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

[Steven Hanley <sjh@svana.org>]

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.

	See You
	    Steve

-- 
Steven Hanley sjh@svana.org http://svana.org/sjh/diary
everyone needs to see the prisoner, they need to make it even easier
they see me as a symbol, and not a human being
that way they can kill me, say it's not murder, it's a metaphor
   Crime For Crime - Not A Pretty Girl - Ani