Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
Hi, Replying to 2 mails in one. john palmieri wrote: On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 7:42 PM, Jonathan Blandford [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 14:10 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: I've been pushing the board to do the following: Shared: * sponsorship * registration accommodation recommendations * local team * organising resource infrastructure costs * Some social events Co-ordinated/negotiated/agreed: * Travel budgets * Target surplus and its distribution * Programme for shared sessions Separate: * GUADEC and Akademy programs/BOFs/meetings * At least one social event * Decision on sponsored attendees This doesn't sound like colocation, and sounds very much like the one conference that has two tracks. Colocation means (to me) that we are in the same city at the same time, and have the possibility for a couple events. I would rather see registration, and some of the resource costs per-conference, and especially sponsorship be per-conference. Having both conferences in one place allows a number of economies - one organising team rather than two locally, companies who get hit up twice a year currently will only get hit up once (such as Canonical, Nokia, Novell, Google - not counting those who got asked and said no to one or both conferences), which gives us a greater clarity in our messaging around supporting the free software desktop. It allows us to take group rates at cheap hotels or hostels, and be reasonably secure in the knowledge that the rate will be fully subscribed. For registration web, I imagine it makes sense to have one central site with 2 child sites for Akademy GUADEC (note: Akademy changed capitalisation this year), the common site will register everyone with people choosing an affiliation (KDE, GNOME, Other) to allow for evaluation of attendee numbers for things like travel budgets surplus distribution, and will contain the program for overlap/shared events. Registration is important for a number of things - knowing how many attendees to expect for allocation of resources, knowing what press are coming, getting some money (assuming there will be a registration fee). snip I must admit, I am pretty disappointed that the board did not really discuss this prior to putting out the call for bids (or even accepting any) and only now are we trying to figure out what we have agreed to. As you said, the devil is in the details, but these are some really big details! Jonathan, we did discuss these issues and it came down to being a co-located event or it wasn't going to fly with either board. I'm prepared to wait see what the board comes up with as a plan, but please (and this goes for KDE eV too) don't come back with a fait accompli, come back with a proposal for agreement that we can comment on, and do a round trip to KDE eV based on feedback from the membership. As I've said, I'm in favour of a shared local team, a shared conference co-ordinator if we can afford one, some shared infrastructure, and one central point for sponsorship, with the rest separate. To summarise, have the thing be one event to the outside world (including sponsors), and two events for attendees. It was heavily discussed at DAM in Austin. At which there was no KDE eV board member present... We perhaps could have advertised it more but we almost didn't put out the joint call for bids because KDE objecting to details of just the press release alone. To be fair, I feel I should share some details here... KDE eV talked about this, as is their wont, on the members mailing list. As happened when it came up here, there were many people vocally against sharing the conference (and mostly for the same reasons of community identity, it's the one time in the year we get to see each other, etc). The board came back said we have a mandate from our membership to have a co-located conference, but our conference will be called Akademy, and yours will be GUADEC. Which everyone agreed on. When I proposed a press release call for hosts that were pretty unequivocal - we're opening up a call to co-host GUADEC and Akademy, their board objected to that, on the basis that it was only one of the available possibilities - they didn't want to come across as strong-arming their membership, and they wanted to leave the way open for interested parties to propose hosting just Akademy. Based on that, the proposal for the press release from KDE eV was along the lines of KDE eV is putting out a call for hosts for Akademy 2009. blah blah blah Oh - and by the way, if anyone is interested in putting in a proposal to co-host with GUADEC, we're interested in hearing about that too. My opinion was that putting out the call for hosts like this was setting ourselves up to fail - both because it's an ambiguous message to potential hosts
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
