[guadec-list] [2017] Minutes of meeting 2016-09-05

[Sam Thursfield <ssssam gmail com>]

See: https://wiki.gnome.org/GUADEC/2017/Meetings/20160905

Core team meeting 2016-09-05, at https://meet.jit.si/guadec2017

== Present ==

 * AllanDay
 * JavierJardon
 * AlbertoRuiz
 * SamThursfield

== Actions ==

 * Sam to pass our many questions onto Kate at MMU
 * Javier to try to contact U of M about the Whitworth Park Residences
accommodation
 * Allan to pursue the Foundation getting a Transferwise account
 * Allan to work on Foundation sponsorship brochure
 * Alberto to get list of sponsors who were approached for 2016 edition

== Meeting summary ==

The most pressing tasks are:

  * to get contracts for venue and accomodation agreed & signed.
  * to create sponsorship brochure

=== Videos ===

Talk videos were excellent this year. We should look at working with
the C3 videos team again.

Alternately, GNOME could start its own video team. The GNOME project
bought 2 cameras for Strasbourg, so we would just need people to run
the team.

=== Legal Entity ===

Kat & Alberto read through the MMU vat exemption form and found
nothing to suggest that we need a UK-based charity to sign the
contracts. Hopefully the US-based GNOME Foundation can sign the
contract with MMU. The board have approved this in principle already.

Not clear exactly how to pay (transfer directly from US account to
MMU, or via a UK account), we'll check with MMU.

Also, can we sign electronically?

=== Accomodation ===

MMU's proposed accomodation (the Birley "Townhouses"):

  * cost ~£35 a night per person
  * are very close to the Birley building venue
  * allow self-catering
  * seem good, but we haven't looked round them yet

We believe we can reserve ~200 places now, then give a final number ~1
month before the conference starts based on how many people reserved
accomodation when registering. We need to get the exact terms of this
in writing.

Also need to know:

  * are they good for families?
  * can the rooms be locked individually?
  * how many people share 1 bathroom / shower ?

Alternative accomodation found at University of Manchester (Whitworth
Park Residences)

  * cost ~£20 a night per person
  * 1.2 miles from Birley building venue
  * unable to get in contact with them so far

Some discussion of whether £35 is reasonable and how accomodation
costs affect attendance.

=== Early promotion ===

Attendence suffers when the conference is announced late; we can
announce the dates as soon as we complete the venue booking.

Basic website & some social media promotion should be done before end of 2016.

CarlaQuintana & OliverGutierrez have agreed with Alberto to help with
the website.

=== Printing ===

We need to do last-minute printing of banners (last minute so we can
keep accepting sponsorship for as long as possible).

MMU has a print shop -- can we get a quote from them?

=== Sponsors ===

Alberto has done much research already.

Some sponsors need to be approached early on because their budgets get
fixed 1 year in advance.

We need a sponsorship brochure. Allan is looking at doing a generic
sponsorship brochure for the Foundation, which should feed into the
GUADEC 2017 one.

Sponsor logos need to be displayed prominently around the conference,
on badges, banners etc. so that sponsorship is felt to be worth
something.

A "photo wall", containing GNOME & GUADEC banners & also the logos of
all sponsors, works well at GNOME Asia.

=== Code of Conduct ===

There is work ongoing to create a "GNOME Code of Conduct" that all
GNOME conferences would need to follow. We could also reuse the code
of conduct from the 2016 edition.

=== Conference format ===

Allan has proposed shortening the conference & making it a "5 days"
rather than "3 days + 3 days" event. One goal is to make the BOFs more
inclusive; right now as a newcomer it can be hard to find a place
where you fit in once the 'core' days are over.

Not much discussion of this on the guadec-list when it was proposed.

We also need to figure out 'workshops' for 2017. Before conference?
Merged into hack days? Need to announce *early* if they will run
before the conference.

We will book the venue for the 3 core days + 3 hack days, but will
find out if this can be changed later on.

A "how to contribute" workshop is a must-have; this could run on the
morning of the first BOF days.

=== Raising profile of subprojects at GUADEC ===

Potential sponsors might not be aware of how much userland & plumbing
work is discussed at GUADEC. If we can make this more prominent we
might attract more sponsorship than we would if perceived as a
"desktop software only" conference.

Examples:

 * ARM porting
 * Audio (GStreamer, Pulseaudio)
 * Automotive
 * Flatpak & OStree
 * GPU drivers & Wayland

Perhaps the conference logo & marketing stuff could include logos of
subprojects.

We can try & get more people from those areas involved too, e.g. have
an ARM GPU drivers BOF & invite people from Raspberry Pi foundation,
Freedreno project, etc.

Worth noting that we don't control who actually submits talks, nor
which talks are selected.

=== Knowledge transfer from 2016 organisers ===

It would be good to organise a meeting with 2016 organisers; we should
prepare a list of questions first.

=== Volunteers ===

About 10 people have volunteered to help with local organisation, do
we have tasks for them?

Managing a large team is a big job in itself; we should focus on
getting the venue booked and sponsorship brochure done (tasks that
don't really parallelize) first.

=== 20th Birthday ===

2017 is GNOME's 20th year. That should probably be marked somehow :-)

Sam