GNOME.Asia - January 18, 2011 IRC Meeting notes

[Pockey Lam <pockeylam gnome org>]

Dear all,

Please find below the meeting notes and action items of today meeting for our action. You can also access it at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeAsia/Minutes/20110118

January 18, 2011 Meeting

Meeting notes and action items

1. We discussed about the dates of the hackfest / conference. Everybody (including the local Bangalore team) is okay with the hackfest starting from March 28 option for 5 days. 28 and 29 March will be hosted in Intel office while 30 March to 1st April will be hosted in the University. 2nd April will be the conference. If sponsors are enough, we may consider to host a 2-days conference. Fred suggested to put the optional 2 days conference into our existing contents esp the call for sponsor document in order to make it more attractive to sponsors, we will need to think of a way to phrase it nicely without committing.
2. We discussed about how to promote our hackfest / conference call for paper, we need to first officially announce it in the gnome.org front page and gnome.asia front page, and then we can all blog / send to selected mailing lists / promote locally as well
   • AI: BLUG_Fred to write an announcement of the GNOME 3.0 Hackfest | GNOME.Asia Summit 2011 to be put in our gnome.asia and gnome.org front page
3. Fred mentioned that: Andreas offered to help us on design
   • AI: Fred to follow up with Andreas on the design work
4. Brian sent email and give some comments about the call for sponsors
   • AI: abharath to modify the call for sponsors based on Brian's comments, if any comment is unclear, abharath will email us to verify
5. abharath suggested to be the contact person when contacting local sponsors. Fred suggested that we should split the contacts based on best relation basis
   • AI: abharath to ask Parag to fetch the full list as Parag had a list of local companies working on Linux
   • AI: we will make a list of sponsors and then assign who will be the contact person(s) respectively
6. We talked about the new design of gnome.asia site and site contents
   • AI: Will is working on the new design site launch, we should start seeing some changes tomorrow
7. Fred mentioned that it seems there is a GNOME user group in Bangalore already, it maybe able to help volunteering / support our event
   • AI: abharath to esquire on GNOME User Group status from his colleague(s)
8. We discussed about the date of the deadlines of call for sponsors / paper:
   • It is suggested to give enough time for participants to apply for VISA, it usually takes 1 to 3 weeks to apply for VISA
   • It is also suggested to give more time to companies / sponsors (at least 2 months) as a lot of companies have process and procedures for fund approval
   • So the deadline of call for paper should be 1.5 months before the hackfest / conference i.e. mid Feb
   • So the deadline of call for sponsors can be in mid March just to give more time for us to find enough sponsors, we will not refuse any sponsor eventhough they passed deadline, however, it is suggested that we should have a deadline and notify them if the deadline is passed, some printed materials may not carry their logos.

   • AI: Pockey / Emily to check the timeline to get VISA from China / HongKong

     • checked Hong Kong and Macau ID card holders are granted visas in 1 working day depending on the cut off time.
     • For others, if you apply it in Hong Kong it takes 4-5 working days.
     • For US and French citizens, it takes 1 week to apply for the VISA - checked by Will and Fred
9. We are all agreed to charge entrance fee as local Bangalore team proposed and as long as it's reasonable. We will waive the following four kinds of participants for the conference:
   • Sponsors - depending on the level, they will have a certain number of pass for their staff
   • Speakers and GNOME contributors - whose travel paid by the GNOME Foundation (like us, the marketing, documentation, release teams plus gnome 3.0 / shell developers)
   • Organizers, working team members and volunteers
   • Students of the university provided the venue for free
     • AI: Bharath to work with Will to put the rules in the registration system
10. Max to send us email to update the web conference tool
    • to test the web conference tool (justin.tv) with Akhil as next step,
    • if the quality is good, Max to write a how-to in a wiki page so different launch parties organizers can connect their events together
11. We also discussed about other topics:
    • Next meeting, let's talk about the bank account thing and cash flow
    • It is suggested to give students some GNOME training: e.g. how to contribute to GNOME and show students how to write a simple app. Fred also suggested to have talk about compilation lesson for gnome 3.0, or GTK 3 hacking. We also mentioned the technical helpdesk, we will discuss more about these topics on upcoming meeting. Some other brainstorming ideas as below:
      • yup something like a BoF but more organized or ask question to famous GNOME hackers/contributors, so something for smaller group with a lot of interaction
      • anyways lets brainstorm this week and decide by the next meet
      • we can announce the training or BoF even on short notice days before the Hackfest or Conference
      • it would be good to avoid slides and 1 to many type of activities

12. Finally, Bharath would like Everyone to update their status on http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/GNOME.Asia2011 (AI)

- Pockey