[Linux-aus] Spaghetti at the wall: LCA thoughts

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012, Russell Coker wrote:
> Also every dorm block had a kitchen table and chairs to seat at least
> a dozen people.  Anyone could have organised a hack day in one of
> those, I believe that such hack days generally don't have that many
> people.
> 
> Maybe the main thing that was missing in this regard is the meme that
> people should run hack days.

I think this is fairly key. It's tempting to say that if people really
wanted <whatever> in close association with LCA they'd JFDI, and to some
extent it's true (witness the collision of events on Sat Jan 14) but it
has taken several years to come to fruitition. (It's not all downside,
some of those Jan 14, including AdaCamp, are happier without LA/LCA
affiliation due to somewhat different goals and audiences.)

Associated events with the Official Conference Seal of Approval will
take off faster, and thus if LA or the conference can identify
events/activities likely to significantly improve LCA, they're more
likely to be successful if officially affiliated somehow. If nothing
else, there will be an element of "well, <event> was included in my
registration, so why not?" and some of those "why not?" people will
go on to become good contributors.

-Mary