Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009

["Quim Gil" <quimgil gmail com>]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Paul Cooper <paul openedhand com> wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 07:05 -0400, john palmieri wrote:
>> The idea is that they are two separate events with the exception of a
>> room reserved for freedesktop.org and other crossover talks.  Also
>> keynotes should most likely be joint as well as the after parties.
>> Everything else should remain separate as to not drastically change
>> the culture of each event.

When it comes to the program, in fact we are talking about joint bug
sessions + specific tracks. The sensible approach is: some keynotes to
be decided in common (Like e.g. Linus Torvalds in the opening session
and Richard Stallman in the closure). Some other chosen by each side.
"Track owners" could work out their own selection process.

freedesktop.org tracks don't necessarely mean all together since they
might be just as technical and focused to especialized audiences.

On the other hand, you might have tracks based on topics like
location, touchscreen UI, widgets and etc interesting for both
audiences regardless of the specific technologies underneath.

Then surely you have many topics interesting only to GNOME or KDE
members, but still you will find an "aKademy attendee" interesting in
that specific "GUADEC session" at that time of the day and the other
way round.

In practice this means that participants will have access to almost
all areas and sessions, having probably the same fee scheme. Which
means a common registration process, something really boring to setup
that brings more or less the same critical work for 400 or 1000
people.

Accounting. You definitely want a single professional accountant
service and a single bank account, independent from the GNOME and
aKademy foundations. At the end of the event the result should be 0,
or have a revenue to be split as agreed (see below).

Social events, they tend to be better with more people. In some cases
there are obvious limitations (you don't want a boat to sink with a
representation of the best free desktop hackers inside). Call it "The
Cute KDE Love Boat" or "The GNOME BareFoot Tanga Contest" and you will
choose your audience. There is plenty of nights for everything.

Sponsors. GUADEC has the initiative here moving much more support and
budget than aKademy (which doesn't mean that they don't do amazing
stuff with the budget they get). Looking at the names the answer is
clear: Nokia, Linux Foundation, Novell, HP, Canonical, Google,
Mandriva... You want a common pool. Increase the numbers for
cornestone and gold since at the end most of the companies at that
level are working with both events and likely will want to get the
visibility of both communities. Keep the affordable Silver level as it
is for those companies that have been silver until now in any of the
events.

My only serious concern about sponsors is how to make the back of the
shirts not-ugly.  ;)

One delicate aspect might be how to share the resources for sponsoring
participants and revenue, if any. Of course losses should be
considered but a conservative business approach should prevent that
due to the reasonable expecations to get sponsors. A solution could be
that both organizers of GUADEC and aKademy in 2008 share the
information on what have they got from sponsors and how much from that
did they invest inviting participants. Find how the numbers correlate
between both events and find the right % that would correspond to
each. 50/50 is a nice number and something to consider, but at least
until now the numbers have been (I believe) different and bigger in
the GUADEC side. I'm sure the right peoplefrom both projects  can
agree on the right terms pretty easily.

PS: Now I see Dave has sent an email getting into more details on
separate sponsored participants etc. Yes, this is just common sense.

-- 
Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com