[Linux-aus] linux.conf.au Possible *Future* Programme Format

[Kylie Willison]

On Wed, 2007-01-10 at 11:28 +1100, Steven Hanley wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 10:45:49AM +1030, David Lloyd wrote:
> > 
> > Steven,
> > 
> > >There could be some advantages to clashing with the main confeerence, One I
> > >see immediately is allowing the main conference to go for longer (5 days, 3
> > >streams), if there are two mini confs on at the same time at the conference
> > >all week it is like having 5 streams but with two of them being miniconfs.
> > 
> > I guess this begs the question:
> > 
> >  * Was there a reason for the conference to go for 3 1/2 days?
> 
> Once upon a time it seemed a good length.
> 
> >  * If one extends the conference to a whole week, how would that:
> >    - affect pricing
> >    - affect scheduling
> >    - affect staffing requirements (where staff may be volunteers but you
> >      know what I mean)
> 
> One problemw e keep having every year now is the amount of cool content we
> have to reject, it got worse agian this yyear with such a huge number of
> talks submitted and I am sure they had tyo reject a heck of a lot of really
> cool stuff.
> 
> If we had more days for core conference we could fit more content in. 
> 
> There is enough budget playing that can be done such that it could be
> arranged to have more main conference time from a money perspective. Prixces
> realisitcally owuld not have to change much if at all. Of course the two
> mini conf days are kind of usd bby the team to set up and tesat a bunch of
> stuff for the main confernece (part of the treating mini confs as second
> class citizens), but it can be worked out differently with a bit more
> effort.
> 
> >  * Is a main conference of 5 days and coordination of, say, 8
> >    mini-confs, a bit much to ask a volunteer organisation to run?
> 
> The volunteers are already there for the majority of the week (especially
> the core crew of the teams)
> 
> > Once the conference gets bigger, it starts to become more realistic and 
> > economically viable to have "someone paid" to help run it yet LCA 
> > advertises itself as a grassroots conference.
> > 
> > When does the conference become "so large" that it stops being "grassroots"?
> 
> Who knows, the crew this year are trying an experiment with increasing hte
> size, lets see how that works shall we.

Small changes over time are often more workable (and better accepted)
than one big change.  The conference can remain 'grassroots' and not
necessarily huge just spread over several days - mini confs and main
conf running at the same time.

Kylie
-- 
Kylie Willison
Co Regional Director
Teen Challenge Murray Bridge
http://www.lm.net.au/~tcmb

My Blog
http://kyliewillison.blogspot.com

This email was sent from a computer running the Ubuntu Linux
operating system.  The Linux operating system isn't harmed
by Windows viruses or spyware.