Hi, Slight correction to the numbers... Quim Gil wrote: GUADEC Cornerstone = aKademy Platinum = 25.000€ Gold is same in both = 15.000€ Silver is same in both = 5.000€ Silver is €7,500 for GUADEC and has been since last year, I believe. aKademy has also Bronze = 1.000€ Do the math and put 3 levels at 50.000€, 30.000€ and... 5.000€ I'd prefer €40,000, €25,000 and €7,500 (this year GUADEC didn't have a cornerstone sponsor, after all, we don't want to price ourselves out of the market). Even at that, between 7,500 and 25,000 there's a lot of water - you'd probably persuade a couple who would otherwise choose 7,500 to move up to 15,000 if there was a level there. Looking at the past editions of both events, reasonable candidates for a Gold are Nokia, Novell, Canonical the Linux Foundation and perhaps Google. One of them to be pushed to the top level. There are some GUADEC silvers that could be tempted to upgrade to gold. And looking at current opportunities, other candidates for sponsorship pitches might be LiMo, Motorola, Marvell, Freescale, ... It would be also reasonable to think that more silvers might appear since we are getting more new ones in every GUADEC and most of the current sponsors repeat. The whole mobile stuff might bring new names e.g. those around the LiMo foundation. We think alike, kimosabe. Conclusion: same or more money to be invested with less organizational costs (thanks to sharing instead of doubling overheads) -- more money to sponsor contributors from more remote places and work better on the social side of the events. And yet... taking those levels at face value and looking at the sponsor list... Akademy raised 25,000 + 2*15,000 + 5,000 + 1,000 this year - grand total: 61,000. GUADEC raised 3*15,000 + 14*(7,500 or 5,000) - for a grand total of 150,000 or 115,000 (depending on what the Silver level was). So roughly double. By pooling resources, it seems to me like GNOME will inevitably be contributing more to the pot, and drawing more from the pot... but will we end up getting 2/3rds of the resources? It seems unlikely to me that this will Just Happen without some major discussion. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
Dave Neary skrev: Hi, Silver for Guadec is at 5.000€. Cheers, Mikael Hallendal Hi, Slight correction to the numbers... Quim Gil wrote: GUADEC Cornerstone = aKademy Platinum = 25.000€ Gold is same in both = 15.000€ Silver is same in both = 5.000€ Silver is €7,500 for GUADEC and has been since last year, I believe. aKademy has also Bronze = 1.000€ Do the math and put 3 levels at 50.000€, 30.000€ and... 5.000€ I'd prefer €40,000, €25,000 and €7,500 (this year GUADEC didn't have a cornerstone sponsor, after all, we don't want to price ourselves out of the market). Even at that, between 7,500 and 25,000 there's a lot of water - you'd probably persuade a couple who would otherwise choose 7,500 to move up to 15,000 if there was a level there. Looking at the past editions of both events, reasonable candidates for a Gold are Nokia, Novell, Canonical the Linux Foundation and perhaps Google. One of them to be pushed to the top level. There are some GUADEC silvers that could be tempted to upgrade to gold. And looking at current opportunities, other candidates for sponsorship pitches might be LiMo, Motorola, Marvell, Freescale, ... It would be also reasonable to think that more silvers might appear since we are getting more new ones in every GUADEC and most of the current sponsors repeat. The whole mobile stuff might bring new names e.g. those around the LiMo foundation. We think alike, kimosabe. Conclusion: same or more money to be invested with less organizational costs (thanks to sharing instead of doubling overheads) -- more money to sponsor contributors from more remote places and work better on the social side of the events. And yet... taking those levels at face value and looking at the sponsor list... Akademy raised 25,000 + 2*15,000 + 5,000 + 1,000 this year - grand total: 61,000. GUADEC raised 3*15,000 + 14*(7,500 or 5,000) - for a grand total of 150,000 or 115,000 (depending on what the Silver level was). So roughly double. By pooling resources, it seems to me like GNOME will inevitably be contributing more to the pot, and drawing more from the pot... but will we end up getting 2/3rds of the resources? It seems unlikely to me that this will Just Happen without some major discussion. Cheers, Dave. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
Mikael Hallendal wrote: Silver for Guadec is at 5.000€. Thanks for the correction... I guess my confusion stemmed from sponsorship levels being in dollars up until Villanova, and €5000 is $7500 roughly. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
