On 07/27/2012 11:19 AM, Eric "Sparks" Christensen wrote:
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On 07/26/2012 12:43 PM, Jon Stanley wrote:
* I think that the openness of the current format is something that
we want to preserve. I don't want to turn it into a "invite-only"
event (ala UDS). If people want to show up, we should foster new
contributors at this event. But we should make it *extremely
clear* that is the purpose.
Definitely agree here. We should want people to come join us and work
with us. New faces are always great and at the same time we need the
old faces as well to help mentor the new faces.
* There may be people that (for whatever reason) don't want to or
can't travel out-of-region. Just something to think about. Again,
reading the comments on the blog post got me thinking that
proximity to the majority of the people that are actually doing
things would be important - it's a quite different thing for me to
head up to, say Boston from NYC, than it is for me to go to London
for something.
This is one of the big turn-offs to this idea, to me. Travel isn't easy
or fun (for some (most?) of us). Sitting on an airplane for hours is
not even in my top 1000 list of things to do. I suspect that many
people won't make the journey, if not because of comfort then because of
time constraints, etc. We'll end up with an event that is attended by
mainly the locals and we would have not achieved the goal of a global
event.
Lastly, I think that we do want to preserve events for users. I'm
not sure how to do this off the top of my head, though. Just
throwing an idea out on the table would be to have something sort
of like a FAD in conjunction with major OSS conferences (thinking
things like SCaLE and OLF in NA, LinuxTag in EMEA, etc) that
wouldn't need a ton of contributors present, so it'd be cheap to
do. I think that showing off what (and who!) Fedora is makes a lot
of sense.
So a few bits of historical stuff:
* FADs aren't user days. IMO: I think we could actually use a term to
describe a user-focused-day event. FADs should be accomplishing a task
that needs doing, or at least, that was the intended purpose for that
type of event. (I repeat tihs a bit below again.)
* When we have had regular FADs, or even FUDCons, alongside those types
of events ... it has the effect of people from the FAD or FUDCon wanting
to do the other thing going on. Which means people popping in and out,
distractions, etc. I think doing a user-focused thing at those events
makes sense, even if it's a full-day, figure out how to get a
sponsored-room type thing - people can dedicate specific time slot swhen
they're not planning on doing other things, etc.
So maybe we're just not defining things correctly. IMO, the mission of
the FUDCon is to not only bring contributors together but also users.
And hopefully we'll turn users into contributors along the way. We're
not going to be able to truck users in from around the globe. Clearly
we need to keep a user event local to a region.
Yes, but at some point, people can either (a) focus on a session with
users, or (b) be in sessions with their teammates / projects they
participate in.
That's not to say that "comingling contributors and users is a bad idea"
- I think quite the opposite, but I think that if people are using their
time to show up at an event of any sort, that they should have the time
to dedicate so that they can get the most value out of their time spent
there.
I would almost take it a step further and say: Maybe we're just not
thinking outside the box enough. We don't need to be attached to any of
these names - people have certain things they think about what a FUDCon
should be, and then think we have to live up to that, no matter what.
I also tihnk that the word "users" is really perceived differently by a
lot of people. When I think of "Fedora Users and Developers" - I think
of "people who are already using Fedora" as users who probably can fit
into and understand a lot of what is going on at a
barcamp-style-conference-focused-on-Fedora, whereas I think "prospective
users and people new to linux altogether" probably show up and wonder
what the heck is going on. But FUDCons are executed diffferently in
other areas of the world, also.
And we already have DoCons now only we call them FADs. Up until now,
I believe the understanding of a FAD was that it is a small event; why
should it be? Why can't we set aside funds to bring teams/projects
together to work once a year? I think the effect would be the same as
what's being proposed while at the same time we can attempt to have a
greater user focus at the FUDCons as I'm assuming they were meant to be.
I don't know that that was the original purpose of a FUDCon. From the
comments/mails I received from the "wayyyy back in the day" crowd (:D) -
there was a more significant focus on "here's what we are going to do
for the next 6 months, and users are welcome to come, but we're here to
get stuff done."
Yes, a FAD is a small event. FADs were also meant to "get stuff done
with my team, usually a specific task/accomplishment." We now also see
FADs everywhere which are more like local user events, which wasn't the
intended purpose, as i understand things.
But I tihnk that what you're pointing out with FADs doesn't necessarily
solve any of the other logistical problems pointed out; we have globally
distributed teams, and people will have to travel. If you're involved
with more than one team, that could potentially be more than one FAD; if
we have FADs and FUDCons, people often have to choose between one and
the other, because while we can sponsor people to some degree, we can't
sponsor them with extra days off work, days out of school, etc.
In any case: I think there are a lot of good ideas and points here, and
I'm sure more will come in :)
Just a thought...
- -Eric
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