On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 11:08:53AM -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 10:40:34AM -0500, Tom Callaway wrote:
Last year, we had: 67 speakers (for talks and workshops).
This is about a third of the attendance, right? I guess there are two factors in that: first, it's a contributor conference, and so we have a high percentage of people with an interest in presenting; and second, the funding issue (where companies, including Red Hat outside of the Fedora community budget, are much more likely to fund travel for speakers).
3 keynotes (2 + FPL) 34 talks across two days (five simultaneous tracks)
Wasn't it 6? I mean, not even counting the Awesome Track?
24 workshops across two days (four tracks) In 2016, we have the same amount of days (4), but I wanted to open it for discussion for changes to the scheduling and layout. Do we want less tracks? Less talks? Less workshops per day?
I still think fewer tracks is better, but I'm not sure how to get the right balance. I'm pretty sure six is too many. I've already suggested doing lightning talks as a plenary session (that is, in the big room with no competing tracks), and that's in the CFP, and maybe emphasizing that even more as we promote this could help. Slice by time rather than by location, basically. (Maybe even doing at and leaving the number of tracks relatively high at other times.) Then presenters could choose between longer time with a narrower audience or shorter time with a wider one.
Hmmm, in fact, for the narrower audience, perhaps a workshop is more appropriate than a talk -- or a workshop linked with an opening presentation.
Also, at DevConf.cz just now, we had a Q&A session that was basically "AMA for anyone in attendance in Fedora leadership in some way". For Flock, that might be a bit too open -- but maybe not.
Do we still want the keynotes in the mornings? Traditionally, we've focused on bringing in external keynote speakers, but we had a lot of difficulty doing this the last time we were in Europe. (It is also unclear who is responsible for handling keynotes this year, as it was my job in previous years.)
I think that's been good, and I think two is a decent number. I don't know who has the baton for this, either.
Also, it seems unclear to me when the CFP closes (it is open now).
Yeah :)
Does anyone object to publicizing March 14 as a starter deadline for CFP?
I would like to get more announcements out to internal dev groups. A line in the sand will help, I think.