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

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012, James Polley wrote:
> As a middle ground between things being organized by unaffiliated random
> external groups and having the Council do all the work, the Council has put
> a lot of work over the last year into making it easier to for
> sub-committees to pop up to organise things. The LA organising
> sub-committees, the Pycon subcommittee, and the LUG subcommittees that are
> starting to pop up are just some examples - if someone wants to JFD a hack
> day, the Council could potentially bless them as a subcommittee.
> 
> Does this sound like it would be useful?

Quite possibly. I see a few options:

(1) Something (hackfest or something else entirely) is done as part of
core LCA.

Advantages: attracts more casual participants due to integrated rego,
being advertised in conference program. May make LCA itself more
attractive to some participants (I'm one of them). Avoids splitting
attendance between people who don't have time or money to do both LCA
and the hackfest.

Disadvantages: more work for the LCA team. (Honestly, I'm not sure why
you think it would devolve to Council?) Potentially more expensive LCA,
and possibly also lengthier, and five days is quite long as it is.

(2) Something is done 'near' LCA, a la AdaCamp, Maker Faire, Drupal Down
Under.

Advantages: does not require LCA registration, which appeals to the
subset of attendees (substantial in the case of some of my examples) who
don't particularly give a toss about LCA.  Depending on timing, one can
do both if one chooses. Does not require much if any work from core LCA
people (or Council, other than the initial approval and the treasurer
work).

Disadvantages: competes to some extent with LCA, as in there will be
some (variably sized) group of people who cannot afford the time and
money to do both and choose the non-LCA event. Does not add to the fun
of core LCA.

-------------------------

Obviously, this is event dependent. I'm not proposing, for example, that
AdaCamp* would have been better if merged with LCA. (It wouldn't have
been.)

But I also don't think that core LCA should remain as it is until
doomsday: I've been to a lot of LCAs and I am starting to wish that some
things about it were different and hearing about things other
conferences do and wishing that they'd happen *at LCA*. Not wishing that
they'd happen the weekend before LCA, or that they'd happen in Australia
at some point during the year, or wishing that LA would fund them, but
specifically wishing that they'd happen *at LCA*, with the specific
people who attend LCA and the specific atmosphere of LCA. So the short
answer to James's question is, no, it wasn't exactly what I was
picturing.

Also, it's worth noting that "you can have awesome hackfests in the
evenings in the dorms" is equivalent to ""you can have awesome hackfests
if you didn't travel with your family!" in most years.

-Mary

* Incidentally, because this is a common assumption, a note about
AdaCamp: while there probably will be future AdaCamps there probably
WON'T be future AdaCamps held near LCA in location or time. For the Ada
Initiative, running AdaCamps that reach out to new communities is
important and so running one with LCA more than once isn't a priority.

I say this only because I've already heard a few people making plans
around the AdaCamp in Canberra in 2013 that I doubt is actually going to
occur!