Re: GNOME events in Beijing

["Quim Gil" <qgil gnome org>]

Hi Emily! I'm adding the marketing team to the loop.

Background for those of you not having heard about the potential GNOME
Beijing event before:

GNOME Take Over series: Asia
http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/node/377

On 8/1/07, Emily Chen <Emily Chen sun com> wrote:
>
>http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/node/377

> Since
> you have rich experiences of organizing many GNOME events, below are some
> points I would like to discuss with you: When, What, Who, How.

Well, I have experience organizing just one GNOME event, but in this
list we have a lot more expertise!

>  When
>  Olympic games will be host in Beijing in 2008 August. The GNOME events
> should avoid this time. May 1st ~ 7th and October 1st ~ 7th are public
> holiday in China. We should also avoid those two weeks. If the GNOME Beijing
> event will launch in 2008, the best time will be April and Late October
> (Neither hot, nor cold).

I don't have a strong opinion between both months. One year is a
conservative margin to organize anything well. If unsure I would point
to October. But the good answer needs to come together with an
overview of the local agenda of free/software activities in the area +
the international agenda.

Well, for this first edition you probably want to aim to something
honorably humble, so perhaps the international agenda is not that
relevant, but avoiding overlaps is always good.


>  What
>  What kind of Beijing event is going to be? Like GUADEC, or Boston summit?
> Or like Mozilla developers' day -- all the developers from the same area get
> together, know each other and discuss some technique topics?

You don't get a GUADEC or a Boston Summit in a first step, and perhaps
you don't even want to have an event like these.

Start small and make it grow with next steps. Nobody beats China in
this principle.  ;)


> How many days it will last ?

I would recommend targeting at 2 days being receptive to increase to 3
if there is such a demand in terms of papers presented and interest.
The complexity is more related with size (amount of participants and
simultaneous sessions) rather than one day more or less.


>  Beijing Gnome event will be a international conference or a local
> conference?  In another words,  does Beijing event target in the China Gnome
> community or the whole Asia area?

Only China is huge, but Asia is immense. I would point to a conference
targeting the Far East with English as primary language and with place
for a local track in Chinese. Think that FLOSS.in is doing quite well
attracting the Indian area of influence, so you don't need to
concentrate of that part of Asia.


>  Will other Gnome developers & user from American or Europe also join this
> Beijing event.

If the program is good/unique, many people (mainly the professionals)
will find the time and money to get there. I wouldn't get obsessed
with the non-Chinese, though. At the end this has a lot to do with the
money you get from sponsors and their interest to make this event
international or not. Getting institutional support is something key
when we talk about knowledge / innovation / IT industries. Look
linux.conf.au, they succeed abducting many Europeans and Americans to
the other side of the planet.

But don't forget: your success will be based in the local assistance.
Only Beijing city can make this event successful, imagine if you add
people coming from other Chinese cities and the closest countries.


>  Who
>  Developers, Users, Students , who is our main target user?

Being practical, think that you need to get like 50% of the
participants (say 100 people) only from Beijing city. What profiles
should you target to get this amount? These profiles will be probably
useful to extrapolate to wider audiences.


>  How
>  There are many things in my mind need to consider :
>  1.  Set up a website for Beijing event, like http://www.guadec.org/ . Where
> the server machine will be based?

GNOME servers, no problem.


>  2.  Register system and Register fee

Work on sponsorship, keep the expenses as low as possible and make a
conference with almost free entrance. I bet this is the kind of event
GNOME needs in Asia (and in fact anywhere).

I'm not the best one answering about the technical details.


>  3.  Advertisement & Call for participant

We can help approaching the GNOME related companies. Some of them have
offices in Beijing and/or interest in China/Asia. You should be able
to get help of local companies and (I think it's very important) local
institutions. But I have no idea how the government and public
organizations deal with this in China - I only see they make huge
investments in promotion in Europe.  :)

>  4.  Find a good conference place

A university is generally the simplest and best deal, specially if
they have already all the infrastructure in place.

>  5.  Negotiate with some hotels to get a better price

Proximity to the venue is many times as much valued as the price. A
system that usually works (in Europe, no idea about Chinese habits) is
to find a backpackers-like cheap accommodation to be offered to
students and low budget participants. The rest usually get the
accomodation paid by the company and have more flexibility (even if
moderated prices always help getting more participants, even
professionals).


>  6.  How much budget we plan to spend on this event

You should fight for a zero-cost venue, or the cheapest possible.
Sound system & Internet included in the rooms already, nothing that
needs to be set up & pay rent. Don't pay speakers - pay their travel
and accommodation if needed. Sponsor participants just in the measure
you can based on the funding you get. Don't spend money in
merchandising, banners & add ons unless you really got a buch a
sponsors that pay enough to be really seen.

The value of the conference is meeting together and making happen
great sessions as free software in China never saw. This in itself is
priceless, but it can also be very cheap to organize if you are clever
with the numbers.


>
>  There are lots of questions I would like to discuss with you in detail.

Shot to the list!

Good luck and best wishes with the next steps. Oh, and a very
important detail: get a small team of collaborators as soon as
possible (3 has proved to be a good start). Skip from this to a small
network as soon as you can. This will be the seed of you success,
either in terms of organization and number of attendees.

PS: you might be interested in http://live.gnome.org/GuadecPlanningHowTo

-- 
Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org