My opinion (not sure how much it counts but anyway) is that there are a number of problems here that could be solved with relative ease. Looking in particular at Dublin/Budapest, I'd say that these are very good candidates for merging. The issues I see with having these as separate events are:
1. Being a relatively small community still, we should aim to get together physically as much as possible. Mailing lists are great but it's getting people together that seems to make stuff happen. Communities don't work well if they're split up. Clearly, a single global conference causes other issues but fragmenting unnecessarily seems counter-productive to me. 2. As already mentioned, most visitors will need to fly and the difference between the cost of a flight to Budapest vs a cost of a flight to Dublin for most candidates for either event will not be all that significant when all costs for attending are added up. 3. We may not have big sponsors, pots of cash to spare, or unlimited organisational resources so combining the two venues would surely help immensely in that regard. Economies of scale come into it as sponsors are more likely to want to chip in if there's greater attendance at a single event than two smaller ones. 4. People are less likely to bother even registering (or getting expenses approved) if, as many have already mentioned, the event is just a single day and justifying the efforts/costs then becomes a real issue. I understand that previously colocated events with ApacheCon haven't actually resulted in many people going to both. Ilya has mentioned this as well. In addition to combining the two events, I think that it should be relatively easy to have a single 'official' day that is well funded and organised but have one (or even two) day events before or after the main event that can be informally organised by the community. Call them hackathons if you will but not necessarily dedicated to writing code - perhaps conduct panel discussions around marketing, direction of the project, different use-cases (or markets), and some coding as well. If ShapeBlue were interested in doing some 'sample chapters' of their training courses as well I'm sure that would go down well for those new to ACS (perhaps the day before the main event). These additional days could be done without any AV, catering, presents, sponsored evening events etc. I'm quite sure most people wouldn't complain about buying their own drinks/food. As for a venue however, this is the hole in my argument. Is it safe to say that there are enough ACS types in Dublin that something could be organised? Would Paddy Power be able to supply meeting rooms for example? Is there an academic community in Dublin that might be happy to assist with these sorts of informal events? Even a hotel with a bar/restaurant might be willing if we agreed to a minimum spend on food/drink and that we'd put it as the top listed suggestion for where to stay when attending. They might even give us a discount on rooms. Obviously if it appears that we do have resources to improve these additional informal days then great but in terms of commitment, we could set a much lower requirement vs trying to run a full two or three-day event. Doesn't mean that the event can't autoscale with demand! How does that resound with everyone? Adrian -----Original Message----- From: Arjan [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 06 March 2015 05:32 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: CloudStack Conferences Price is mostly venue, catering, audio video, evening events. (Gifts) Time is number of tracks, speakers, sponsors, look and feel. So you can fiddle around with combinations. Two day low profile single track could be easier than 1 day the whole shebang with party and speaker dinner etc Rgds, Arjan > On 5 mrt. 2015, at 23:56, ilya musayev <[email protected]> wrote: > > Arjan and Sebastian > > Thanks for sharing your experiences in setting up the conferences, > > Just curious would 2 day events be more justifiable, easier to organize and also less expensive? > > Thanks > ilya > >> On 3/5/15 2:39 PM, Arjan wrote: >> 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 >
