Hi! Today we had the preparation meeting for the DebConf10 selection process. This are the minutes from the meeting.
The first thing that was discussed was the acceptance of the late Quito bid, it was agreed that if the bid reached the same quality than the other bids, it should be accepted. But no other bids from today on. This should not be taken as a precedent to accept late bids in the future. Then, each team made a short introduction of themselves, with a short Q&A session. Venezuela was not present and thus the introduction and Q&A was missing for them. Here are the summaries for each location. Quito: * URL: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/Quito * Quito is capital of Ecuador -- 2.5 million people live there. Quito's main advantage ATM is the country being cheap and USD being local currency. Also, Ecuador doesn't require visas for most countries, more info in the wiki. * Already looked at the venue, which is Centro de Convenciones Eugenio Espejo, major conventions center for the city. Planning to host 100 people on DebCamp and 400 people on DebConf * Also made a very preliminary budget draft. Taking into account what DC6 and DC7 had to said in their final reports. Even with inflation, and oversizing costs, around 150,000 USD for the whole event. * Budget URL: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/Quito/BudgetDraft * Regarding connectivity, the Eugenio Espejo Convention Center provides broadband (DSL), but quotations from several providers were requested. Some of them had availability, some not, but there's a good offer of 700 USD/month plus installations for 2 Mbps Fiber, the idea is to order 4 or 5 of that. And there's local company willing to commit to pay 3000 USD for that. * Regarding distances: for the 20 USD/person/night lodging area (which is La Mariscal) is about 10 mins. by bus. Currently looking to reduce costs on lodging, nearby the convention center, which would then be on walking distance. New York: * URL: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/NewYork * NYC has a few general advantages not specific to our venue: travel costs are quite cheap and flights are quite direct from most of the world, which will allow more people to afford their flights or get sponsored; there's very useful 24/7 public transportation and food stores, etc; lots of diets can be satisfied in terms of food, certainly vegetarian and vegan; there are a huge number of daytrip options - beaches, parks, urban architecture, museums, etc; lots of cheap stores to get electronics; everyone speaks English, and in many areas (including the one our venue is in), many people also speak Spanish; and the city is very friendly to foreigners and people of all appearances. * One -possible- main venue in manhattan is Hostelling International (for everything including lodging and talk rooms), assuming that venue, the location checklist has been filled in at: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/NewYork/HI * This venue was chosen mainly for the enviroment it would provide. It is completley self-contained -- can have all of our facilities under one roof, with management who knows our needs and can work with us, they have 600 beds total, two large rooms and two small rooms, and much common space for our use. They are open to our bringing in networknig gear and outside internet connections * Regarding conectivity: they have a significant amount of connectivity already and we can add more * But there are still mutiple options regarding venue rooms, lodging, etc. * Regarding visas, the plan is to work with DebConf's many US-based corporate sponsors to get their lawyers to help with the bureaucracy, send letters of invitation and the likes. Boston: * URL: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/Boston * Travel costs/arrangements are very similar to NYC * Regarding connectivity: there is a huge advantage, since it's effectively unlimited * Costs for venue & housing are practically worked out, but there hasn't been much work on food costs. Any outside caterer can be brought in, as long as they're insured, or people could be on their own with the plethora of outside food options * The location is in the middle of a lot of academia and MIT * The currently proposed venue is less than a 5 minute walk to the proposed accomodation (both of which are WiFi-eqipped) After that, we agreed that there should be only 1 more meeting, following the agenda already used for DC8 and DC7 decission processes, currently at: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/Meetings Since this is going to be a loooong meeting, we ask people to allocate 2 or 3 hours for it. Also, to be well prepared (i.e. for the teams: have the answers to the agenda points already pre-written, for the other people, to have read all the information on the URLs provided). Chairing will be done by both Ganneff and me. The date should be by mid/end February. The doodle page for choose the date is: http://doodle.com/bk7w5fecg29cthha People Present: 1. moray 2. Ganneff 3. Hydroxide_NYC 4. Clint 5. bureado_UIO 6. also 7. MrBeige_NYC 8. Roliverio_UIO 9. bgupta 10. apostols_Margarita 11. ailefi 12. santiago-ve 13. h01ger 14. ari_boston 15. xxv_boston 16. zer0mdq 17. rvntone 18. marga 19. Sledge 20. Maulkin 21. mako Notes from the bot: http://meetbot.debian.net/meetbot/debconf-team.20090125_2100.html Log from the bot: http://meetbot.debian.net/meetbot/debconf-team.log.20090125_2100.html -- Besos, Marga _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list [email protected] http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
