[Aust-NZ] Conversation restart conference, unconference, workshop or code sprint

[Jody Garnett]

Any takers? 

It sounds like the members of this list are familiar with the trails and tribulations of organising a conference. To organise a local conference we would need to sort out a venue; arrange speakers and so on. It is often smart to do one of these in association with another event. Is there anything on the calendar that would be a good fit?

Organising an unconference is a little bit easier; if only in that there is no program to plan out a head of time. Simply set aside rooms run those in attendance through the process of picking subject(s) and grabbing a place to talk. These can go well (or badly) depending on the enthusiasm of those present.

Running a workshop or training session gets a bit difficult as it is a hard topic to staff using volunteers. FOSS4G gets buy by heavily subsidising the materials (to the tune of one conference ticket). Nevertheless such a function has been requested (both at the Brisbane and Canberra meet ups).  

There was a great "workshop" track at FOSS4G this year entirely devoted to what open source is, how to make use of it, and so on - aimed at providing some comfort for attendees prior to the full conference. Perhaps organising one of these would be worthwhile?

A code sprint is perhaps the oddest one to organise; as it involves out reach to interested projects or teams; but often has the largest benefit to the source code and sense of community. However this does not always need to be the core programming projects. It may be worth while to run a sprint to work on promotional materials for Australian government and industry? Or perhaps focus on educational materials etc... 

-- 
Jody Garnett

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