[maemo-community] Organizing Maemo Summit 2009

[From: Sebastian 'CrashandDie' Lauwers]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 8:31 AM, Jose Manrique Lopez de la Fuente
<jsmanrique at gmail.com> wrote:
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gij%C3%B3n
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oviedo

Could we at least try to hit a place with international airports? I
travel quite a bit, but I'm not prepared to spend more than 4 hours
getting to a destination within Europe. I concur that Spain would be a
very nice place, but please, within 30 minutes / 1 hour train distance
of an internation airport. Barcelona, heck, even Girona. Madrid is
going to be a mess. There are a whole lot of places that would offer a
lot more interesting things than just "regional opensource support".
No offence.

I can reach Perpignan inside 2 hours, I can reach Kiev inside 4. Why
bother going through the hassle?

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 8:24 PM, gary liquid <liquid at gmail.com> wrote:
> plenty of beer, wifi, power-outlets and bacon.
> berlin was strangely lacking in the latter.

I guess if we did it in your backgarden, there'd be bacon trees ready
to serve an army.

> would like to have a smaller less formal meetup within the country fairly
> soon to discuss development.

Works for me.

On a more serious note, I would love to see this work nicely, Berlin
was a success for many, let's try to keep it going that way.

My 2c:

"Rotation" of cities is fine. Though, it is not necessary. HOPE has
been organised in the same hotel for ages, nothing wrong with that.
The main advantage of going to the same place, is that it allows for
easier travel, easier planning. Sure, I know we'd all love to have an
excuse for a spot of tourism, but still. Simple isn't necessarily bad.
If on the other we agree that we want to switch cities each year (we
might want to think about making this event only happen every 2 years,
btw? Just a thought), I think we should try to define a list of
"necessities" the city should provide: Easy travel, easy lodging, easy
food. It's pretty much common sense, but it's harder than you might
think (exhibit A previously in this thread). Maybe in a few years, we
might want to be more adventurous, but I'd really like to see "ease"
being the keyword.

Big cities are more expensive than rural places, obviously, but then
again, they are also a helluva lot easier to get access to. Money
you'll spend during your trip will be easily saved in travel time. If
you don't care about travel time, well, sorry, but I think most of us
here are pretty much very busy. Like I said, I don't want to spend a
whole morning/afternoon traveling. I'd much rather pay double the
price during my stay and have an extra day on the trip than having to
sacrifice it.

I think a big city like London is pretty much out of the question. Not
only is lodging extremely expensive (unless you're couchsurfing),
finding a place to actually hold the conference is going to be a pain
in the bum, and is going to suck every last penny out of Nokia's
funding. I think b-cities are a lot more likely to be a successful
conference host. Manchester (plus our little gary just needs to walk
out his back yard) has a very well serviced international airport.
Copenhagen, Milan, Barcelona, Geneva, Ibiza :-* , Hamburg (if you're
not sick of ze Germans yet), hell, we could even go and squat ze
French; Grenoble or Lyon, for instance.

One last point, is that having an inside man is quite crucial. We will
-- and I honestly believe this -- need someone with decent local
knowledge, who will also be able to fulfil quite a lot of transactions
(search for hotels, negotiate with hotels to get better deals, etc).
Don't forget actually hosting such an event in a hotel could be quite
easy, and not that expensive (as long as you make 'em believe we're
all bloody rich and will be using tons of room service).


-- 
question = ( to ) ? be : ! be;
      -- Wm. Shakespeare