Re: GUADEC 2007 in the UK?

[Thomas Wood <thos gnome org>]

Paul Cooper wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 21:52 +0000, Thomas Wood wrote:
>   
> > Bastien Nocera wrote:
> >     
> [snip]
>   
> > * Who is definitely willing to help organise it?
> >
> > We need a definitive working group. If people would like to put their 
> > names down on a list I think it would definitely help.
> >     
>
> I'd definitely be up for helping.
>   
Great. And judging by the rest of the e-mail, you are in an excellent 
position to do so! We need someone with good contacts and information on 
possible venues and you seem to have that covered. The Conservatoire 
sounds ideal and from what you've described I can't really see any 
problems with it. At Reading University the halls of residence are 
normally vacant and hired out during holidays, and I suspect it is the 
same with UCE. The Internet connection problem is probably one we will 
find where ever we go, so it shouldn't be a deciding factor.
>   
> > * Where would be suitable?
> >
> > We've already basically ruled out London. I think Birmingham would be a 
> > good choice in terms of getting people there. Basically any place close 
> > to an international airport and with a University would be a suitable 
> > candidate.
> >     
>
> I think Birmingham is a good choice in terms of big city, not too
> expensive, good transport links, etc, plus we have a growing ecosystem
> of FOSS companies in the West Midlands (and the premier UK FOSS event
> LugRadioLive is in nearby Wolverhampton). To be more specific one venue
> we investigated for a conference was the Conservatoire (i.e. music
> school). 
>   
[ ... ]

> I think a mini-GUADEC this year would be great. I would guess the
> Foundation Board would look at that as evidence of organisational
> ability. LRL would be the easy option, as more or less all we have to do
> is get speakers.
>
> Alternatively there are some smaller venues in the Birmingham area that
> I could investigate, and depending on the situation we (OpenAdvantage)
> might be able to help with costs. But we have plenty of other great
> potential venues if we have volunteers on the ground to get is sorted;
> Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff off the top of my head.
>   
LRL is obviously the easiest option, but I suspect they may want to keep 
neutral on such issues (unless KDE where to do a similar thing during 
the weekend for example - which would be great!). Maybe we need to start 
a separate thread about this. I think one or two subjects such as  
"GNOME and it's future", "Developing with GNOME" or "Contributing to 
GNOME", would be of interest to quite a lot of users and developers.

-Thomas