[Foss4g2009] Workshops and tutorials

[Mark Leslie]

With the call for workshops and tutorials going out yesterday 
(presumably) we need to sort out how we should go about ranking and 
selecting them.  I seem to remember putting together a suggestion but 
for the life of me I have no idea where I put it.

My suggestion is that we basically have some simple guidelines and let 
the organising committee run with them.  I feel it's more important to 
exert our will over the workshops since we have fewer of them than 
previous years and we need to ensure we have a high ratio of beginner 
workshops, our presenters are as experienced as possible, etc.

Tutorials I expect will be a different balance.  24 slots gives us more 
flexibility, and I would like to see the developers and advanced users 
catered to as much as beginners.  I  also feel that we should be able to 
define four clear tracks once we can see what submissions we have to 
work with.

The criteria that I've been discussing to date are (in no particular order):

* Presenter experience with the material and FOSS4Gs (more important for 
workshops)
* Beginner oriented (only for workshops)
* Fit with the "User Driven" theme
* Fit with other tutorials and available tracks (only for tutorials)
* Hands-on content (mandatory for workshops, preferred for tutorials)
* Balance of user level within the program (only for tutorials)
* Quality of the content of the response
* Quality of the written description (if they can't write a decent 
description how will they write a decent tutorial?)

Volker was working on an app to allow us to vote on these, which would 
make life easier, but I think we need to be aware that simply taking the 
top N in the ranking won't necessarily provide us with the balance of 
content we need.  I haven't heard if he has finished or not.

Any thoughts on our process?

-- 
Mark Leslie
Geospatial Software Architect
LISAsoft

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