Re: Promoting events in South America

["Lucas Rocha" <lucasr gnome org>]

Hi,

> I wanted to have an opinion on an idea I've been playing for a while.
> I'd like to run some -not so big- conference around here in Perú.
> Obviously one of the goals of doing so is promoting GNOME events
> outside the north hemisphere of our lovely planet.

Yeah! Viva a América do Sul!

> One of the obvious problems with the will of taking people from Europe
> to SouthAmerica is that ticket cost is high. Discussing the idea with
> various people, an idea popped: sync conferences of this side of the
> world so people travelling from europe can assist easily to other
> conferences in other countries, this would be simple masses economy
> (if that's the translation).
> Example:
> - GNOME Chile decides to have a conference March 15-17, they want to
> bring Lucas for a talk about Maemo
> - GNOME Brasil wants to have Lucas on March 20
> - GNOME Perú would like to have a conference on March 22-24, and would
> like Lucas as a speaker for March 23.

Does it mean that I'll be in Chile, Brazil and Peru next year!? Woohoo!
Sorry, I couldn't help it. :-P

> The idea is simple, just agree on some schedule so we have the chance
> of sharing the availability of speakers or attendants.
> This of course raises problems like outside-of-office time for these
> guys and other things like lots of travelling, but SouthAmerica is not
> huge, it's easy to go from one place to another.

Yes, it can be really hard to argue with an employer about being more
than 1 week out of office just to participate on conferences. But this
is a case-by-case thing: it depends on the who, when, what and where.

> Benefit for the local people is having some cool speakers for a lot
> less money than normal (or maybe even for almost no money?), benefit
> for speakers is that they get to travel around SouthAmerica.

Indeed.

I would just add that this would be really nice for the Board too
because it would be a very effective investment to sponsor 2-3 GNOME
events at once with relatively lower costs (specially for flight
tickets).

> I would like to hear your opinions on this idea, or any opinion about
> the whole issue of bringing more people to our part of the world!.

I like the idea. Actually, I don't think you need any opinion from
Marketing team in order to push this forward[1]. I suggest you to
contact chileans and brazilians to know their opinion about this
conference schedule syncing (which might be tricky btw). Next step
would be to agree on a list of potential/wanted  "gringo" speakers.

I can help you with the brazilian contacts.

Feel free to contact the Board to help you on this when/if you have a
more concrete proposal.

--lucasr

[1] It's nice that you've posted your ideas here though because other
people might be having similar ideas for the same issues.