Re: What is GUADEC?

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

I don't think we should eliminate the enterprise or government outreach 
aspects of GUADEC - think how important deployments like Extremadura 
have been (or should have been).  However I think we should focus that 
outreach to take advantage of our strengths.

In that way, enterprises and/or governments with interest in "the Free 
Desktop" will know that GUADEC is the place to go for specific, targeted 
discussions of issues of interest to them, from a highly technical and 
expert perspective.  The fact that GUADEC is full of technically astute 
hackers _including the core platform developers_ is something few 
conferences can offer.  Instead of trying to "pull people in off the 
street", so to speak, let's advertise the fact that GUADEC is the place 
to go for answers, solutions, and open dialogue about issues of 
importance to users.

What I'm suggesting is this:  keep GUADEC a hacker's conference, but 
specifically make it a place where users (especially technically savvy 
users and institutional users) can engage with developers on technical 
issues.  This will not only be helpful to institutional users and 
would-be deployers, in helping them understand what Gnome can do for 
them, but also to Gnome developers, by helping us understand the 
challenges and needs of the broader user community.

Bill

Dave Neary wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Tim Ney, GNOME Foundation a écrit :
>
> > On Wed, 2005-09-07 at 16:05 +0200, Quim Gil wrote:
> >
> > > For some the GUADEC is an opportunity to meet, for others is a way to
> > > get new contributors, for others is a way to get some money for the
> > > Foundation, for others is a way to enhance a common vision of GNOME, 
> > > for
> > > others....
> >
> >
> > That's a fair summary of what the board has discussed, as recently as
> > June.  Jonathan Blandford once termed GUADEC as GNOME's mothership, an
> > annual place to meet and recharge batteries.  It has played at least
> > four important roles for GNOME and the foundation over the last six
> > years:
> >
> > *Technical *Outreach *Community (Social)
> > *Fundraising
> >   Press announcements about the event state:
> >
> > About GUADEC
> > The GNOME User and Developer Europe Conference (GUADEC) is an annual
> > gathering of GNOME developers, enthusiasts and individual, business,
> > education and government users worldwide. It provides a forum for
> > members of the GNOME project to showcase their work and to discuss the
> > future of GNOME development. Housed in a different European country each
> > year, GUADEC is a catalyst for the future development and direction of
> > GNOME. 
>
>
> The point is, Tim, that is is huge. It's wide open. And aiming too 
> wide is at the root of the problems that there have been with GUADEC 
> over the past two years, where a large portion of the attendees were 
> either completely uninterested in the first two days, or completely 
> uninterested in the 3rd.
>
> Aiming a conference at "developers, enthusiasts and individual, 
> business, education and government users worldwide" is madness. We 
> might as well say "everybody", and be done with it.
>
> If it's outreach, who are we reaching out to?
>
> There is no argument on at least 2 of the points - everyone who goes 
> sees GUADEC as a technical, social conference. No-one disagrees with 
> having outreach either - but I would prefer to see us reaching out to 
> people just off our radar - converting GNOME users into advocates, 
> converting local free software developers into GNOME developers, and 
> converting local hobbyists into free software and GNOME users.
>
> The ROI for the enterprise & government outreach has been small, and 
> I'm not sure we should continue it.
>
> Cheers,
> Dave.