Re: Changing the name of GUADEC

[Mikael Hallendal <micke imendio com>]

David Neary wrote:

Hi,

Sorry to bust in late, and I kinda got tired before reaching the end of
the thread so this might have been raised already.

Maybe this discussion would be better started with asking ourselves a
couple of questions:

* What kind of conferences are we interested in?

* Who should be the target audience of those conferences?

* Where should they be held?

For several years there has been a movement to change Guadec into
something that it hasn't been in the past (only the name suggested that
this was a user oriented event, but most people have not thought of it
as such). Maybe we should consider dropping Guadec and replace it with
one ore more conferences?

For a conference targetting "converting new users/developers" it makes a
lot more sense to me to host it as part of a larger conference so that
not all people going to the conference actually has to go for GNOMEs
sake but might happen to come into the GNOME area and stays there.

For any non-GNOME developer/user non-local to the city where it's being
held I would guess that there is little interest in travelling to a
conference only for the sake of "checking it out".

Also, I'm not at all convinced that having a hacker/user-combined event
is such a good idea. Hackers going there are going to want to spend
their time with other hackers, discussing and coding. Users coming there
will be faced with people not interested in talking to them.

With less hacking there will be even less interest for companies sending
their developers there since it will just be "a week off work". So maybe
 we should consider splitting them entirely and have the Boston Summit
for developers and something-new for users?


And to sum this mail up I'll answer my own three questions:

* What kind of conferences are we interested in?

- I'm personally most interested in a pure developer conference with
  hacking, discussion and possible small sessions where people can
  present their projects for other hackers.

  Such events should be for GNOME developers, not targetted at getting
  new developers but to evolve GNOME. Being smaller with less demanding
  audience (ie. we need a room with network pretty much), organizing
  these  events will be much easier.

- User conferences/new developer conferences would probably be best to
  have several smaller ones to attract as much local audience as
  possible. Preferrably co-hosting with larger conferences.

* Who should be the target audience of those conferences?

- Obviously for the hacker one, HACKERS *only*.

* Where should they be held?

- Around the world, the hacker conference would preferrably move around
  all over the world and not being on a fixed location in Europe or the
  US. This will give us the opportunity to travel to lots of different
  places and cultures. Due to really low demands on the actual places,
  hosting these events will be much easier than a full-blown Guadec.

Just a couple of thoughts,
  Mikael Hallendal

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