-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 06/08/2015 08:58 AM, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 03.06.2015 18:33, Robert Schweikert wrote:
<snip>
- While in the end we had a good turn out at oSC15, it took a herculean effort to get there and I would say we did not meet the goal of having "..a significant number of contributors gather..".
True, the more significant question is why is that so?
I think at least part of the answer is in the responses in the thread "letter to people not accepted to be a member" that jdd started - - Travel is expensive - - Other priorities, family, other hobbies,.... - - One may have to take vacation ..... Nothing really out of the ordinary I would say. I would also go as far as saying that we all face the same questions/choices every time oSC comes around. For those that do attend the choices are different and probably the starting position is different. There is certainly no universal answer. Everyone is going to have a different level of expenses they will be willing to tolerate for example . Obviously we also have certain things in common. Interest for the openSUSE project. Given that the published videos get a good number of viewing I'd also say that the content is interesting to people. Therefore, I would say that if we want to have more contributors from around the world join we probably have to do better on the money front with TSP potentially covering more of the travel expenses. If that is an option I do not know.
- The most recent oSCs required an unbelievable effort by a very small group of people. Each year we got lucky and found someone who was willing to take on the organization. But effectively we are in "burn mode", i.e. once someone organized the event they are completely and utterly burned out.
Which is to be expected when you organize the 'life' of ~250 people over the course of 4 days. This is a shitload of work, no matter how good you are at it. This is a full-time job and at the end you're going to be glad that it's over.
I think the question we should ask ourselves is how can we make this a little less grueling than it is now.
I agree. The answer is probably more structure, i.e. e recipe that someone can follow. It will still be hard. Also having people that will do the promotion as part of their contributions to the openSUSE project. As it stands today we have almost no marketing and promotion of the project and thus for oSC those that organize the event also have to do that part rather than providing an existing promotion team with information.
- From my perspective we are failing at "fulfilling the charter of oSC".
Again, the most significant question is why are we?
- Should the effort be made to continue oSC past oSC16?
I think the last couple of oSCs have shown that we desperately need to rethink the approach. What are the benefits of changing location and organizer teams, what are the drawbacks?
Yup, hopefully this discussion will bring about answers or a potential direction for this.
- Should we strive to change the charter/nature of oSC and brand it more as a "FOSS conference organized by the openSUSE project"
I fail to understand what this would change for us as a community? Can you elaborate?
If I take oSC 15 as an example, for a long time the event was primarily promoted within the openSUSE community. Only after it was obvious that we are not going to have a sufficient number of existing community members be present, did the marketing of the event take on the approach of reaching out to other parts of the FOSS community. With a changed charter this "reach out to others" would be there from the get go. oSC by the openSUSE Community for the openSUSE community vs. oSC by the openSUSE Community for the FOSS community
- What would it take to raise oSC attendance closer to the top of your list, given the other reasons listed above plus your own are still present?
Like with every other event in life: oSC needs to be meaningful to the people, they need to take away something. For a tech conference this is for most people (a) personal connections, (b) knowledge and (c) entertainment.
- What prevents people from contributing to the organization of oSC?
I think that throwing inexperienced openSUSE/oSC organizers at it every year, giving them next to no directions and no structural support is the cause. This make organizing oSC a very daunting task with lots of loose ends. Usually that means that collaboration goes overboard first because collaboration takes a huge extra effort to set up.
Agreed a better structure would definitely help. How can we build this structure? For me part of that structure would also be per-existing teams, like a marketing/promotion team that promotes openSUSE anyway and promoting oSC is just part of what they do. Another part of the structure would be the handling of printing banners and the design of web and printed promotion material. With web page creation, registration handling, talk submission etc. we have made great strides and are will on the way to have everything in place. The two key points probably narrow down to this: - - From an organizers point of view we have to have more structure and better support from the project - - From an attendees point of view we probably need to look at TSP changes for oSC Later, Robert - -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVddZoAAoJEE4FgL32d2Ukd/cH/3rAHzi1xhJMVB0pig/1o/wl Sm/NYf9q3tGwAsQSirUVZp5WwTZd82MVoswiQaJUt0qNoFtHdsflhrE/blMpLPbu lPkIHjHNuurUDcKfHOnOuLdA+pnEigSpdl9+ZVn+BsM3EK02S5G0ZU7foRjtfAvB BDFxXXwzDJNJTBr+ObJO6MaJXgDL8LbJgmuFNFGqqtpiqXALH1n0nqhI60sqPku+ QFDvXvINuwZSZpyYGefbB1ypeDe4Qn6/xvnERhA7DhaCsO9PQxITESHtAHIe/NMh emqshrWarWtQ2Wb78Ol61tyDLT8ccRoSTfJOKu6EMwavEapWAZHeM6GVeeXg1vQ= =qEIv -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org