LUGRadio / GUADEC catchup

[Paul Cooper <pgc openadvantage org>]

Hi,

Thomas, Bastian, and I had a little impromptu meeting at LUGRadioLive to chat about GUADEC plans and Linuxworld UK. This a short rundown of what we discussed.

* Paul: Meeting with the conservatoire on Aug 2nd to finilise plans for the venue. UCE has finally told me that Cambrian Halls (opposite Conservatoire) are not available for next July due to refurb work. The next option I'll investigate is Aston Uni.

* Thomas: Investigate setting up Gnome-UK as a club / registered charity / NFP so we can get a bank account and other infrastructure ready.

* Bastien: Investigate who in RedHat to talk to about sponsorship and talk to other Guadec/Board people about who / how to approach existing sponsors and members of the advisory board (Nokia, Intel, Novell, Google, etc)

If you're interested in helping with any of these things, especially if you have any experience or knowledge of how we should setup Gnome-UK so we can get a bank account, please contact the relevant person.

The other thing we talked about was what to at LinuxWorld in October - we've been asked by .org village organiser if we want a stand. Traditionally we've had a stand and made a stab at promoting Gnome to anyone who comes along.

Our idea was that this year instead of selling Gnome as a whole broadly to users or developers we should instead use the booth primarily to drive membership and involvement in Gnome-UK. The rational being;

* by and large most people at linuxworld have made some kind of choice and are unlikely to switch (especially based on the limited rescouces we have; space, time, people, schwag). 
* so far involvement of existing Gnome users / supporters in Gnome-UK has been pretty minimal (this is a call to all lurkers to de-lurk!). We need to do a better job of telling people all the ways that they can contribute.
* if LUGRadio teaches us anything it how important building a community is, and what excellent results that can bring. LUGRadio, debian-uk, ubuntu, phpwm, london php, all seem good examples of more vibrant communites than ours. We need to fix that.

So we need to think about what is Gnome-UK (looking at Gnome-Hispano would be a good start) and how we're going to communicate that and the many ways to contribute to Gnome(-UK) at Linuxworld. 

Paul

PS - Sorry to anyone at LUGRadio whom might have been interested in joining the conversation, but it was hard enough to get Bastien, Thomas, and myself, together in one quiet place for more than a few minutes anyway. We will have to organise a get together in Birmingham for anyone interested in Guadec help and planning (possbily Sept / Oct)?



-- 
Paul Cooper                    |  Tel: 0121 634 1620
Assistant Director             |  Fax: 0121 634 1630
OpenAdvantage                  |  http://www.openadvantage.org