Hi Martin, I don't want to belittle your contribution but - well, you're kind of stating the obvious: sure, when there are lots of money and experienced, motivated people around, everything goes fine :-)
The question is, how to get to that point for a group of volunteers of a fledgling UG, whose email addresses don't end in Sun.com? How to avoid the hurdles and attract money, contracts, and attendees? I'd really like to keep the discussion on this list, it really is where it's needed, as it is the focus for the Advocacy community and User Groups. If OSDevCon organizers can share their experience and explain how to get where they are here, or add to a wiki, that would be perfect! Laurent Martin Man a ?crit : > Hi Damian, > > don't let the mistakes discourage you from doing further events. > > Few notes from organizing OSDevCon 2008 in Prague. > > - We had a partner in GUUG which are conference organization experts, so > we were not starting from scratch but rather extending their experience. > Having an older mentor always helps... > > - We had an agency that did most of the "boring organizational and > accounting work for us", it was part of the budget and it helped a lot. > You don't want to waste your time deciding what coffee to order for a > coffee break... > > - Despite the fact that it's a community event, it's a business project > (albeit non-profit) per se. You have to have the contracts, money, > goals, responsibilities, etc., otherwise it will not fly. It's not quite > like putting my-super-duper-application-0.1 on sourceforge.net :) > > my .2 cents, > Martin > > P.S. and as Wolfgang noted, we can move discuss this further to > osdevcon-discuss@ > > On Oct 28, 2008, at 16:01, Damian Wojslaw wrote: > >> Three days later, it is time to have some critical thoughts on our >> event. I sum what went wrong, so that anyone doing their conference from >> scratch, won't make the same mistakes. >> >> The biggest one, from my point of view: >> - I have never had a written agreement with my sponsors about the money. >> They backed out and I it was only thanx to few fantastic people that the >> thing happened. >> - For the reason above, I lost a projector at Thursday night and up >> until Friday 8:10 AM I didn't know if I had one. Again, thanx go to >> fantastic friends. >> - I took too much on myself. I should have known, that with health >> problems at home, I wouldn't able to bring an order to this event. It >> was nice, but it was a chaos. >> - I had no written plan and milestons. It's just the must. If you have >> plan, you have objectives and dates, by which you know that all is going >> as planned, or it's a march to disaster. >> - I have lost my nerver and did my talk in Polish, as all my Polish >> friends. We agreed previously to have all talks in English and that was >> my sin against abroad guests. >> - I never thought of it and have should - I did announcement in Polish, >> while for the sake of our guests, I should have done so in English. >> - I have made a mistake of giving out a conference web page to people >> that did not keep it up to date, even though I have contacted them many >> times. Thus the online agenda in Polish was not in sync with one in >> English and both were not synchronized with reality. I should have >> reclaimed it and hand out to someone I could trust. >> - It was a deliberate omission, but I should have sent maps to people >> regarding near hotels and a route from train to conference site. >> - As with the web page, I made a bad choice about a person that would >> send and Invoice to Sun Czech, which covers most of my expenses. They >> almost missed the mark and I almost lost all the money that I paid for >> the conference with. It was my personal earning. >> - Watch your words. I have made a few remarks that, given the Sun >> sponsoring the vent, made people think that Sun is an evil entity. I >> have never though of this and it was pointed out to me after the >> conference. >> - There were omissions in e-mail communication. Most of this two days >> before the conference, and I am guilty for this. >> >> Given the above, I agree with Roman Strobl, that a guide for conference >> organiser should be made. I volunteer to give my experiences. Anoyne >> there to help? >> >> Regards >> >> -- >> Damian Wojslaw >> http://pl.opensolaris.org/ | SCA OS0073 >> http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/on/ >> http://opensolaris.org/os/project/szc-osug/ >> http://www.linkedin.com/in/trochej >> >> _______________________________________________ >> advocacy-discuss mailing list >> advocacy-discuss at opensolaris.org >> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy-discuss > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > advocacy-discuss mailing list > advocacy-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy-discuss -- / Leader de Projet & Communaut? | I'm working, but not speaking for \ G11N http://fr.opensolaris.org | Bull Services http://www.bull.com / FOSUG http://guses.org |
