[maemo-community] Organizing Maemo Summit 2009

[From: Tim]

A couple of things that I discussed with Andrea privately, but wanted to
interject here:

* Nokia has already stated that Maemo Summit would be a yearly event. This
means that the next one will be sometime August/September 2009.
** The exact time will most likely occur in conjunction with another major
FLOSS conference.
* We had some discussions (I forget if it was on this List or somewhere
else) about whether the Summit would always be in Europe or rotate around,
etc. This will have to do with a couple of factors: (1) Like with the
timing, the location will probably depend on the other conference that the
Summit becomes aligned with; (2) it turns out that most Maemo
users/developers are in easier access to European countries.

To answer Anildel's question, Maemo Council will help out as regular Maemo
Community members (as that is what we are). If Maemo SW chooses to use us
in greater capacity, they are free to -- all of which will be public
knowledge. As of now, we have not been discussing Maemo Summit 2009. (One
of the reasons I asked Andrea to bring it up here.)

Tim


On Mon, 9 Feb 2009 20:08:46 +0000, Aniello Del Sorbo <anidel at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 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 ?

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