Andrew Cowie wrote:
[Reigning the flights of fancy back in, I will mention that Mikal is
considering working on something at the much-smaller end of the scale.
I'll let him discuss that if and when he sees fit]
Ok, here's me coming out of the closet... This grand plan came to me in
a dream last week sometime, so it's still quite new, and probably needs
tweaking. The fundamental premises are:
- the world needs a introductory user conference in AU
- there are a bunch of people in Canberra who know how to make
conferences now
- I don't mind running another conference
- users are extremely price sensitive
Bear those in mind while you look at the following proposal I wrote up
last week. It's still in extreme draft mode...
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The concept.
------------
The market is "ripe" for a user conference in Australia. The underlying
premise of this proposal is that there is now a group of people in
Canberra who understand how to run an event, having just done it, who
are capable of running said user conference.
I would like to volunteer to run such an event. The operational concept
is that of "AusLUG". This is a national event styled on a bigger LUG
meeting for two days. The cost is kept deliberately low, and the event
is much simpler than LCA. The concept has room for growth into a fuller
conference in future years, dependant on demand. I propose that the
event have two streams -- a user stream focused on introductory / LUG
grade topics (such as how to install and use Apache, what distribution
might be right for you, email environments, how iptables works and how
to set it up, that kind of thing) and an introductory programmers stream
(what license would be right for you, what an open source package
usually contains (tarballs, README, license, man pages), how to autoconf
your package, what languages work with Gnome and KDE, that kind of thing).
The conference would run in a down scale venue, such as a community
club. The only vendor handouts, unless they are donated, would be a
tshirt. No catering is provided, but may be bought from the club. The
cost of attendance should be approximately $100 per person for the full
two days.
I see scope for an associated trade show in future years, once an
audience has been established (which I believe is needed for exhibitors
to be willing to spend money on booths).
Draft schedule for the event:
Saturday
--------
8:30 - 9:30 Registrations
9:30 - 10:00 Welcome
User stream Intro programming stream
10:30 - 11:30 ... ...
11:30 - 12:30 ... ...
13:30 - 14:30 ... ...
14:30 - 15:30 ... ...
16:00 - 17:00 ... ...
17:00 - 18:00 ... ...
18:00 - Dinner (not formally organized)
Sunday
------
9:30 - 10:00 Welcome
User stream Intro programming stream
10:30 - 11:30 ... ...
11:30 - 12:30 ... ...
13:30 - 14:30 ... ...
14:30 - 15:30 ... ...
15:00 - 16:00 Close, and where to from here
There are 10 talks per stream...
Funding.
--------
I am requesting $xxx seed funding from Linux Australia, and the same
amount from AUUG. The reasoning here is to spread the risk of the event,
and maximise the benefits to the community and both groups. In return
both organizations will recieve branding of the event, and half the
profit from the event if there is one. I also need to to receive a
commitment to running the event in a similar shared manner in the future.
In the case of the conference making a loss, then both organizations
would lose their seed funding, but no more.
Timing.
-------
September. Enough after LCA for me to have a sleep. Not too close to
AUUG 2005 (a month away, but a different audience), not too close to LCA
2006 (and again a different demographic). Open to negotiation though.
Chain of command.
-----------------
I would report to both Linux Australia and AUUG, but would have sole
delegated control of the event. Subsequent events would be negotiated
between myself, Linux Australia and AUUG if this event is a success.
Liability cover would be arranged through Linux Australia's event
insurance.
Cheers,
Mikal