On Fri, 2010-04-16 at 16:33 +0200, Michael Loeffler wrote:
Moin,
first refresh your mind and/or get inspired of the openSUSE conference 2009 [1].
And then let's have some starting conversation about openSUSE conference 2010. Most important for the start is a place and a date. As place we think Nürnberg, Germany is a good fit as it is good to reach from where ever you're coming from and its a convenient place to attract as many SUSE/Novell developers as possible. 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.
- I think the cost of Berufsforderungswerk is very beneficial to planning the conference as it ensures we can help focus whatever conference funding we have on other needs. My only issue with Berufsforderungswerk is that the name is sooo long that I never learned how to pronounce it. :-) = Lack of solid internet access was both a positive and negative. It was positive in that it forced us to focus on the conference rather than spending time fooling around online all the time. But, negatives were that we were unable to access the internet to download or demonstrate stuff in the hallways to each other. Also, we were unable to tweet/blog/publicize the conference activities live. This is something that the marketing team should look at and come up with some kind of good "press corps" plan that takes any internet limitations into consideration.
From a timing perspective we currently have two options for the openSUSE conference: a) week of Sept 6-12 b) week of Oct 18 - 24
I strongly vote for the latter variant b) as in Southern Germany its not just still vacation season, it's still school vacation till Sept 13th or so which means pretty many people are on vacation in reality. Further, most of the preparation work would fall into the globally vacation season which might not be perfect.
Well, from US perspective, students are returning at beginning of September or end of August. I am unsure about the rest of the world. The question though is whether "student vacation" is a good thing or a bad thing? If students are not in class, are they more likely to attend because they are on vacation? You brought this up during last board meeting and I think we reached a general consensus that considering the vacation issues and other events happening in September, October looked much more attractive. So, I'm voting for October as well.
Last year we had a 4 days conference [3] from Thursday through Sunday which imo was the right duration. My question would be if it should shift days, eg. from Wednesday through Saturday ?
Yes, most definitely we should shift days. The length is perfect, but travel abroad is not that easy from Nuremberg. If we end on Sunday, then abroad travelers can't leave until Monday. Which means abroad workers can't return to work until Tuesday. I would vote for Wed-Sat for conference days, and then leave Sunday open as a general informal hackday for those that want to hang out and continue doing some uninterrupted work.
For the conference in general I propose to create a team which takes care of everything such as key notes, major topics, content in general, sponsoring, special events, PR, advertising etc..
Yes, the conference will be even more successful in appearance when it looks like it is organized by its own community. I endorse this proposal.
What about doing a openSUSE conference 2010 kick-off meeting next week on Thursday 22, 6pm CEST [4] on openSUSE-project IRC channel?
I think a kick-off meeting is good and the conference planning itself should include broad community discussion. But I think you should consider contacting a few people first whom you think would be good organizers and get them to discuss and frame/shape the ideas before presenting it to the general population. otherwise, we spend all of our time with "I wanna this, I wanna that... I wanna... I wanna.." and not enough time actually focusing on what it is we can and should do based on whatever resources we have available to us (i.e., funding, services, etc.) Most definitely, I would like to see folks from Marketing participate in the conference planning. So, any of you folks on this team who are interested (AND HAVE THE TIME BECAUSE THIS IS A BUSY PROJECT!) please step up. I'll be around as well, but more as a Board Member so I want to make sure Marketing folks have the opportunity to participate and get more experience.
Looking forward having an effective conference organization and to see you all at openSUSE conference 2010.
Best M
[1] http://gallery.opensuse.org/Conference%2009/ [2] http://www.bfw-nuernberg.de/admin.tool/_cms/de/Content/na/na/19,0.html [3] http://en.opensuse.org/Conference_2009 [4] http://tinyurl.com/y289c3c -- Michael Löffler, Product Management SUSE LINUX Products GmbH - Nürnberg - AG Nürnberg - HRB 16746 - GF: Markus Rex
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org