Re: [guadec-list] Keynote speakers brainstorming

[Dave Neary <nearyd gmail com>]

Hi,

On 04/03/2013 08:34 PM, Karen Sandler wrote:
> > I know Robyn and Jaroslav personally and I think they're good fits for
> > this. On the other hand, I'm a bit concerned that people might feel
> > GUADEC is too much about Red Hat. Red Hat is going to be one of the
> > major partners and sponsors, most people in the organizing team are
> > redhatters, there will be a lot of attendees from Red Hat since it's
> > held in Brno etc.
>
> Good point. I also worry a bit about GUADEC seeming too Red Hat focused
> this year. This is a bit crazy perhaps, but I'm just tossing out an idea -
> what about having distro themed keynoters with one from fedora, one from
> debian, one from opensuse and then one from either mint or ubuntu? Or this
> may be difficult to limit now that I think of it, given all the other
> relevant distros...

I agree on the "fear of RHT overload" point, but one keynote is not 
*that* huge - unless we also end up with a design team keynote (which 
would be Red Hat) too. Then again, I like breaking habits before they 
get too embedded in the psyche - so I'd suggest avoiding a Shell/design 
keynote this year, since we've had one each of the last 3 years.

I love the idea of a Mint keynote - I also think you'll have some 
resistance to it. I would not suggest having an Ubuntu keynote - we've 
reached out to them a lot, and recent changes only reinforce the fact 
that the schism is consecrated - at this point, inviting an Ubuntu 
keynote would be the equivalent of inviting a KDE keynote. Interesting 
in the abstract, but very likely to be misunderstood by the audience.

> > What about inviting a "representative of users"? I suppose there some
> > larger deployments of GNOME no matter if it's on RHEL or SUSE or some
> > other system. There are also companies that build their solutions on
> > GNOME technologies. I've always felt that such voices (of those that use
> > the software in day-to-day business) are not emphasised enough at
> > conferences such as GUADEC.
>
> this is another good way to go! We probably should just put together a
> list of people that we think would be good speakers and start inviting
> them though. A lot of them won't be able to make it anyway.

Well, the idea keeps coming up, so we might as well get it out there 
again this year... how about a nice, "typical" GNOME user like Greg KH 
or Linus Torvalds? For the record, I think neither would be a good 
choice. It's better to give someone who doesn't usually have a pulpit 
the opportunity to speak.

Karen, do you have contacts with any prominent happy GNOME users? 
Institutional users would be best, but famous people who use GNOME 3 
(fame is relative) would work too.

Cheers,
Dave.




--
Dave Neary, Lyon, France
Email: dneary gnome org / Jabber: nearyd gmail com
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