On 5 mrt. 2015, at 10:00, Sebastien Goasguen <[email protected]> wrote:
Morning folks,
This is a good point, however like Chip mentioned we would need sponsors.
Organizing a 3 day event is a big task, you need to find a location that suits
people, you need to pay for that location, you need a program, you need
attendance, you need sponsors etc.
For Amsterdam, Schuberg took the lead role. Citrix was the main financial
backer with Schuberg. I believe it basically took ~3 people full time from
Schuberg for several months to organize things the way it was, plus a lot of
time and energy from other folks to get sponsors, drive attendance etc. The
event cost ~200k euros and was in the black at the end (no secret there).
For Denver and Budapest we aligned with the ASF and leveraged the Linux
Foundation to do the logistics and help get sponsors. It worked out but it is
still a lot of effort to get the program together, help LF reach out to
sponsors etc. As a side note, even though these were 3 day events, lots of
folks arrive on tutorial day, spend the keynote day and leave at night or in
the morning. That's why I pushed for a poster session at the end of Budapest,
because typically folks leave before and we end up with semi empty sessions in
the last afternoon.
The bottom line is that it is a question of cost, attendance, who takes the
lead in planning and what does the event look like. We could organize three day
events much cheaply. Something that comes to mind is configuration management
camp in Ghent. It drives 400 people, is hosted at the university. There is
almost no sponsors/booth, no signage, no video recording, very little lunch
etc. But if we want something like Denver or Budapest, we are looking at 6
figures plus the human investment.
CloudStack is a brand owned by this community, so anyone here is free and
should feel entitled to organize its own CloudStack Day close to home. Norway,
India etc. It could be a 30 people event or it could grow into its own 300/500
people event. The Japanese community for example organizes CloudStack Japan on
their own and drives 500 people.
Now all these 1 day events are co-located (before, after or during) the
linuxcon events (cloud open, KVM forum, Xen summit, Kernel summit etc). So I am
sure you can justify going for 3 days, attend the other LF events and attend
the CloudStack day. I do think there is better alignment with LF events than
with other ASF projects. Sadly the Apachecon itself is not a large conference,
and I don't think we got the cross-pollination we were hoping. LF events are
much bigger (Dusseldorf in the fall was 1,500 people).
The risk I do see with 1 day event is that we get fragmented and that we don't
see each other that often.
To conclude, it is key that everyone on our lists feels entitled to do things and take
the lead. In some sense there is no such thing as us vs. "the organizers". We
are all the organizers of these conferences. It is a matter of who has the time and the
will to step up and lead these events (1 or 3 days ) and who will attend.
-If you have the time, can you take the lead and organize another 1 day event
closer to home ?
-If you have time, can you take the lead on one of those scheduled events and
take on the program planning ?
-If you have funds, can you sponsor the event ?
-if you have space, can you donate it for an event ?
-sebastien
On Mar 5, 2015, at 2:01 AM, Erik Weber <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 3:45 AM, ilya musayev <[email protected]>
wrote:
Am i right in assuming that we no longer going to have 3 day long conferences
and instead 5 separate cloudstack day events? It does makes sense as it helps
with awareness, but..
Looking at it from my employers side, as well as my personally - its a bit hard
to justify a trip for just one day :( On average, a person would have to travel
a night before and leave a day later to make the most of it. That is 2 days
spent in transit to attend 1 day event.
Lets see how this works out, but i really think we need at least 1 event that
is longer than a day - so we can have a community get together that many would
be able to attend.
I must agree.
Unless you live near one of the airline hubs you'll most likely have to travel
three days anyway.
In my case I have to travel the night before to get there before 1PM, and as
anyone would want to attend the night events (that's usually where I personally
get most out of the conference) I have stay a night longer.
Justifying a three day trip to attend a one day event is significantly harder
than justifying a four day (we usually arrive a bit later on the first day)
trip to attend a three day event.
--
Erik
