[Aust-NZ] FOSS4G-SOTM-Oceania: conference length and dates

[Daniel Silk]

I see a number of benefits in a two day conference.

Some attendees will not be interested in attending the pre-conf workshops or post-conf code sprint so two days of conference material makes travel costs more viable. It also creates a logical conference dinner slot between the two conference days, and a logical slot for an icebreaker type get together on the evening of the workshops. The recent QGIS event in Sydney was great but I really would have appreciated more time to network - with a one day conference, a lot of people will be catching flights immediately before and after which closes the door on these opportunities.

FOSS4G covers a broad range of software and topics, and we have SotM also. Covering all of this in one day would seem like a huge squeeze to me.
We could start by finding out how many potential talks we have just from those that have been involved in the early discussions..? Could we even fit that into a day?

Cheers
Daniel

________________________________________
From: Aust-NZ [aust-nz-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] on behalf of Alex Leith [alexgleith at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2017 6:56 PM
To: Rob Atkinson
Cc: aust-nz at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Aust-NZ] FOSS4G-SOTM-Oceania: conference length and dates

Hi All

I'm with Cameron, and I think we would be better to aim modestly and easily achieve it rather than go for too much and find it hard!

If we go for a one day conference this year, and it works well and we know the demand is there and how big it is, then we can do it bigger next year.

That's my view.

Cheers,

Alex

On Wed, 13 Dec 2017 at 09:12 Rob Atkinson <robatkinson101 at gmail.com<mailto:robatkinson101 at gmail.com>> wrote:

These things are always balancing acts - maybe its worth polling around what people want to get out of things.

As a user or service provider or developer - i want to see trends - who is using what and where the action is.
As a developer i want to highlight what and why and hopefully find users and stop other re-inventing a wheel and becoming contributors
As a user I want to know how people are using tools and who might be available to provide support for particular aspects
As a service provider i want warts-and-all experiences of deployment with real lessons being shared

Having to choose between 10 long workshops run once, or  5 short workshops run for 20% of the time and repeated - the latter - people can always organise in depth training sessions, but FOSS4G should be about visibility into the broader community. Employers might want to send to a detailed course in a specific tech - so longer workshops before and after - bit not organised by committee (but maybe with bundled entry to FOSS4G )?

2c...

Rob



On Wed, 13 Dec 2017 at 08:40 Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com<mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com>> wrote:

My thoughts on the first regional FOSS4G conference (in a long while) is that the primary goal is to make sure it is successful. With FOSS4G 2009 we over-estimated the number of attendees by close to a factor of 2. There were multiple reasons for this [1], but a key lesson was to make sure the conference goals are achievable and sustainable.

As such, I'd err on selecting shorter, lower cost, lower barrier to entry (which results in being more selective of presentations and providing less higher quality presentations rather than more). I'd prefer to be sold out rather than having a conference full of empty seats.

Lets see how many people we can attract into the conference in the first year before over-committing. We can build up numbers in following years.

Cheers, Cameron

[1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2009_Lessons_Learned


On 13/12/17 8:24 am, John Bryant wrote:
Hi all,

At our upcoming committee meeting, we'll hopefully come to some kind of decision on:

  *   conference length (for the 'conference' component, exclusive of pre-conf workshops and post-conf code sprint/hackathon/mapathon)
  *   conference dates

Discussion around length, so far, has focused on 2 options, either one day or two (for a total event length of either 3 or 4 days).

My personal preference would be to see two days for the conference proper, as I think with both FOSS4G and SOTM components, and a broad region (Oceania), there is the potential for a lot of content... I think one day wouldn't be enough time to cover it without spreading across too many competing streams/sessions.

One argument for one day is that it would be less of an organisational burden, which is a fair point.

Surely there are other arguments for one or the other option, or perhaps even additional options that haven't come up... it would be great to have some input on this mailing list before we meet next week to make a decision.

Thoughts?



_______________________________________________
Aust-NZ mailing list
Aust-NZ at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:Aust-NZ at lists.osgeo.org>
https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/aust-nz


--
Cameron Shorter
Technology Demystifier, Learnosity
Open Technologies Consultant

M +61 (0) 419 142 254<tel:0419%20142%20254>

_______________________________________________
Aust-NZ mailing list
Aust-NZ at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:Aust-NZ at lists.osgeo.org>
https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/aust-nz
_______________________________________________
Aust-NZ mailing list
Aust-NZ at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:Aust-NZ at lists.osgeo.org>
https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/aust-nz
--

Alex Leith
0419 189 050

________________________________

This message contains information, which may be in confidence and may be subject to legal privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not peruse, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message. If you have received this message in error, please notify us immediately (Phone 0800 665 463 or info at linz.govt.nz) and destroy the original message. LINZ accepts no responsibility for changes to this email, or for any attachments, after its transmission from LINZ. Thank You.