Hey everybody, There were many great days for DebConf11, but we should definitely remember this one.
As you may know I had a meeting with President and Minister of Science and Technology today. Meeting was a big one, I was there with lady that's in charge of NGO "DIVA", we were meeting with President and Minister of Science and Technology of Republika Srpska, along with the Mayor of Banja Luka along with other government officials, and there was some press as well. Many issues were discussed but the main point of this meeting was to see what are we going to get from the government in terms of sponsorship. First we were planning to get money from Government, then we planned to get stuff in compensation, we were basically aiming for free Venue and Hotel Bosna. To sum it up, this is what happened and what we got: President alone gave us 50.000€! From Government we got 100.000€ and from the City of Banja Luka we got a free Venue (Banski Dvori), we even got Student Dormitories as bonus and backup option for accomodation, however I'm planning that we stick with the original plans and go with hotels as planned. Oh yea, FYI what I just said wasn't a Disney movie :) I think that line itself sums how the meeting went, I've also told President what our plans are for future, and that we are working on, getting more sponsorship, he even offered his help in getting the local sponsorships. I've told him that we are planning to start our work on Penta and have the registrations open within the next month. And then we'll start acquiring information about all attendees and their preferences, and where they'll be getting from to Banja Luka and in what times. Mostly beneficial regarding organized transportation from airports to the Venue. We also discussed other matters such as visas, I explained how the situation was with some of the attendees. Solution to this problem will be that, we'll start a list people that will need visas, those people will be granted approval to enter Bosnia on the border, all that those attendees need to let us know is where/what country will they be entering Bosnia from in case of transit. I suggest we start working on making this list ASAP. After the meeting we also went to the President of our Venue, and we told him our requests, we got what we asked for 14 days. There's much more to say on what happened, but I think I said the most crucial things, please attend next IRC meeting on 8th of March if you want to find out more. *Note* for BiH local team, for members that are new, don't just appear on the IRC meeting or mailing lists just like that, introduce yourself on our local list firsts before starting discussions or before jumping into fire. Here's even an image for all of you :) http://twitpic.com/43c759 From left to right, NGO DIVA president, Minister of Science and Technology, President, me :) Comments? P.S: You owe me beer for this one :) Adnan _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list [email protected] http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
