.com http://josef.uniteddiversity.com

--- John Dean wrote: >

For me London is totally out of the question. It is not a matter of distance or money it is a matter of principle, being a Northerner. As far as organic muck is concerned you can shove that stuff where a monkey shoves his nuts

Thanks for your contribution. Tell us, would you consider going near London if there were assurances that lunch would certainly not be organic? Or alternatively, if it were to be held in the North in future, would you still attend if the food were to be man-made pesticide free? Ian, In the mean time, I'll try to put this conference about with some management in Herts. And thanks for your effort in trying to co-ordinate such a positive and hopefully practical conference. -- Matt ________________________________________________________________________ BT Yahoo! Broadband - Save £80 when you order online today. Hurry! Offer ends 21st December 2003. The way the internet was meant to be. http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=21064/*http://btyahoo.yahoo.co.uk

On Thu, 2003-12-11 at 09:55, John Dean wrote:

For me London is totally out of the question. It is not a matter of distance or money it is a matter of principle, being a Northerner. As far as organic muck is concerned you can shove that stuff where a monkey shoves his nuts

I'm a Geordie by birth and Midlander by adoption. Why London? Because it has the best rail connections, the biggest population to recruit from and most importantly the Government is in London and if you want to get influential people from the Government to attend.... The fundamental question is Do we want FLOSS to succeed? If so we need to do the things most likely to make it happen and not get side-tracked by individual politics as you indicate with your monkey comment ;-) Personally it would be nice to have it in Whitley Bay so I can stop with my ageing dad and save costs by having it in his living room. Given the number of people likely to attend that would probably be all we would need ;-) Come on, if money isn't a problem let's see you there and let's make some impact on the DfES. Regards, -- ian

On Fri, 2003-12-12 at 23:04, Colin McQueen wrote:

ian wrote:

...

Personally it would be nice to have it in Whitley Bay so I can stop with my ageing dad and save costs by having it in his living room.

Hey Ian, I was born and bred in Whitley Bay. Spent much of my mispent youth playing pinball down at the Spanish City. What d'yer know. I'd go for it cos I could visit my Mum and Dad as well. :)

I used to work on the ghost train when I was 15. (1970ish) Which primary school did you go to? Park School? I was at St Edwards - demolished now, used to be next to the bus station. Brought up Briar Dene and Whitley Lodge. Regards -- ian

On 2003-12-13 11:00:35 +0000 chris_thing-e wrote:

Perhaps now is a good time to go back to basics

I think it is probably far too late to put this conference back to the planning stage. If people have basic concerns, let's address them in the next one. I'm sure the organisers will do what they can for this one, but to replan completely at this stage? Ow. There was some consultation about this conference and I think the organisers have tried to respond to what they were told. I saw them do research and try to give you what is wanted. For example, people wanted a lower ticket price than OSIEC: you got that. People wanted a venue with better rail links: you got that. Different debate panel mix: you got that. I agree that we could do with more information published about this conference, about objectives, desired outcomes and audience. I hope that Ian and co will provide it as soon as possible. Agenda drafts are in the booking details already, I think. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/

Sorry for cross-posting again. I've added suggested aims, audience and objectives for the FLOSSIE conference to the SF-UK Wiki - just go to www/schoolforge.org.uk/pn/ and hit "Conference". Those are just my ha'pennorth, feel free to edit/annotate them. At some point I may - what's the word? - rationalise? - the page, so we can use it in brochures, etc. John Ingleby ************ Webmaster - Schoolforge-UK On Sat, 2003-12-13 at 11:00, chris_thing-e wrote: [-snip -]

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?)....

On Sat, 2003-12-13 at 16:29, chris_thing-e wrote:

Thanks again...useful.......think you meant www.schoolforge.org.uk/pn/....

Are all the bods listed as 'involved' actually attending?

They are all doing about half an hour each on their experiences in practical use of FLOSS. Mainly GNU/Linux desktop and servers with integration with legacy Windows. Prof David Hargreaves is the keynote Speaker and he has agreed to attend.

And who are the speakers and what are they presenting....do u have outlines or drafts of presentations yet?

The list of the speakers is the bods involved. This list is those involved in delivery actually on the day of the conference, not those organising it. The outlined topics with each speaker is what they will be talking about and hopefully generating discussion about. This is the basis of the programme that is on the flyer that is going out. One or two of the speakers might get changed. Maybe the fact that this is effectively the programme for the day needs to be more explicit but I had assumed that this was obvious. No detailed drafts yet. I didn't want to pressure people into spending a lot of time on this until the conference is sure to run. They are all volunteers so there is also a limit to how pressuring I can be.

Any ideas on what current sign up rate is and when go/no-go decision re delegates is?

I need to check with Yvonne, but its a lot better than it was and I think its still a long time before the event for some. We are past the point of no return in that if it doesn't go ahead I'll have to pay quite a bit to the LIE anyway. Its more a matter of making sure its as well attended at it can be now so I lose less money ;-).

-----Original Message----- From: John Ingleby [mailto:john@coronet.co.uk] Sent: 13 December 2003 13:46 To: chris_thing-e Cc: suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com; schoolforge-uk@lists.centralmanclc.com Subject: [suse-linux-uk-schools] FLOSSIE - Back to basics

Sorry for cross-posting again. I've added suggested aims, audience and objectives for the FLOSSIE conference to the SF-UK Wiki - just go to www/schoolforge.org.uk/pn/ and hit "Conference".

Those are just my ha'pennorth, feel free to edit/annotate them. At some point I may - what's the word? - rationalise? - the page, so we can use it in brochures, etc.

John Ingleby ************ Webmaster - Schoolforge-UK

On Sat, 2003-12-13 at 11:00, chris_thing-e wrote: [-snip -]

...

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?)....

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-- ian