[maemo-community] Organizing Maemo Summit 2009

[From: Aniello Del Sorbo]

2009/2/9 Andrea Grandi <a.grandi at gmail.com>:
> Hi all,
>
> talking with Tim Samoff in these days, we did think it could be the
> time to start organizing next Maemo Summit.
> The first one was a very amazing experience (at least for me, but I
> think for a lot of people too!) and we should try to repeat this great
> thing.
>
> I wrote down some points we could follow as guidelines to organize the summit:
>
> 1. Country and city
>
> Where is the Maemo community located? I mean: where do the most of
> people come from? Are there more american or european? I think this is
> an important factor to evaluate when they have to choose where to
> organize the summit.
>
> If there are 80% european and 20% american, it's normal to organize it
> here in Europe, so the most of people can come buy them self and the
> other can be sponsored by Nokia. Of course we should choose a city
> easily reachable with flights (like a capital or a big city:
> barcelona, madrid, berlin, london, ecc....).
>
> We could prepare a simple poll or a form to get some tips and
> suggestion from the people that wish to attend.
>

The where depends on a number of factors.
I wouldn't go for which country has got more attendees.
This would work once, but then ?

We should probably just "rotate".
Let's come up with a list of possible candidates and then we choose
how to rotate ?

> 2. The place
>
> I think it's important to find a place like C-base for the next Maemo
> summit. We are an open community and a place like that is very
> comfortable and interesting for us geeks, developers and Maemo fans.
>
> We could take contacts with local Linux user groups or other similar
> groups, so we could know how much they're interested in offering their
> place for the summit.
>
> I'll try as much as possible to avoid places like hotels, luxurious
> conference rooms ecc... first because they're very expensive, second
> because they're not the kind of place that remind to community and
> openness. What do you think about?
>

This of course depends from the place we choose as venue.

> 3. Contents
>
> What should a summit offer to community? We should encourage knowledge
> exchange in every kind of way: organizing small conferences and a lot
> of light talks (they were one of the most interesting things in the
> summit), create little groups of discussion (for example, 10-15 people
> choose a subject and meet in a room to discuss it directly) ecc... and
> the most important thing: we should ask the community what they expect
> to find in a summit.
>

We should first find out a venue, then who is going to contribute and with what.
Then organize the talks/discussions/etc..

> 4. Sponsor
>
> The fact that Nokia sponsor some of us is a very great thing. I'd
> never had the possibility to join the Berlin summit, since I'm a
> student and I cannot spend so much.
>
> The important is to avoid wasting money. Nokia should
> encourage sharing a room with another person of the community, so more
> people can be sponsored. What do you think about?
>

Is Nokia going to sponsor again ?

> 5. When?
>
> When should we organize the summit? Before a big release (like
> Freemantle), just after the final release or after some months of
> development with it? I don't remember exactly when the final release of
> Freemantle is scheduled for, but I think that next September would be
> a nice period... what do you think about?
>

As Fremantle is a big release, I suspect the Maemo team will be very
busy with this release.
This depends, thus, on them.
I would go for right after the Fremantle release.
Or, if Nokia would like to use the Maemo Summit as the place for the
announcement, that would be a great time.

> When we have some confirmed points we should start creating a page on
> the wiki: http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2009
> so all people can read and give suggestions.
>

Probably we should already do that ?

Also, what would be the role of the Council in this ?

-- 
anidel