Since the request I sent out last week, I've received quite a lot of email expressing interest in a lucene pre-conference, but it hasn't been an overwhelming amount. Based on this, I think it's safe to reserve the smaller, wi-fi enabled room that we've been discussing, and to plan for a max of 40 - 50 people. The group consensus seems to be that we do not need to charge a registration fee, although there have been requests for refreshments during the afternoon session, so maybe during lunch we can take up a collection and send someone out for donuts.
Here is my proposal for a pre-conference format: A full day event devoted to lucene and solr, led by Erik Hatcher. The morning will be devoted to background and theory, and the afternoon will be an opportunity to try some hands-on projects. Participants should either bring a wi-fi enabled laptop or be prepared to look over someone else's shoulder. So that we can get as much accomplished in the workshop as possible, we will provide a list of software and documentation to be downloaded before the workshop. If you are interested in working with a specific data set, please bring the data set with you, preferably on a sharable media format (e.g., CDROM, USB Flash Drive) so that we can exchange data sets quickly and easily. To save time at the event, please get your data into XML before the conference. Enough people are interested in ILS related topics that it might be worth forming groups around specific ILS products. If you are one of these people, email the list if you're interested in setting up such a thing. To keep things simple, maybe registration can consist of just an email to me? But we will need to put something on the conference registration website, and send a message to everyone who has already registered in case they are not also on the code4lib mailing list. This would be the day before the conference proper, so that's Feb 27, right? Comments? Suggestions? Bess Elizabeth (Bess) Sadler Head, Technical and Metadata Services Digital Scholarship Services Box 400129 Alderman Library University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22904 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (434) 243-2305