Hi, One other thing I didn't say but am a little worried about... Dave Neary wrote: I'm pretty sure everyone's aware that the devil is now in the details, and there will be times when we are in conflict over some issues. I expect clearing up sponsorship and distribution of surplus will be the biggest one, and the one we most need to settle quickly. ... One other major issue for me with the Gran Canaria bid, which I pointed out to the board but which was obviously not decisive, is that we have, in the past, dealt with organising committees from outside the community on 3 occasions, and each time there were major issues. Kristiansand: The university helped organise things, and in spite of regular conference calls, several things went badly - visa requests weren't answered, resulting in one Chinese VIP not being able to attend, we were working with people who didn't have a culture of handling large volumes of email (the conference can generate 20 - 50 mails a day at crunch time), and there was something of an expectations gap between the organisers and the community. Stuttgart: In co-operation with the regional government there, we corrected a lot of the issues we had previously - we had a local co-ordinator on-site for the 2 weeks before the conference and during the conference. We were in a magnificent building (which wasn't really suitable to the needs of the conference IMHO). The region covered the rental of the conference center, but we ended up with an unexpected (to the board) bill for a/v equipment, chairs, coffee breaks sandwiches... conferences in conference centers are expensive for all extras. Again, these problems came from something of an expectations gap. Barcelona: Originally, GUADEC in Barcelona was to be co-hosted with a professional conference. And here, there was both a resource problem on our end, and a major expectations gap. The Barcelona organisers were expecting us to have a list of needs, a number of attendees, have sponsorship finalised and have started working on our schedule by the end of September. In the end, they grew increasingly frustrated, and added roadblocks and deadlines as we went on, until we finally ended up deciding mutually not to work together. At which point Super Quim saved the day with a fall-back plan which he put together in 2 weeks, which involved using a university, lodging in a campsite, and which resulted in the successful GUADEC we all attended in Villanova. These major issues mostly stayed hidden to GNOME hackers attending the conference, I think, but after all the work which had been put in (particularly in Stuttgart) aligning expectations and communicating with the organising committee, the complaints I heard from people at each of these GUADEC was quite upsetting. I would hate to see us have a repeat by having the conference in an expensive conference center, and losing some of the spirit of GUADEC we've had in the past 3 years or so. Just some examples of things that raise alarm bells for me: The local organisers are covering costs up to €250,000, about the same as our entire GUADEC budget for the last two years combined, and this coverse the site + 40% subsidy of sightseeing + invited journalists, VIPs and perhaps organisational staff (to be determined). In the conference center, lunch is €24.50 per person and coffee breaks cost €7 per person per coffee break (that better be some good coffee) They talk about going through a travel agency and getting group rates in hotels. I would *really* like to see GUADEC go back to block-booking beds in a hostel or campsite (as we did in Stuttgart Kristiansand), and recommending hotels for those who desire them. All in all, it smells to me like we will need to manage expectations of the organising group very aggressively, starting now, to avoid a cultural disconnect. And that means being able to clearly communication our expectations - I know we have had problems doing this in the past (thinking in particular about Barcelona). I think the best way to do that is to have someone representing the two communities who understands those expectations representing us to the Gran Canaria local government. Food for thought for the board... Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
2008/7/16 Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The local organisers are covering costs up to €250,000, about the same as our entire GUADEC budget for the last two years combined, and this coverse the site + 40% subsidy of sightseeing + invited journalists, VIPs and perhaps organisational staff (to be determined). What we have told to the local government is that this is going to work as the olimpic games, we set the rules and the spirit of the event. If there's something in the proposal that we don't like, nothing is written into stone yet. As a side note, the secretary of tourism and innovation was a teacher of computer science on the university, so we won't have too much problems to explain him what the culture and the values that we want to push into the event, we just have to make sure that we tell them what we want. We have regular meetings with them since a few months already, so there's a good communication channel between us. In the conference center, lunch is €24.50 per person and coffee breaks cost €7 per person per coffee break (that better be some good coffee) There are plenty of restaurants along the coast and a shopping center right in front of the venue. Attendees won't have to go too far to get a much cheaper price (6€-8€ menus). We also have the possibility of doing beach volley, football or basketball activities, there