On 16 August 2010 07:10, Pierre Schmitz wrote:

On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:16:02 +0200, Dieter Plaetinck wrote:

...

Some ideas: * Maybe we can do it together with Froscon.  (like opensqlcamp does   their sql conference at froscon) * I know there are some local schools and businesses in Belgium (Antwerp   and Ghent) willing to provide rooms for free for tech/open source   conferences.  Probably similar opportunities exist in other countries. * ..?

We had this idea for some time now. I think we would benefit from attaching our con at e.g. FrOSCon. This should save us money, we need less to organize and I am sure we'll see a lot more visitors. (people might not want to travel a long way if it's just for quite small con about a single distro.)

I guess the only thing holding us up till now is that organizing this would be a lot of work and responsibility. :-)

This has always been the hold up, but Ricardo and I have proven it's doable. ;-) ArchCon2010 was a great deal of fun, but also a great deal of work; it left me feeling pretty drained, but it was worth it. The amount of work isn't actually so great if you do two things: a) get enough people to commit to helping with organizing and split up the work. Ricardo and I did ArchCon2010 pretty much on our own, although most attendees pitched in on the actual day of the conference. I think that with three or four people sharing the load, it wouldn't be too much work for any one of them. b) Leave a lot of time. If you want to do it in July next year, start planning now (Go Dieter!). c) Post a blog with some arbitrary dates, a call for talks, etc. Pick arbitrary dates for when to have talks submitted by, a list of presentors chosen, when attendees must be registered by, schedule up by, a location confirmed, etc. Publish these and try to stick to the schedule. I'm willing to help out by hosting the blog, getting schwag (badge holders, t-shirts and bags) together, and dealing with incoming and outgoing money. Somebody else has to be responsible for booking a location, booking catering, discovering nearby possible accommodations, ensuring the place is near pubs (note: important!), and the wireless will be supported. And a third person should be responsible for receiving and choosing presenters, setting up the schedule, and setting up other scheduled activities (I dropped the ball on a world-wide bug squashing this year). A fourth person to get audio/video recording set up would probably also be useful. Personally, I like the idea of having the conference on it's own, as we did this year. It legitimizes it a bit, and gives us full control. It was smallish this year, but it was fun and worth it. think year two would be more popular, especially with so many more Archers in Europe. Also, from some of the complaints about FrOSCon organizing this year, are you sure you want to work with them? This decision comes down to who is willing to organize the local stuff, more than anything. Dusty

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 23:52, Dieter Plaetinck wrote:

About the froscon idea: I think it pulls away some attention from Arch if there are too many other things to do, and it's less "cousy" but you get a lot of advantages (logistics taken care of, maybe some interested people stopping by).

True. However at FrOSCon and FOSDEM there were dev rooms specifically for talks about one project (e.g. PHP room, KDE room), so with a dedicated Arch room for talks this can be just fine (and we get extra visitors from the main conference :-P).

What makes an Archcon an archcon, and not "arch devs present at conference $foo" is mostly Arch talks. lots of Arch talks, but I think that won't be an issue. If every dev I'v met so far at froscon/fosdem gives 1 presentation, you can easily fill 2 days :)

Very true.

I don't know what you're referring to with the froscon organising complaints though.  Maybe Roman's issues with the visa, but that's a problem with the german embassy, not froscon (afaik).

actually it's froscon's team slowness that was the main problem -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)

On Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:10:20 +0200 Dieter Plaetinck wrote:

Okay, * who wants to do a presentation? Some ideas: thomas about mkinitcpio, pierre about dbscripts, ...?

We'd (Arch Hurd) definitely want to do a presentation; could perhaps hook up a box running Arch Hurd to a projector to give a demonstration, talk about our achievements over the last year and a bit, and of course a bit about the Hurd itself. -- Michael Walker (http://www.barrucadu.co.uk) Arch Hurd Developer; GNU Webmaster; FSF member #8385 http://www.archhurd.org http://www.gnu.org http://www.fsf.org