Alternately, if anyone out there works for a company that would be willing to "sponsor" a conference by letting us use their wi-fi enabled conference room, that would work as well, I think. Our "ideal" conference usually starts on a friday and runs through the weekend.

Bill

On Jun 27, 2007, at 7:18 AM, Martin Bähr wrote:

you don't need to be in touch with any organization. you could just ask where other groups (like your local linux user group) meet. many cities have community centers that can be used, or ask at the university.

and, we don't need a place for free. renting a place would be ok too. the conference fee has been extremly low until now so it sure would not be a problem to raise it a bit to pay for a location.

we also have funds available to make a prepayment. so there should be no financial risk.

really all that is needed is for someone to be at the location to help ensure that everything goes all right and handle the communication with the location provider.

in latvia, while we didn't pay for the location itself, we did pay for catering, and the location was only part of that deal.

so don't worry about not having contacts. just open the phonebook and call a few places to see where we can get a room.

Just my 2 cents:

I'm not necessarily convinced that more time equates to more getting done. My observation was that if you had a 7 day conference, folks would show up for a few days and that you'd end up having "quorum" for only a brief period. The reality is that having 5 days versus 3 days isn't going to mean the difference between a release or not.

while I agree that the focus of our meetings has tended not to cater to end users, i think that's more a result of the audience.

one could also make the argument that we might not be drawing a larger crowd for any of the following reasons (not necessarily inclusive):

- lack of advance notice on dates and locations - length of time: most folks have jobs that prevent them from taking a whole week just for something like this - perception of a too-highly technical crowd

My preference would be for more "meetings" of shorter duration. That way, there are more likely to be "hits" for people's schedules. I understand that getting a large proportion of the core development team is a goal, but that's more a matter of coordination than anything.

It's less the case for people like me, but folks in europe are blessed with inexpensive air travel that makes things like twice yearly, in-person meetings of a day or two possible for a large number of our audience.

Also, I'm not opposed to making the trip to Sweden. I've never been, and I hear it's lovely :)

Bill

the last two conferences were more like 5 days. and i'd like to spend more time actually working on code and a 7.8 release. like an extended international version of that last meeting over kladdkaka.

that's not for everyone of course, but it's not like we are drawing a crowd, so we might as well do things to move pike forward instead of trying to attract a lot of pike users. (not that i am against attracting pike users, only suggesting that the conference might not necesarily be the venue for it)

Well, I don't really disagree. I think it's really a chicken and egg problem... it's usually good to have some third party presenters on the schedule, but it's hard to get them without having a schedule. I also believe that having a shorter program lends itself to a schedule earlier in advance, as you're not trying to fill up the additional days.

At this point, I think I could probably put together a 2.5 day program without a lot of trouble, assuming that one or more core developers showed up.

Really, my opinion is that the venue and dates need to be set 6 months in advance with a tentative schedule firmed up by 2 months in order to expect any kind of participation.

We're pretty much past those dates for 2007, but I still wouldn't mind a smaller scale event in the early autumn anyway... call it a "birds of a feather" session, if you will :)

Anyone have any opinions about that?

Bill

On Jun 27, 2007, at 4:45 PM, Martin Nilsson (Opera Mini - AFK!) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

I think this one is really important reason for people not coming:

• No or poor advance agenda/schedule.