is equipment and infrastructure to do this all around the beach besides the venue, although we don't know what do we need to book them yet, anyway, it's not like people will be stuck in an expensive venue without any other options. They talk about going through a travel agency and getting group rates in hotels. I would *really* like to see GUADEC go back to block-booking beds in a hostel or campsite (as we did in Stuttgart Kristiansand), and recommending hotels for those who desire them. We are one year ahead, so we are on time to do whatever we want, I wasn't at Sttugart or Kristiansand, so if you could be more specific on what the experience was and what we need, I can start requesting the information on which options do we have to repeat the experience. All in all, it smells to me like we will need to manage expectations of the organising group very aggressively, starting now, to avoid a cultural disconnect. And that means being able to clearly communication our expectations - I know we have had problems doing this in the past (thinking in particular about Barcelona). I think the best way to do that is to have someone representing the two communities who understands those expectations representing us to the Gran Canaria local government. There are already two representatives for each community, there's Agustin de Benito and Richard Dale from the KDE community (who was the one who presented the idea of doing Akademy to of the local government of Gran Canaria) and Luis de Bethencourt (maintainer of Ubuntu Studio) and myself. We'll push as hard as we can to keep the spirit of the even, just let us know what we should do. We have already told to the government that this kind of works like the olimpics, the comitee sets the rules and the spirit of the event, the host puts the infrastructure. So far the government has been pretty open to all of our requirements so I don't see any problems on getting whatever we want as long as we ask for it on time. -- Cheers, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
Hi Alberto, Alberto Ruiz wrote: As a side note, the secretary of tourism and innovation was a teacher of computer science on the university, so we won't have too much problems to explain him what the culture and the values that we want to push into the event, we just have to make sure that we tell them what we want. We have regular meetings with them since a few months already, so there's a good communication channel between us. This is reassuring! Thanks for the info. They talk about going through a travel agency and getting group rates in hotels. I would *really* like to see GUADEC go back to block-booking beds in a hostel or campsite (as we did in Stuttgart Kristiansand), and recommending hotels for those who desire them. We are one year ahead, so we are on time to do whatever we want, I wasn't at Sttugart or Kristiansand, so if you could be more specific on what the experience was and what we need, I can start requesting the information on which options do we have to repeat the experience. In Stuttgart, we block-booked about 100 beds in a youth hostel overlooking the city: http://paul.luon.net/images/guadec_sun1.jpg (this is where we had breakfast every morning). Lots of people got a sponsored bed, and some people who hadn't asked skipped out without paying, so the whole thing cost the foundation quite a bit, but people had a bed for about €20 per night IIRC. When I said Kristiansand, I actually meant Villanova :} In Kristiansand, there was a Living for Free option - if you brought a bed roll and sleeping bag, you got floor space in a gymnasium of a school. It was actually pretty fun :) They also had student flats available for a reasonable rate ($46 per night), and recommended hotels for those looking for that option. There are already two representatives for each community, there's Agustin de Benito and Richard Dale from the KDE community (who was the one who presented the idea of doing Akademy to of the local government of Gran Canaria) and Luis de Bethencourt (maintainer of Ubuntu Studio) and myself. We'll push as hard as we can to keep the spirit of the even, just let us know what we should do. As I said earlier, I'm reassured that this is the case. Thanks for your effort. The first thing to do is to make sure that they're aware that we don't need much in the way of frills - a university-type structure, with cheap food drink, cheap accommodation options, but with the option to upgrade for VIPs, lots of space to meet mingle, and good quality A/V equipment for presentations. