with only two months left before the 7th of October, it's about time we start planning and setting up the next edition of the Cocoon GetTogether.
For those of you who are new to this, please have a look at the previous event website at http://outerthought.org/cocoon/gettogether/
As being announced before, the 2003 GT will be held in Ghent (Belgium) again, in a different location though, smack in the middle of the city. We were quite ambitious while prospecting a new venue, which means we have a large room to fill. This year's event will be organized by Orixo (http://www.orixo.com), but most and foremost will depend on your participation and presence. Stefano has also agreed to be involved content-wise, so again this will be a great occasion to meet some of the core Cocoon developers in real life.
We won't be changing too much from the previous year success formula (we had 100+ registrations at that time), although we hope to learn from the experience and tweak things, hopefully also depending on your input.
This mail serves as a heads-up for both potential participants, speakers and sponsors.
What are we planning to do?
* Hackathon
The day before, October 6th, Outerthought will be hosting a hackathon in its offices. They/we have a nice meeting room with (Wifi) Internet access that should be able to sit somewhere around 15 people. We would like to see a number of 'guided' design sessions, hopefully focussing on some big challenges ahead, prepared by active developers who want to have some high bandwidth collaboration around a whiteboard.
The idea is that somebody prepares a brief intro presentation to focus thoughts and ideas, and that we put some serious time in tackling the issues at hand. Subjects like 'Real Blocks', 'Caching and Performance', 'WebDAV' or 'Flow' surely warant some quality time together. Anyone who feels like up to preparing and shepherding such a session (which might last for a good couple of hours), please speak up.
Outerthought will be sponsoring lunch and snacks during the Hackathon to keep brains running and blood sugar level high.
* GetTogether
On the 7th of October, we'll be gathering in 'het Pand', where we have rented a large conference hall of the Ghent university, nearby to a closed car park and in easy reach of public transport. Also close to a couple of 'Ibis' and 'Sofitel'-class hotels, and in walking distance (15') of the Ghent Youth hostel for those running on tight budgets.
The GetTogether itself consists of a number of presentations, with plenty of time (breaks) in-between to mix and intermingle with fellow Cocoon developers and users. The presentations will be deliberately kept short, so that we are able to provide you with an interesting mix of topics, and plenty of time to discuss and interact.
Some surprise 'acts' are also being thought of, so we'll try and make this an lively and not run-of-the-mill day for everybody.
People who want to present during the GetTogether are kindly requested to send in a presentation proposal. Mind you that presentation topics will be screened for cluefulness, in the sense that we don't want any commercial presentations. Introductory, tutorial-like stuff into new or advanced topics are much appreciated though. Please send in your presentation proposal to gt2003-speaking[at]orixo.com - see below for a template to help you in filling out a proposal.
* Social events
As with the previous edition, there will be hosted social events on the night of the 6th and the 7th. If you need to travel to come to the GT, please consider also to extend your stay in Ghent for a couple of days, since it is quite a nice city for tourism as well.
* Financials and sponsoring
The previous edition learned us that simply breaking even on sponsors' budgets only proves to be near to impossible (unless some of you know where the money bags are at Sun or IBM ;-)
Therefore, with much reluctancy and many considerations, we decided to ask for a small fee covering the cost of this event. While the exact amount hasn't been settled yet, it will be in the range between 50 and 100 EUR. The GT organizers are very much committed to make this year's edition to prove much bangs for these bucks.
Sponsoring the event: In the past year we were approached by several large companies that use Cocoon about sponsoring the GetTogether. We welcome sponsors and feel that this is a chance for companies to give something back to the Cocoon community. Due to the nature of the event however, sponsors will only have the possibility of placing a logo or similar on the introductory presentation and hanging a banner or similar in the location. Also, the social events, handouts and surprise acts can only get better with some sponsoring. Of course, sponsors can also remain anonymous. Please contact info[at]orixo.com for sponsoring the GT2003.
That's all for now. We are working on the website (help is still welcome though) and registration procedures, so expect another heads-up soonish. We, Orixo, would be delighted in seeing you show up on the 7th of October.
-o-
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMITTING A PROPOSAL
Do not include proprietary or confidential material in your proposals. We will assume that you do not consider any material included in the proposals to be confidential. All conference presentations are vendor-agnostic and should focus on technology. Your proposal should contain the following information:
1. proposed title for the talk/session/debate.
2. brief outline or abstract of the talk/session/debate
2.a Please be as concise as possible.
2.b Please write in third-person context.
2.c Please list any prerequisite sessions or knowledge you feel is essential.
2.d Indicate, if applicable, if this is a beginning or advanced talk.
3. For all proposed speakers, include: speaker name, title, company, address, email, phone number, fax and website.
4. biography for the proposed speaker(s) showing relevant experience and qualification to speak on the proposed subject matter (not to exceed 250 words).
5. Primary contact/founder name, title, company, address, email and phone number.
DEADLINE for proposal : September 7th, 2003 Proposals should be sent to: gt2003-speaking[at]orixo.com.
All speakers are required to submit copies of their presentations at least 2 weeks before the conference. These presentations will be included in the conference notes. All presentations will be made available after the conference in electronic (PDF) format.
-o-
Cheers,
</Steven> - GT 2003 co-organizing puppet -- Steven Noels http://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source, Java & XML Competence Support Center Read my weblog at http://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/ stevenn at outerthought.org stevenn at apache.org
