On Thu, 2018-09-20 at 08:29 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
We want to get this started now, so we don't end up running into
last
minute
problems. Also, as I think many people know but was never officially
announced, it'd be nice for Red Hat engineering travel budget if we
end up
in a cycle with expensive-travel EU Flock in a different year from
expensive-travel San Francisco Red Hat Summit. (Next year's summit is
Boston, so that doesn't constrain us, but the year after that
shouldn't be
in the EU.
All understandable.
We talked about all sorts of possibilities including doing an APAC
or
LATAM Flock, but the general consensus was that those areas need
something more user-focused than Flock. It's additionally the case
that having the confernece within reasonable ground transit distance
from Brno means a lot of Red Hatters who work in that RH office can
easily attend (this year there was a bus with, like, 50 people!) —
and that has turned out to _not_ be the case with proximity to
Westford/Boston. (That's not to say that we shouldn't do NA — see
earlier point on travel costs — just that when we do EU, there's
significant benefit in keeping to, say, 5 hour bus/train from
Brno.)
I wonder if there is an ability to have both a Flock style event and a
user-focused co-event. I have never been to a flock so I am just
guessing that having a large number of participating in Flock would
augment a more user focused event that was also going on.
We also talked about relying more on the RH events team (hi Jen!) to
provide their expertise in finding a venue. We've had some great
success with this being community based, but also a lot of
challenges. And we've definitely found the hotel-with-venue model to
work better for us than finding university or other low-cost or
donated space and then finding lodging secondarily. The events people
have the contacts and expertise to do this. So, as we go forward, I'd
like to let them help us with logistics in this way, while we as a
community focus on the conference *content*.
I agree with using the RH events folks to help us.
With all that in mind, I'm thinking of a model like this:
1. Fedora Council decides on a general region.
2. Events team comes back with several possibilities in that region.
3. We get community feedback on ability to attend and excitment for
each of those, and return a ranked list to events team.
4. Fedora Council and events team pick final location.
5. Community people in or around that location who are able and
willing to volunteer to help with logistics, finding awesome evening
events, etc., are absolutely invited to work together.
6. Awesome Flock conference!
And, actually, assuming something like this is what we want, in the
future I'd like to get started even earlier than now, so we can do
what many conferences do and announce the location for the next Flock
at the end of each one.
What does everyone think?
Overall a solid plan. I look forward to seeing this idea implemented.
Charles