Re: [guadec-list] GUADEC 2017: Length and Format



Debarshi Ray <rishi is lostca se> wrote:
...
>    - Switch to two days of talks and two days of "hack days".
>    - Advertise the conference as a four day event. The fact that the first
>    two days are talks would be a minor footnote only; when people say they
>    want to come, we give them the dates for the four days.

Four days (2 + 2) sounds too short to me.
...  
While a 8 day conference with 4 days of BoFs can be considered too
much, are we really struggling to fill up the slots over a 6 day (3 +
3) schedule?

Not that I'm aware of.
 
Last time this was discussed, there was a concern about the lack of
good quality talk submissions. Did we explore the possibility of
having people from Elementary and Cinnamon attend GUADEC? Why do we
think that the quality of talk submissions have gone down? How about a
5 day conference?
 
I'm not particularly concerned about talk quality and that's not what's motivating this proposal.

I do like the idea of advertising the conference as one unit and
de-emphasizing the split between the core and BoF days. I am concerned
that going from 6 to 4 days would leave us with precious little time
for hallway and social interactions between people who barely meet
once every year.

In my experience most people only attend for 3 or 4 days. One aspect of the proposal is to align the conference format with this pattern of attendance. Another aspect is to increase the amount of hallway time for those attendees who only attend for 3 or 4 days, since it will mean that they will spend a smaller proportion of their time sitting in talks. 

A possible modification to the proposal would be to tack on an additional "unconference" day at the end, making it 4+1 days. The unconference day would have minimal organisation, would be presented as being optional, and would primarily be for those who want to hang around a bit longer and hack.

Thanks for the feedback, Debarshi!

Allan


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