Re: Application for hosting the 5th GUADEC.

[Glynn Foster <glynn foster sun com>]

Hey Nils,

> Application for hosting the 5th GNOME Users and Developers Conference.

Thanks for the application! It's really great to see people thinking
about next years conference so early. I am looking forward to it already
[grin]

> Please indicate a budget and your experience with sponsors from earlier
> events. We would need to use the GNOME foundations network to get in contact
> with the right people for sponsorship contracts at big companies. What are
> the criteria for Gold/Platinum etc sponsorship?

This year the foundation board set the target of raising 50K early in
the year for GU4DEC and we managed to raise about 30K, which considering
the current economic climate was a pretty excellent achievement.
Obviously we're still trying to put together the final budget for the
event, so things are a little uncertain as yet.

One of the major sticking points of this years conference was the high
costs of the conference venue and network, although bandwidth was kindly
sponsored by HEAnet - this cut significantly into our budget, and it's
certainly something that needs to be thought out for next year.

This year we embarked on a new enterprise to encourage companies to
sponsor the event, and get their value for their buck. This year we
partnered a German company called 'LogOn' to produce a Linux work day,
splitting the proceeds 50/50. Linux work is a very successful series of
one day confererences hosted in various European cities -

	http://www.ltt.de/linux-at-work.2002/final-report.shtml

where a number of high profile business and community speakers give
presentations on the current Linux market. We gave sponsors the
opportunity of buying exhibition booths for the Linux work event.
Looking back I'm not sure how successful it was and whether it is
something to put in mind for future years, given the extremely tough
economic conditions. I still have to see the attendance numbers for the
event, but I'm pretty happy with the quality of some of the sessions -
some really interesting stuff happening, to prove that we're on the
verge of something special.

As far as the sponsorship goes, basically the sponsorship amount is
proportional to the amount of exposure that a sponsor receieves, in
terms of a mention in any press releases, size of logos on website,
posters and programs etc. While I know some details, I'd rather Leslie
comment on this, so I don't get things wrong. This year we had a number
of levels of sponsorship - Platinum, Gold, Supporting, Media Partners,
Hardware Providers, Network Supporters and Association Partners. The
Foundation can certainly help with regard sponsorship contact details -
one of the big things that we missed out on this year was not having
enough time to target local companies. I'm pretty sure we missed out on
potentially quite a lot there.

> End of June is the nicest time of the year in Norway, and the best time for
> HIA to arrange the conference. April is unfortunately impossible for us,
> since it is just before the exam period starts, so all the theatres will
> still be in use. In addition, the students will focus on rehearsing to the
> exams instead of attending or helping out at GUADEC, and the teachers that
> help out arranging GUADEC will be too busy following up the students or
> making exams.

We also had that problem, given that the university wasn't free until
the main bulk of the exams were over. Unfortunately this means that many
students couldn't attend the event, which was a great pity. Given that
we now have more time to think about the event, how possible would it be
to organize a date to try and accommodate everyone?

> We expect the GNOME foundation to help organising central GNOME related
> tracks, tutorials and BOF's, according to state-of-the-art GNOME development
> in 2004.

This is generally a local committee responsibility, which unfortunately
takes up quite a large amount of time. The order of events should be
something like -

	o Call for papers
		- This includes Abstract, Photo and Bio
	o Full paper submission
	o Successful papers announced
	o Schedule announced

We made the mistake of publishing the schedule before it was properly
set in stone - this caused a large amount of grief, shuffling people
around and having to cancel some talks. I think it would be better next
year to avoid announcing the schedule until we definitely have the
schedule fixed in stone.

I think it would be great to think about having a certain set of
conference themes, and getting people to write papers to those themes.
GUADEC is very much about developers and their opportunity to show some
of the new technology, so we may need to think about this more, and
whether this is appropriate for such a conference.

This year the Foundation also embarked on trying to provide professional
tutorials for a fee. We were lucky enough to have Owen Taylor giving a
tutorial on GTK+ programming, and Tuomas Kusmanen and Jakub Steiner
giving a tutorial on the GIMP. We hoped generate some revenue off this,
but we really didn't achieve this, mainly due to the fact that we didn't
target our audience well enough and whether there was really supply and
demand for this time of venture.

> Agder LUG, GLUG and the OSYS group at HIA would organise side tracks and
> tutorials,  such as Mobility/Accessibility, SkoleLinux or other themes
> according to people we know in the OSS communities, and/or send out Calls for
> Papers. We also could consider arranging  social events like sea-menu on
> board, Norwegain wine cellar evening, concert event..

