[maemo-community] Organizing Maemo Summit 2009

[From: Quim Gil]

Thanks Andrea for kicking this off. Right after FOSDEM, the right time
for it.

Time to start consolidating info in a wiki page?


ext Andrea Grandi wrote:
> 5. When?

Having September 2008 as a reference, the default candidate is September
2009.

Elements that can affect these dates:

- Do we want to co-locate to another event? Which?
- Other events too close before/after?
- Announcements (you have to trust Maemo SW on this)

For instance, http://debconf.org/ is on July 16-31 which is too close to
http://grancanariadesktopsummit.org/ July 3-11.

Any interesting event happening in September/October? If so, let's
discuss. If not, let's think of good reasons for people to come.


> 1. Country and city

Related to the above. Near to an airport cheap to fly and possibilities
of decent accommodation prices.

I think this year Europe is still the default candidate to beat. There
seems to be a higher density of developers a good network of really
cheap flights giving many alternatives at a decent price and within 1-2h
flight range.

USA is only one county but this doesn't mean that it is easy for the
developers of one coast to go to the other coast and etc.

Another idea would be to combine a main event in Europe and in the same
weekend a parallel hackfest somewhere in SF and perhaps in other
'satellites', with some kind of lo-fi community interaction between sites.


> 2. The place

Depending again from the above.

Theater school + c-base set a precedent hard to beat. We should evolve
from that spirit. We expect more people, which will make things more
complex and informal venues more difficult to find.

It would be good to have a list of potential candidates with a local
support. The first maemo Summit would have been impossible without the
commitment of the c-base spacecraft crew.

> 3. Contents

Time and space for application developers + platform hackers + (very
important!) enthusiastic users & non-developers community contributors.

Actually most of the growth expected comes from potential Maemo fans ,
(old and new) attending to a meeting where there is cool stuff for them
as well.

> 4. Sponsor

I hope to get at least the same budget we had last year in order to have
an open conference with free registration, key contributors invited and,
if possible, basic logistics and merchandising also free of charge.

It would be good though if the community could somehow handle the budget
yourselves via Council or something, since this might help making and
(even more) efficient use of the money. It would also make things more
easy and flexible for booking cheap transport and accommodation, expense
claims, etc.

This also would bring more paperwork to the Council or the organizers of
the event, but this is known business for event organizers and at the
end it might be worth paying some money to an accountant that will help
squeeze more from the same budget.

Tero and myself have to check this though, since we can't just take the
money and put it in somebody's hands.


> 6. Live blogging
> 7. Live streaming

Very important, but the above needs to be fixed first.

-- 
Quim Gil
open source advocate
Maemo Software @ Nokia