Re: GUADEC 2007 in the UK?

[Glynn Foster <Glynn Foster Sun COM>]

Hey,

On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 22:00 +0000, Andrew Sobala wrote:
> So, before anyone can answer that, I think we need to know:
> 
> * Does the geographical location of this group matter? Do they need to 
> be in the same place or can they organise remotely?
> * What do the people need to be able to do? Is it just normal 
> organisational skills, or is something special required?
> * How much time is this going to take up?
> * etc.
> 
> I've Cced gman just to irritate him :-) Actually, I remember he did a 
> huge role in organising GUADEC Dublin and can probably help us answer 
> the above.

I think it's definitely harder organizing things remotely, and having a
relatively small team on the ground of the location would help a lot
actually. Without that you're definitely sunk.

It's the simple things that you need to worry about -

	o Venue
		- Choice and size of rooms
		- Cost of venue
		- Projectors, whiteboards, furniture
		- Network/Wireless
		- Built-in audio system?
	o Catering and Accomodation
		- Restaurants, pubs, cafes, ...
		- Youth Hostels, Hotels, ...

That all probably caused more heartache than most of the other stuff
[1]. Since I was relatively on my own for a while, I actually took off a
couple of months from Sun work and concentrated on the conference full
time leading up to it. With a bigger team, I wouldn't imagine this would
be more than a couple of hours a week at most providing everything goes
to play.

I don't think there are any special skills required, just need to be
prepared for some hard work, and sticking to some sort of set of
deadlines.

It's also relatively fulfilling when things go mostly to plan and the
conference is a success. I think if I were to do it again, I'd try and
drive down the costs of the venue and hold it in a university that
actually wanted the conference - hosting GUADEC should be a honour, not
something that we necessarily had to pay a huge amount of money for
[like in Trinity, Dublin].


Glynn

[1] Although lack of a budget was also a big deal - that one was a 
    breakdown at the GUADEC Planning/Foundation level though.