Thanks Seb, I agree. We wanted to organize ccceu14 again, but the effort on organizing another 3 day event was too big. Next to that for Amsterdam we have put in serious money together with Citrix.
So 3 day events work, but you need time and / or funds. A one day event is much easier. Single track. Smaller location etc etc. I am in favor of the hybrid approach though, but most likely the 1 day events will happen more. Maybe it is even an option to do the devops days approach. Every city can organize one as a sort of franchise model. Arjan > On 5 mrt. 2015, at 10:00, Sebastien Goasguen <[email protected]> wrote: > > Morning folks, > > This is a good point, however like Chip mentioned we would need sponsors. > > Organizing a 3 day event is a big task, you need to find a location that > suits people, you need to pay for that location, you need a program, you need > attendance, you need sponsors etc. > > For Amsterdam, Schuberg took the lead role. Citrix was the main financial > backer with Schuberg. I believe it basically took ~3 people full time from > Schuberg for several months to organize things the way it was, plus a lot of > time and energy from other folks to get sponsors, drive attendance etc. The > event cost ~200k euros and was in the black at the end (no secret there). > > For Denver and Budapest we aligned with the ASF and leveraged the Linux > Foundation to do the logistics and help get sponsors. It worked out but it is > still a lot of effort to get the program together, help LF reach out to > sponsors etc. As a side note, even though these were 3 day events, lots of > folks arrive on tutorial day, spend the keynote day and leave at night or in > the morning. That's why I pushed for a poster session at the end of Budapest, > because typically folks leave before and we end up with semi empty sessions > in the last afternoon. > > The bottom line is that it is a question of cost, attendance, who takes the > lead in planning and what does the event look like. We could organize three > day events much cheaply. Something that comes to mind is configuration > management camp in Ghent. It drives 400 people, is hosted at the university. > There is almost no sponsors/booth, no signage, no video recording, very > little lunch etc. But if we want something like Denver or Budapest, we are > looking at 6 figures plus the human investment. > > CloudStack is a brand owned by this community, so anyone here is free and > should feel entitled to organize its own CloudStack Day close to home. > Norway, India etc. It could be a 30 people event or it could grow into its > own 300/500 people event. The Japanese community for example organizes > CloudStack Japan on their own and drives 500 people. > > Now all these 1 day events are co-located (before, after or during) the > linuxcon events (cloud open, KVM forum, Xen summit, Kernel summit etc). So I > am sure you can justify going for 3 days, attend the other LF events and > attend the CloudStack day. I do think there is better alignment with LF > events than with other ASF projects. Sadly the Apachecon itself is not a > large conference, and I don't think we got the cross-pollination we were > hoping. LF events are much bigger (Dusseldorf in the fall was 1,500 people). > > The risk I do see with 1 day event is that we get fragmented and that we > don't see each other that often. > > To conclude, it is key that everyone on our lists feels entitled to do things > and take the lead. In some sense there is no such thing as us vs. "the > organizers". We are all the organizers of these conferences. It is a matter > of who has the time and the will to step up and lead these events (1 or 3 > days ) and who will attend. > > -If you have the time, can you take the lead and organize another 1 day event > closer to home ? > -If you have time, can you take the lead on one of those scheduled events and > take on the program planning ? > -If you have funds, can you sponsor the event ? > -if you have space, can you donate it for an event ? > > > -sebastien > > >> On Mar 5, 2015, at 2:01 AM, Erik Weber <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 3:45 AM, ilya musayev <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> Am i right in assuming that we no longer going to have 3 day long >> conferences and instead 5 separate cloudstack day events? It does makes >> sense as it helps with awareness, but.. >> >> Looking at it from my employers side, as well as my personally - its a bit >> hard to justify a trip for just one day :( On average, a person would have >> to travel a night before and leave a day later to make the most of it. That >> is 2 days spent in transit to attend 1 day event. >> >> Lets see how this works out, but i really think we need at least 1 event >> that is longer than a day - so we can have a community get together that >> many would be able to attend. >> >> I must agree. >> >> Unless you live near one of the airline hubs you'll most likely have to >> travel three days anyway. >> In my case I have to travel the night before to get there before 1PM, and as >> anyone would want to attend the night events (that's usually where I >> personally get most out of the conference) I have stay a night longer. >> >> Justifying a three day trip to attend a one day event is significantly >> harder than justifying a four day (we usually arrive a bit later on the >> first day) trip to attend a three day event. >> >> -- >> Erik >
