Call for invitations to be the host of GUADEC 2008

[Anne Østergaard <anne oestergaard nu>]

Call for invitations to be the host of GUADEC 2008

GUADEC is the yearly GNOME Users and Developers European Conference.

Dear GNOME friends

For those of you who would like to host the next GUADEC in 2008 you are
hereby invited to write a formal invitation to the board of The
GNOME Foundation.

The invitation should be send to 
board gnome org and 
Anne �tergaard <aoe(at)gnome.org>
at the latest on May 15th 2007. 

As the conference is getting bigger and hopefully better and more
important every year there is no reason not to tell you that it takes a
lot of persons actively involved and committed in the actual planning
and a lot of time and spent carrying out the practical work.

It is also rewarding and very much fun and you learn a lot in the
process.

I usually say that when you can take care of a baby and handle a big
conference you are pretty much prepared for anything. These things are
real and can not be handed virtually.

Some practical advice:

There are a couple of things that you must take into account when
writing your invitation:

You must be a group of at least ten persons behind the invitation to
take on responsibility. 

These ten persons each need a lot of helpers.-  For this purpose you
can involve everybody - they do not all have to be nerds- other skills
can often be of great advantage to the team.

The conference must take place in the same physical place/ building.

You must be many persons very near and in the place/city where the
conference is taking place.

It is an advantage if there is a strong support from the community:  the
region, the city, university, huge companies, important organizations
and/ or among a very large group of local citizens.

The conference will need facilities from Saturday to Thursday. It will
be nice to have the facilities from Saturday to Saturday. (The weekend
normally used for establishing things and getting rid of jet-lack.- Some
activities which involve moving in the sun and fresh air could be
helpful here.) 

The technical infrastructure is crucial to the conference. The hacker
room and the conference rooms needs a lot of bandwidth. This is also the
case for streaming. 

One large conference hall for 500 persons.
Projectors, beamers and at least 3-4 large conference rooms and many
smaller rooms are needed and possibly an exhibition area and/ or hall.

A hacker room with pc' s available, and open most of the day and evening
is very much appreciated.

You will need a lot of sponsors and good press contacts.

You must have solutions for housing: Hotels, youth hostels, the living
for free program etc.

Catering, the "Beer Party" and cultural activities for a flexible number
of persons must be possible as well as affordable lunch meals for all.

Assisting in conference planning calls  or meetings and taking notes for
a long period of time, taking care of registration, accounting, the
technique in each conference room and of invited speakers and keynotes-
which involves some local transportation etc. and a hospitality scheme.

Construction and updating of the website, call for papers, logo
competition, printing conference material etc.

I am sure I forgot something but if you are able to meet most of the
things on this list you are already a real GNOME champion.

GUADEC has been hold at universities half of the time but other venue
solutions are quite possible.

It will be an advantage if you start following the planning list for
this years GUADEC 2007 in Birmingham guadec-list gnome org

The following two links lead you to "must read stuff" as well as to very
useful information:
http://live.gnome.org/GuadecPlanningHowTo?highlight=%28guadec%29%7C%
28howto%29

Check list:

http://live.gnome.org/GuadecPlanningHowTo/CheckList?highlight=%28guadec%
29%7C%28howto%29


Countries which have close regional collaboration could help each other
make a joint invitation to one venue.

We would love to see GUADEC have both national and regional spin off
effects for the use of GNOME and Free Software. Especially in places
where we have not yet so seen so many footprints:)

I know that you will need all the time you can get to prepare an
invitation so I hope I have inspired you to get started.

The GNOME Board hopes to hear from you May 15th or before.

Good luck!

GNOME greetings

Anne