On Mon, 2005-08-29 at 22:06 -0400, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: > Jean, no one is saying, least of all me, that an excellent benefit of > a hosting a booth at a conference is not community building. It > partly depends on the conference, of course. Having a booth at a > conference is fun, stressful, interesting, engaging; and the > camaraderie created there is quite valuable: I have been to *many* > conferences and manned many booths, and can speak to the connections > formed there.
As can many of us. Seems a bit of an irony that the main function of OOoconf is community building and seen as valuable in its own right yet holding a miniconf at DLS with a booth isn't. > But community building was not the focus. The focus > was representing OOo and what it can do and leveraging our presence > there as much as possible so that the project could benefit. Thus, > community building was a "side benefit" though "obviously important," > to quote myself :-) This seems to me too rigid a way of looking at things. What matters is the outcome. If the side benefit turned out to be a major benefit why worry if that was not the original priority? If the original plan was not wholly successful in meeting its objectives what can be done to learn from that and improve? The difference is one of approach, a negative controlling view that suppresses the energy of the volunteers or a positive view that taps into that energy and levers it. > Of course, for a conference like OOoCon, part of the point is > community building. And the community, the OOo community, is > implicated in it, even those who are not attending. So we have all, I guess promoted OOoCon in our relevant circles whether attending or not. That seems to be the main thing Erwin says needs doing. Probably the most effective thing to do would be to regularly post notices to the lists reminding people to keep the publicity going. So why does every marketing initiative have to cease in a global project because there is an important event taking place? > I do hope I clarified things. Hmmm.... > Cheers, > Louis -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMSL --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