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 11:57 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote: The GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. announced that they will hold their yearly conferences, GUADEC and Akademy in 2009 in Gran Canaria. The conferences will be separate events, but co-located and hosted by the same organizers, the Cabildo of Gran Canaria and its Secretary of Tourism, Technological Innovation and Foreign Trade. Great - something I'm keen to understand is what co-located means. Does it mean that we just happen to be at the same venue at roughly the same time, but otherwise separate - separate finances, sponsors, sponsorships (of speakers), parties, swag, etc. Or are the conferences to be jointly organised at that kind of infrastructure level, so that there will only be one bank account, set of sponsors, sponsorships, parties, swag, etc. My understanding is that it's much more of co-organisation rather than simple co-location, but it's not clear to me where the boundaries lie. This isn't a complaint, just a heads up - at some point in the next months people will be working on the sponsorship brochure, website, call for volunteers, and I think there is a fine line to be walk. For sponsorship in particular, many (larger) sponsors probably have investments in both GNOME and KDE so having them at the same place, with one sponsorship, one set of travel, etc will be very attractive. However other companies are only invested in either GNOME or KDE and would need more clarity as to how their sponsorship euros are getting spent, how their brand is used and associated, etc. This isn't just about sponsors either. Sponsoring speakers and attendees is a huge chunk of GUADEC budget and always fraught with tensions and potential disappointment - how this is handled needs to be clearly explained, and carefully handled to prevent the perception that one 'side' or the other is getting preferential treatment. Similarly attracting volunteers and assigning responsibilities would need some thought. Overall I expect overall sponsorship and participation to increase - for example I would hope that one of the companies invested in both KDE and GNOME to step up to cornerstone sponsor :-) - and I don't sense that anyone existing sponsors or volunteers are going to walk away. However I do think it will need to be more carefully explained than simply saying 'co-located' unless we really do mean same place same time and nothing more. Regards, Paul While there were other excellent bids, the GNOME foundation and KDE e.V. have settled on Gran Canaria because of its position as Port to Africa and the excellent circumstances for holding such an event there. Unfortunately, having three proposals, two have to be rejected. The proposals from Tampere in Finland and Coruna in Spain were close contenders. Both foundations would like to thank those organisers for the work they have put into their proposals and encourage them to consider their cities for conferences in future years. Read the full press release: http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/2008-07-guadec-akademy-grancanaria.html -- Paul Cooper| Tel: +44 0208 819 6559 ext 333 Business Development Manager | Fax: +44 0208 819 6559 OpenedHand | http://www.openedhand.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
Hi Paul, Paul Cooper wrote: On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 07:05 -0400, john palmieri wrote: The idea is that they are two separate events with the exception of a room reserved for freedesktop.org and other crossover talks. Also keynotes should most likely be joint as well as the after parties. Everything else should remain separate as to not drastically change the culture of each event. So GUADEC and aKademy are still going to individually approach, for example, Nokia, RedHat, Novell, etc for sponsorships - each with different costs and benefits? I thought part of the attraction of co-locating was to stop cutting these sponsors in two. I've been pushing the board to do the following: Shared: * sponsorship * registration accommodation recommendations * local team * organising resource infrastructure costs * Some social events Co-ordinated/negotiated/agreed: * Travel budgets * Target surplus and its distribution * Programme for shared sessions Separate: * GUADEC and Akademy programs/BOFs/meetings * At least one social event * Decision on sponsored attendees There is lots of stuff *not* on this list, this is just the big stuff I've thought of. Two separate registration systems, and desks, and sets of volunteers on those desks? And so down the list of conference organisation. I'm not expecting answers to everything this second, just trying to give a heads up that it bears thinking about. I'm pretty sure everyone's aware that the devil is now in the details, and there will be times when we are in conflict over some issues. I expect clearing up sponsorship and distribution of surplus will be the biggest one, and the one we most need to settle quickly. To my knowledge, Akademy runs at a loss, or no better than break-even, while GUADEC has allowed the GNOME Foundation to propose hackfests, fund speakers travelling to conferences, pay for the Boston Summit, fund the GNOME Outreach Programme: Accessibility, and more. