Re: Conference Propsoal: Portland Summit

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me>]

Hi Brian, thanks for getting back to me.  Hope you guys had a good time at Desktop Summit. :-)

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com> wrote:

Sri:

Having an event in Portland sounds agreeable assuming we have
enough local volunteer support to make the needed arrangements.
Would it make sense to try and co-locate this sort of an event
with another local free software event?

I should be able to pull in some help.. Portland is the other free software city and we have a number of people.  We started two conferences here - Linux Plumbers Conference and OSSBridge.  So we should have some floating around.

Secondly, I have talked with Linux Foundation - they think that there is a possibility of doing something like this.  But they would like to cohost with another Linux Foundation conference in Portland.  If that happens, setting things up in Portland shouldn't be overly difficult.  The problem is that it'll be a lot more "corporate" than say a community conference like Plumbers or Desktop Summit.  But the advantages is that in fact we will have some exposure to companies like Sony (who I saw at LInuxcon but didn't have a chance to talk to)

The other possibility is to do it with OSSBridge which is the other large free software conference.

Could you be more clear about what help you need from The GNOME
Foundation to help with making your proposed event possible?  If you

I see GNOME Foundation's role as:

1) Promotion
2) Sponsorships from  people interested in desktop/mobile software
3) help find people to review proposals and set up tracks


On point 3: I'm actually quite interested in duplicating Plumbers set up which has  set of tracks, and then assign "track leaders" who will be responsible for the content.  For instance, "Sound", "Integration", "UI" and so forth.  For instance, Lennart runs the Sound track for Plumbers.  He could run something similar but a focus in userspace as opposed to kernel space.

| are needing help with getting sponsorships, then can you provide
| materials we could share with possible sponsors to explain the
| event and describe the sponsorship options?


I believe I can provide such things once I have worked out the conference materials.  I'm a bit of a neophyte on this stuff, so advice would be appreciated.  I have of course other sources that I can draw on specifically Plumbers conference experience.

I'll start putting something on the wiki.

Thanks again for getting back to me.

sri

Brian

On 08/03/11 00:01, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:

Talking to various others, it seemed obvious to me that we are missing a
presence on the west coast.  With some encouragement, I've decided to
make a proposal.

Time frame: Spring 2011 - May for 3 days.  I'm flexible on the dates.  I
pick spring because I have more flexibility with cheaper venues.

Venue: May-June after school is out I have several cheap possibilities.
Thanks to Open Source Bridge and Linux Plumbers Conference, I have all
kinds of venues I can approach.

Sponsorships/money:  I have some encouragement from my employer, Intel.
Dirk Hohndel seemed willing to talk about sponsorship dollars (he
brought it up, not me!) .  I will ask Mozilla foundation, Google, and
Linux Foundation for funding.  Thanks to prior work on Plumbers
conference, I know who to talk to for most of these people.  Most people
know I'm a social butterfly, I'll figure it out. :-)  Money depends
whether I've talked to people before the next budget cycle of course.  I
will need to prepare approximate costs including venue cost, travel
budget for speakers and of course finally I need to sell it to the
non-Intel folks.

About Portland:
Portland is the other open source town on the west coast as Boston is
known for the east coast.  We have of course a number of open source
organizations and boasts two open source conferences a year - OSCON and
Open Source Bridge.  We were the original host of Linux Plumbers
Conference, two years running (I was on the planning committee) Our past
two mayors are big open source advocates, as is our state government.
Former Mayor Tom Potter ran KDE and current Mayor Sam Adams shows up to
most conferences and has pushed several initiatives in regards to open
government.  You will not find a more open source friendly atmosphere
than Portland.

Companies and foundations that have a presence here - Mozilla
Foundation, OSDL, Intel, Red Hat, Puppet Labs, Oracle and various other
start ups.  A diversified combination of kernel hackers, application,
web, and X hackers exist and are active here in Portland.  Meego is
developed by Intel here in Hillsboro as well which shares technology
with GNOME.

Location:
Being on the west coast, means that it is a cheap train ride from
Seattle, Vancouver B.C., and the Bay area.  It is also attractive to
Latin America as well.  There are people who cannot make Boston but
might find Portland to be a lot more accessible.

Open questions:
Resources: - I am one person, I can probably try to get others to help
around here.  But a lot of them might still be burnt out doing Linux
Plumbers Conference for two years in a row.  I can probably do leg work
and maybe some help with finances and other bits.  But I will need
someone to help with getting talks accepted I think.  That said I have
access to people who know how to run a conference as well our own people
in GNOME Foundation.

Content:
Currently, I perceive our conference schedule looking something like this:

June                   July/August              October
GNOME.Asia -> Desktop Summit -> Boston Summit

We have an entire 9-10 months before the next large conference, with
hackfests in between.  Coinciding another summit around the same time
frame of a release of GNOME might help us in planning each cycle.
Portland Summit could also help develop a rapport with application
developers. Portland can also be a perfect half way for those living in
Latin countries as Boston is for European countries.  The GNOME asia
conference would be difficult for lot of U.S. based developers to show
up for.

If we want to do this, then I need to start talking to various folks
before their yearly fiscal budgets starts.

sri