This sounds great!

> Please give feedback as soon as possible whether you want the conference in
> Norway in end of June, or not. The hotel prices shown are valid if we get a
> reply before 22. July. After that we have to renegotiate prices for  the
> hotel.

Absolutely, I'll certainly bring this item up at the next board meeting.
Hopefully also there will be other groups that may be willing to compete
to hold the event?

> Bjarne  Offenberg is board member for the student house and pub called
> Luftslottet, which also may be used during the arrangement. Either as a pub,
> or as a venue for keynote speakers where we need space for more than 204
> persons. Luftslottet is situated right beside the college. Bjarne has
> experience from arranging larger concerts and arrangements with up to 500
> participants at Luftslottet. He also has helped out arranging the Norwegian
> short film festival in Grimstad this year, see
> http://www.kortfilmfestivalen.no/. Mikael Snaprud, Nils Ulltveit-Moe and
> Finn-Arne Johansen are key persons for arranging the other Linux related
> arrangements above.

Awesome!

> Deciding upon dates, and getting prices for accomodation should be done as
> soon as possible, as prices increases the closer you get to the conference.

Sounds sensible.

> Working with possible sponsors, like HP, SUN, Ximian should start as early as
> possible. We should also consider other companies situated in Norway that use
> Linux to a large extent, or make Linux based products or sell services, like
> LinPro, Trustix,  Schlumberger,  Dolphin,  BibliotekSystemer,  Kitrus, eZ..

Sounds great!

> The Linux installweek in mid-January 2004 may be used as a kick-off forum
> where the GNOME foundation, Agder LUG, GLUG and HIA representatives meet to
> plan the 5th GUADEC conference, and also give some early talks.

I think this would help a huge amount. Having enough people on the
ground was a failing of this years conference, and working over
timezones proved to be annoying, at best :(

> AUD-MAX204 persons
> AUD-MIN104 persons
> AUD-F91 persons
> AUD-G90 persons

The maximum limit of the main theatre sounds a little bit small.
Although I don't have attendance figures handy, I know that we pushed
well over 300 people in Seville - not sure how many people were in
Dublin.

> The Linux users
> group already has infrastructure for a  hacking room  where people may
> connect their PC-s and do coding, even though it may have to be extended to
> facilitate more PC's. In addition, all theatres and the canteen at HIA have
> free WLAN connectivity. In addition, Grimstad is on the nicest coastal areas
> of Norway, so we could try to arrange e.g. A boat trip, or some other kind of
> social arrangement.

Free network, ROCK! How many people can the network room handle? This
years conference had a nice large room, and although was never filled to
capacity, it provided a nice place for people to sit down and
brainstorm, hacking on code, etc..

> Grimstad is a nice and relaxed town 40 km (45 minutes) from Kristiansand
> airport,  and 180 km (2.5 hours) from Torp airport (Sandefjord), where you
> may get take the budget airline Ryanair.
> There are airport coaches going to and from Kristiansand, and the express
> coaches between Kristiansand and Oslo corresponds with Torp airport until
> 2200. It is also possible to take the Color Line ferry from Denmark to
> Kristiansand, or the DFDS ferry from Newcastle to Kristiansand, or from
> Strømstad in Sweden to Sandefjord.

Is Kristiansand the main airport of Norway? I think this is quite
important, given the difficulties that we had in Seville. How regular
are the various buses?

> Single room with breakfast 60 Euro
> 
> Double room with breakfast 72 Euro (36 Euro pr. Person)
> 
> Apartment for 4 persons with breakfast 115 Euro

This certainly sounds like a much cheaper option to the hotels of
Dublin. People staying on campus typically had to pay about 60 Euro, for
non-hotel room.

> FOOD AND BEER PRICES:
> 
> The student canteen offers reasonable lunch (around 4 euro) and dinner (6-8
> euro) , and usually offers 3 courses in addition to ordered food like hamburgers etc.
> 
> The student house/pub Luftslottet sells 0.5 l beer for 4.8 euro (No, it is
> not that cheap, but you can buy tax-free when entering Norway ;-)

Is there any other bars and restaurants around the conference venue?
With such a large amount of people travelling, it would be impossible to
accommodate everyone in the same place for food/beer.

Let me know if you need more information!


thanks,

Glynn
ex-ex-ex-GU4DEC Planning Committee ;)