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Paul Cooper [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi John, On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 07:05 -0400, john palmieri wrote: The idea is that they are two separate events with the exception of a room reserved for freedesktop.org and other crossover talks. Also keynotes should most likely be joint as well as the after parties. Everything else should remain separate as to not drastically change the culture of each event. When it comes to the program, in fact we are talking about joint bug sessions + specific tracks. The sensible approach is: some keynotes to be decided in common (Like e.g. Linus Torvalds in the opening session and Richard Stallman in the closure). Some other chosen by each side. Track owners could work out their own selection process. freedesktop.org tracks don't necessarely mean all together since they might be just as technical and focused to especialized audiences. On the other hand, you might have tracks based on topics like location, touchscreen UI, widgets and etc interesting for both audiences regardless of the specific technologies underneath. Then surely you have many topics interesting only to GNOME or KDE members, but still you will find an aKademy attendee interesting in that specific GUADEC session at that time of the day and the other way round. In practice this means that participants will have access to almost all areas and sessions, having probably the same fee scheme. Which means a common registration process, something really boring to setup that brings more or less the same critical work for 400 or 1000 people. Accounting. You definitely want a single professional accountant service and a single bank account, independent from the GNOME and aKademy foundations. At the end of the event the result should be 0, or have a revenue to be split as agreed (see below). Social events, they tend to be better with more people. In some cases there are obvious limitations (you don't want a boat to sink with a representation of the best free desktop hackers inside). Call it The Cute KDE Love Boat or The GNOME BareFoot Tanga Contest and you will choose your audience. There is plenty of nights for everything. Sponsors. GUADEC has the initiative here moving much more support and budget than aKademy (which doesn't mean that they don't do amazing stuff with the budget they get). Looking at the names the answer is clear: Nokia, Linux Foundation, Novell, HP, Canonical, Google, Mandriva... You want a common pool. Increase the numbers for cornestone and gold since at the end most of the companies at that level are working with both events and likely will want to get the visibility of both communities. Keep the affordable Silver level as it is for those companies that have been silver until now in any of the events. My only serious concern about sponsors is how to make the back of the shirts not-ugly. ;) One delicate aspect might be how to share the resources for sponsoring participants and revenue, if any. Of course losses should be considered but a conservative business approach should prevent that due to the reasonable expecations to get sponsors. A solution could be that both organizers of GUADEC and aKademy in 2008 share the information on what have they got from sponsors and how much from that did they invest inviting participants. Find how the numbers correlate between both events and find the right % that would correspond to each. 50/50 is a nice number and something to consider, but at least until now the numbers have been (I believe) different and bigger in the GUADEC side. I'm sure the right peoplefrom both projects can agree on the right terms pretty easily. PS: Now I see Dave has sent an email getting into more details on separate sponsored participants etc. Yes, this is just common sense. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
2008/7/15 Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hi Paul, To my knowledge, Akademy runs at a loss, or no better than break-even, while GUADEC has allowed the GNOME Foundation to propose hackfests, fund speakers travelling to conferences, pay for the Boston Summit, fund the GNOME Outreach Programme: Accessibility, and more. Something that I've been thinking about is sponsor affiliation, something that I discussed with some Igalia folks, the idea is to let sponsors decide to which organization do they want to affiliate so that besides the common budget, all the remaining money goes to the one they affiliate with or both (in case they want to choose both). I don't think this is going to be an issue with the biggest sponsors, but some of the smallest ones might want to just support the project/organization that they have interest for. Other than that, I think that we should share as much as we can as long as we keep the identity of each event separated. -- Cheers, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
