Re: [guadec-list] List of things we'd love to see done

[Enver ALTIN <ealtin gmail com>]

Hola Baris,

Any comments? Clock's ticking...

Saludos,

Enver ALTIN wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Me, Umit Bozkir and Kerem Can Karakas grouped up on Saturday to enjoy 
> the amazing Bosporus view while talking about free software events 
> coming up in Turkey. For the record, we all live in Istanbul. There's an 
> active free software (user and developer) community here; and we help 
> organize big annual events for more than 5000 visitors every year. "We" 
> means the Turkish Linux Users Association, which has around 1000 members.
>
> We were talking about the Turkish Free Software Conference to take place 
> in Ankara in June 20-21; and it dawned to us that GUADEC is coming nearby.
>
> Thankfully Baris is doing most (if not all) of the preliminary work. 
> Albeit a bit early, we contacted Baris about 6 months ago to offer some 
> help, may need there be. So we decided that we should come up with a 
> list of things that we'd love to see done for GUADEC, and of course we'd 
> love to help with these. Here it goes.
>
>     * A stand at the airport, with a big GNOME logo on it. At least one
>       English-speaking volunteer at the stand to be there to prevent
>       people from getting lost in the city.
>     * A shuttle bus between the common hotels area and the airport.
>     * A team for everything about the transportation in Istanbul. This
>       is roughly a "I'm lost! Help!" or "How do I go to Topkapi Palace"
>       hotline.
>     * Event organization team for people willing to explore the city.
>       This team would collect the FAQ that will answer to "which museum
>       should we visit?" or "where should we have dinner?" sort of
>       questions and organize tours.
>     * We'd like to see a dedicated accomodation organization team,
>       there's no other way this problem could be tackled. There are lots
>       of good hotels and hostels around; but availabilty, quality and
>       price is always a concern. Yet, most of these hostels don't have
>       websites with enough pictures so you don't get an idea of the room
>       you have booked until you actually arrive. We'd love to see this
>       solved by a few people actually visiting hotels, getting price
>       quotes for groups, taking photos and writing reviews.
>     * We'd like to see an appointed visa issues guy. Getting a visa
>       shouldn't be a problem at all, but just in case. People from
>       certain countries may need special help.
>     * Local IT support team. We think this is a must. There will be
>       network, electricity, wiring, IP, firewall, whatever problems and
>       we don't really want people blogging about how bad that broken
>       thing affects their lives.
>     * We'd probably get some professional help from a local ticket sales
>       office for airline and route planning before it's too late. We
>       could get someone to volunteer for that, and that someone could
>       use Skype or e-mail for easier communication.
>     * Local press relations. We'd love to see translated press releases
>       appear on IT magazines and national press around here before and
>       after the conference. Creating hype and awareness is important for us.
>     * We'd love to see the entry barrier lowered for people with
>       technical decision making positions in Turkish governmental
>       organizations; so that they can see the people developing the
>       software they use for themselves.
>     * Govt. people attending means there will be some amount of native
>       Turkish people who don't speak and understand English very well.
>       We've successfully used simultaneous English-to-Turkish
>       translation for certain events in the past, we can most probably
>       use it again at least for large-audience talks in GUADEC. It would
>       be great to add a checkbox like "I would use simultaneous
>       translation if available" to the registration page so we can get
>       an idea about the demand beforehand.
>     * More hype: In one of the previous events we were able to invite an
>       official to join the opening talk from the Ministry of
>       Transportation (which regulates the IT sector in Turkey). We'd
>       love to do this again, but it looks like it's already a bit late.
>       Well, I agree that this one is too high on the sky.
>     * There are certain people we'd love to see talking at GUADEC and
>       this includes the Pardus project, which is a Linux distribution
>       project primarily funded by The National Research Institute of
>       Electronics and Cryptology. It looks like their attention is
>       towards aKademy but we definitely should invite them because for
>       now they've become one of the big flags for free software in Turkey.
>     * We'd love to see a will-do-whatever team. There will be need for
>       local help throughout the conference, and we should be prepared
>       for more demand for resources.
>
>
> We estimated that we'd need about 20-25 people to get this work done; 
> and getting together and organizing people would need about a week.
>
> Thanks,