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

["Diego Escalante Urrelo" <diegoe gnome org>]

Hi

On 6/10/08, Enver ALTIN <ealtin gmail com> wrote:
>
>
> 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.
>

YES, PLEASE!. For this we will need to fill in the travel details for everyone:
  http://live.gnome.org/GUADEC/2008/Travel

I think the ideal -if done- would be to have two or three guys hanging
around on the "crowded" hours of arrival, greet the newcomer and give
some indications like which bus to take. No need for taking people
from airport to hotel, but just receiving directions from a GNOME guy
is much better than asking a random guy, I think.


> A shuttle bus between the common hotels area and the airport.
>

Again, maybe for the crowded hours? We need to make a call for filling
arrival hours in the wiki if this would be possible.

> 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.

It's useful to have a GUADEC 911 line, maybe forwarded to more than
one cellphone or something, if someone can take the responsibility,
please tell us which number to relay on. I would still be trapped in
Birmingham's airport if there wasn't a 911 line last year.

> 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.
>

Maybe a wiki page would be enough, or just hanging around with all the gnomies.

> 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.
>

Define a responsible for this task, and write something similar to
  http://guadec.expectnation.com/public/content/accommodation

Price, what it misses, what it has and rocks, etc. Grab a phone dir,
and call these options, take notes on prices and discounts and if you
have the time go visit the hotels. Most of them are usually honest
about what they have and what they don't, in the worst case there are
always options so we can dump the liers ipso-facto.

> 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.
>

There's already a contact for visa letters, luckily only few of us
have needed one. If YOU are needing a Visa, please mail Baris. Check
the requisites for your country.

> 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.
>

Is Gil going to be helping in infra again? Gil?. I guess most of the
work will be done in coordinating with univ's IT staff on getting
ports open and etc.

> 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.
>

Copy GUADEC's press release and/or write a quick note yourself and
mail it to local newspapers "reader contact" addresses, basically give
them a friendly reminder on this. Some of them will be interested,
those who not wouldn't go to GUADEC anyway, so no big loss. If you
know any local reporter, ask for his help to contact others directly.

> 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.
>

I think GUADEC is more a niché thing, with gnome devs and users in
mind, more than decision makers, and etc. It is nice to have them, but
I don't think that they would make any decision after seeing a clutter
presentation or listening to Lennart talk about spatial audio and that
crack.

> 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.

GUADEC is not a general free software event, it's a GNOME thing,
almost exclusively.

Remember there's
  http://live.gnome.org/GUADEC/2008/Volunteer

for taking note of volunteers or just adding ideas. A quick task would
be "10 must know phrases of Turkey: thanks, bye, hello, no, don't
know, wasn't me". Just add a table to that wiki page.