The idea is that they are two separate events with the exception of a room reserved for freedesktop.org and other crossover talks. Also keynotes should most likely be joint as well as the after parties. Everything else should remain separate as to not drastically change the culture of each event. -- John (J5) Palmieri GNOME Foundation Board Treasurer On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 6:58 AM, Paul Cooper [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 11:57 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote: The GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. announced that they will hold their yearly conferences, GUADEC and Akademy in 2009 in Gran Canaria. The conferences will be separate events, but co-located and hosted by the same organizers, the Cabildo of Gran Canaria and its Secretary of Tourism, Technological Innovation and Foreign Trade. Great - something I'm keen to understand is what co-located means. Does it mean that we just happen to be at the same venue at roughly the same time, but otherwise separate - separate finances, sponsors, sponsorships (of speakers), parties, swag, etc. Or are the conferences to be jointly organised at that kind of infrastructure level, so that there will only be one bank account, set of sponsors, sponsorships, parties, swag, etc. My understanding is that it's much more of co-organisation rather than simple co-location, but it's not clear to me where the boundaries lie. This isn't a complaint, just a heads up - at some point in the next months people will be working on the sponsorship brochure, website, call for volunteers, and I think there is a fine line to be walk. For sponsorship in particular, many (larger) sponsors probably have investments in both GNOME and KDE so having them at the same place, with one sponsorship, one set of travel, etc will be very attractive. However other companies are only invested in either GNOME or KDE and would need more clarity as to how their sponsorship euros are getting spent, how their brand is used and associated, etc. This isn't just about sponsors either. Sponsoring speakers and attendees is a huge chunk of GUADEC budget and always fraught with tensions and potential disappointment - how this is handled needs to be clearly explained, and carefully handled to prevent the perception that one 'side' or the other is getting preferential treatment. Similarly attracting volunteers and assigning responsibilities would need some thought. Overall I expect overall sponsorship and participation to increase - for example I would hope that one of the companies invested in both KDE and GNOME to step up to cornerstone sponsor :-) - and I don't sense that anyone existing sponsors or volunteers are going to walk away. However I do think it will need to be more carefully explained than simply saying 'co-located' unless we really do mean same place same time and nothing more. Regards, Paul While there were other excellent bids, the GNOME foundation and KDE e.V. have settled on Gran Canaria because of its position as Port to Africa and the excellent circumstances for holding such an event there. Unfortunately, having three proposals, two have to be rejected. The proposals from Tampere in Finland and Coruna in Spain were close contenders. Both foundations would like to thank those organisers for the work they have put into their proposals and encourage them to consider their cities for conferences in future years. Read the full press release: http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/2008-07-guadec-akademy-grancanaria.html -- Paul Cooper| Tel: +44 0208 819 6559 ext 333 Business Development Manager | Fax: +44 0208 819 6559 OpenedHand | http://www.openedhand.com -- http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/advisory-board From time to time confidential and sensitive information will be discussed on this mailing list. Please take care to mark confidential information as confidential, and do not redistribute this information without permission. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
The one thing we have made clear to our Advisory Board is we do not want this to be an excuse for companies to invest less in either events. That would be disastrous. This is not a joint event. The GNOME Board and KDE eV agreed on this with the understanding that we are co-located, not one conference. Some details can be shared but most of it should be treated as we just happen to show up at the same time and place. Its buisness as usual for the most part. If we wanted a joint conference we would have just thrown a Freedesktop.org event. On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 8:25 AM, Alberto Ruiz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/7/15 Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hi Paul, To my knowledge, Akademy runs at a loss, or no better than break-even, while GUADEC has allowed the GNOME Foundation to propose hackfests, fund speakers travelling to conferences, pay for the Boston Summit, fund the GNOME Outreach Programme: Accessibility, and more. Something that I've been thinking about is sponsor affiliation, something that I discussed with some Igalia folks, the idea is to let sponsors decide to which organization do they want to affiliate so that besides the common budget, all the remaining money goes to the one they affiliate with or both (in case they want to choose both). I don't think this is going to be an issue with the biggest sponsors, but