[opensuse-project] Re: [opensuse-marketing] openSUSE conference 2010 approaching - openSUSE Project

17 Apr 2010

On Sat, 2010-04-17 at 00:20 +0300, Strainu wrote:
...
  On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 5:33 PM, Michael Loeffler
&lt;michl(a)novell.com&gt; wrote:
  For the venue we're aiming for the same venue
we had last year -
 Berufsförderungswerk Nürnberg [2] - which is perfect from a conference
 perspective and has 75 hotel rooms on-site with a reasonable price. Downside
 was internet connectivity (2Mbit) but they meanwhile can offer 4Mbit and work
 on getting 10Mbit till mid of this year. So, with some luck this downside
 should be solved till the conference takes place.  
 As a participant at last year's conference I have several issues to
 report regarding Berufsförderungswerk:
  - it was excessively far for people coming from downtown - over 1
 hour 15 in commuting. The main problem was the bus, which was only
 coming each half hour, and if I remember correctly had a different
 ticket price. I think a location that one can reach by tram would be
 more appropriate for that city. 
Out of curiosity, are you resident of Nuremberg or did you choose to
stay in hotel in downtown area?  If staying at hotel, why didn't you
stay at the conference center hotel?  IIRC we had some spare rooms left.

I did not use public transit when I was in Nuremberg, so I have no idea
what the system is like, and can't comment.  But do understand that one
of the reasons we used this location was because of the price.  The
rooms were very cheap compared to inner city.  

The conference itself was free to everyone and many rooms were
sponsored.  I think the tradeoff for staying outside of the main city
was well worth it, and I didn't really mind it that much.  

...
   - in 2010 lack of Internet sucks (especially for
geeks). There are no
 good points here; we're not monks ore slaves that should concentrate
 only on the matter at hand, we're mature people that can focus during
 the presentations and do whatever they like in the rest of the time 
Agreed.  Definitely showed poor preparation by the conference center.
We taught them a lesson big time last year.  :-)  It was more
frustrating for me because I am from US so my cell phone service did not
even work in EU and therefore, I could not even check messages on my
phone.

But as Michl said, they are working to upgrade their service by this
summer and hopefully that issue will be mostly resolved in time for our
arrival.

...
   - the place outside the conference rooms was pretty
small. The
 solution was to talk outside the building, but the later the
 conference is in the year, the more chances there are of rain. The
 organizers should take this into account too. 
I'm not sure I agree completely.  I think we did alright.  We had the
main hallway, the cafeteria area, the lounge area.  And most people went
outside mainly to smoke or get some sun.  The space I think is adequate
for the ~200 attendees.

But you raise a valid point about potential rain.  Still, considering
the pricing of this location, its a fair tradeoff, and even renting a
big awning for the week to put outside the front area would still be far
cheaper than going elsewhere.

The location of Nuremberg is good also, because many of the developers
are based in Nuremberg, and thus we don't have to worry about their
travel costs.  This allowed us to further put more of the budget into
the conference itself.

The purpose of the conference isn't to live like kings for a week
(though wouldn't it be nice?) but to get all of our valued contributors
together once a year affordably.  

Instead of focusing our energy on finding different (and potentially
more expensive) locations, let's start to focus on how we can make the
content of the conference itself even more useful than before.

Thanks!
Bryen M Yunashko
openSUSE Board Member
openSUSE Marketing Team Lead
GNOME-A11y Team Outreach

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