some of the smallest ones might want to just support the project/organization that they have interest for. Other than that, I think that we should share as much as we can as long as we keep the identity of each event separated. -- Cheers, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 8:41 PM, john palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The one thing we have made clear to our Advisory Board is we do not want this to be an excuse for companies to invest less in either events. That would be disastrous. Sure, but who talked about getting less corporate money? In fact it would be reasonable to get more since in terms of marketing and awareness (GUADEC + aKademy) GUADEC + aKademy Let's look at the numbers. GUADEC and aKademy have very similar sponsorship schemes, which is unsurprising considering that both marketing teams have been collaborating on this topic since 2006. See http://dot.kde.org/1205342263/ (I could only find GUADEC 2008 brochure in an attachment). GUADEC Cornerstone = aKademy Platinum = 25.000€ Gold is same in both = 15.000€ Silver is same in both = 5.000€ aKademy has also Bronze = 1.000€ Do the math and put 3 levels at 50.000€, 30.000€ and... 5.000€ Looking at the past editions of both events, reasonable candidates for a Gold are Nokia, Novell, Canonical the Linux Foundation and perhaps Google. One of them to be pushed to the top level. There are some GUADEC silvers that could be tempted to upgrade to gold. The current Silvers come mainly from the GNOME side, which makes sense due to the decentralized corporate nature of the GNOME project. This is why I'm suggsting to keep Silver at 5000€ or do an upgrade to 6000€ at most in exchange of a much higher visibility. In fact many of these companies work on components compatible with KDE technologies and/or in the freedesktop.org domain. It would be also reasonable to think that more silvers might appear since we are getting more new ones in every GUADEC and most of the current sponsors repeat. The whole mobile stuff might bring new names e.g. those around the LiMo foundation. Conclusion: same or more money to be invested with less organizational costs (thanks to sharing instead of doubling overheads) -- more money to sponsor contributors from more remote places and work better on the social side of the events. This is not a joint event. The GNOME Board and KDE eV agreed on this with the understanding that we are co-located, not one conference. Some details can be shared but most of it should be treated as we just happen to show up at the same time and place. Its buisness as usual for the most part. If we wanted a joint conference we would have just thrown a Freedesktop.org event. For what we have seen in this thread there are some coincident opinions among the coordinators of GUADEC 2006 and 2007 + the main hunter of sponsors and keynotes in the past years (Baris is excused for being afk). There must be something to consider here. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 14:10 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: I've been pushing the board to do the following: Shared: * sponsorship * registration accommodation recommendations * local team * organising resource infrastructure costs * Some social events Co-ordinated/negotiated/agreed: * Travel budgets * Target surplus and its distribution * Programme for shared sessions Separate: * GUADEC and Akademy programs/BOFs/meetings * At least one social event * Decision on sponsored attendees This doesn't sound like colocation, and sounds very much like the one conference that has two tracks. Colocation means (to me) that we are in the same city at the same time, and have the possibility for a couple events. I would rather see registration, and some of the resource costs per-conference, and especially sponsorship be per-conference. I'm pretty sure everyone's aware that the devil is now in the details, and there will be times when we are in conflict over some issues. I expect clearing up sponsorship and distribution of surplus will be the biggest one, and the one we most need to settle quickly. To my knowledge, Akademy runs at a loss, or no better than break-even, while GUADEC has allowed the GNOME Foundation to propose hackfests, fund speakers travelling to conferences, pay for the Boston Summit, fund the GNOME Outreach Programme: Accessibility, and more. Agree with this last statement a lot. I would consider that an institutional and structural advantage of GNOME, and I would really rather not see us give that up. Looking at the aKademy sponsorship list, I see significantly fewer sponsors, a smaller conference, and less money raised. It would be crazy to effectively cede a couple hackfests to KDE. I must admit, I am pretty disappointed that the board did not really discuss this prior to putting out the call for bids (or even accepting any) and only now are we trying to figure out what we have agreed to. As you said, the devil is in the details, but these are some really big details! Thanks, -Jonathan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
