Brian Exelbierd píše v Po 09. 01. 2017 v 12:07 +0100: > Warning: This email is long. I don't know how to avoid that. I > debated making this a wiki, but I think we need more discussion that > just editing. There is no tl;dr. If you want a tl;dr perhaps you > should wait a while and participate near the end of the > conversation. > > Warning: The opening text is the same for both Part I and Part II. > > During 2016 I had the privilege of helping to plan and execute Flock > and attended both FUDCon LATAM (Puno) and FUDCon APAC (Phnom Penh). > Talking to people has led to me to believe that these events may not > be > meeting all of our goals. Specifically we are spending a lot of > time > and money on them and may not be getting our full value. I also > heard > a lot of comments about how the events are not equal from people who > thought they should be and not well distributed across the world > from > people who thought they should be. This led me to believe that > there > is a lot of confusion about why we do these events and what we want > out > of them. > > In the spirit of it is easier to edit than to create, I am going to > propose some ideas. My goal is less to present this as a polished > proposal ready for a vote and more to allow us to have a discussion > around the finer points of the events strategy. It would be nice to > see > this discussion come to an end by the end of March so that it can > have > impact this year. The planning for Flock will begin soon (see my > another of my emails today) but the FUDCon processes are not heavily > started, as far as I can tell. > > Additionally, while history is important, I think it is equally > important that we consider what we want to accomplish today and in > the > next few years, not just what we tried to accomplish in the past. > Therefore, I've written this without too much reference to what is > being > changed and instead as an idea of what we should be doing. I look > forward to folks bringing forward suggestions for continuing > activities > from the past or better incorporating lessons learned that I may have > missed. > > I look forward to your feedback and input. > > regards, > > bex > > # FUDCon > > As mentioned above, I attended both FUDCons in 2016. These are the > only > two FUDCons that I have ever attended. I was told by attendees at > both > events that while every event is different, these two were fairly > typical in the areas I was concerned with. > > FUDCons have been described to me as being for Fedora Users and > Developers (hence the name). What is never clear from the people > I've > talked to is what kind of users they think are targeted and whether > the > developers are "developers who use Fedora" or "people who develop > (contribute to) Fedora." Both events this year were held in > partnership > with Universities. Both had large attendances on the first day, > typically when students were incentivized to show up by their faculty > and poor attendance on the non-incentive days. It was unclear that > many > people took a lot away from the conference or that there would be > significant follow up activity. These comments are not to single out > the organizers for these FUDCons. They all worked very hard and > pulled > off very good events. I just didn't get a feeling that the events > had a > lot of impact and changed much in the short or long term. > > I believe that for our investment of time, energy, and money in > FUDCons > to be successful, the goals of these events must be clarified. > > ## Structure > > I believe we need to remove some of the restrictions we place > on these > events, chiefly on where and how often they can be held. Therefore, > I > believe we should simply state that FUDCons can be held anywhere in > the > world and any number of times that is appropriate. This means that > we > can have FUDCons in places like EMEA and NA (which helps to relieve > pressure on Flock). > > Additionally, while FUDCons are inherently regional events, I believe > that the Fedora Council should nominally "own" them. This means that > the budget allocation should work like most FADs and be approved by > the > budget. I don't think this is a change from current practice. > > While I hope that Ambassadors will take the lead in organizing and > running these events, I believe that any contributor should be able > to > make a proposal. > > Finally, I believe these events do not need to be standalone. I > think > they can have greater impact when collocated with other conferences > or > run as "+1 days" to other events. While this shouldn't be a > requirement, I think it is a good practice to encourage. Hi, while there might some economies of scale and this option always looks very appealing to people, I have almost never seen an event where it brought a lot of benefit. The specialized co-located event never attracted anyone from the larger event and people who came for the specialized event were usually too busy to attend the larger event. And if it's organized as "+1 day" event, it means people have to stay longer to benefit from both, thus lodging costs go up. I think the only exception was GNOME.Asia+FUDCon APAC 2014. Two smaller events got together and created something big enough to attract sponsors and visitors from far away. It also worked because GNOME+Fedora is a combination that makes sense and there is an overlap in contributors. I'm one of those who contribute to both. Jiri > Another challenge for FUDCons that we should remove is to make it > easier > to organize them. Once a FUDCon is approved, we need to ensure that > we > have enough people and resources engaged to make the event a > success. > In the case of Flock we see several core organizers working with the > local organizer to make things happen. FUDCons should be able to > rely > on more support from the FCAIC and possibly others to help with > organizational details. We should also see FUDCons being proposed > with > robust organizing committees that are appropriate to the size of the > event. > > ## Goals > > It is hard to write a single set of goals for a varied set of > events. > Instead, I think that we should consider these in a way that I hope > is > similar to how the Ambassadors consider events they attend. > Specifically, I believe that we should be asking the following > questions: > > * Who specifically is this event targeting and why? How does this > group > align with the target audiences for Fedora? > * What are the specific desired outcomes of this event? How can we > see > evidence of achieving these goals? Evidence doesn't need to be > quantitative, it can be qualitative, but you need to have thought > through how you know you were a success. > * Why should we hold a FUDCon in this specific city? > * How will you ensure you attract the right audience and that they > are > engaged? What preparatory activities need to happen? How will those > happen? What follow up activities are needed? How will those happen? > * If this FUDCon is collocated, why is this conference or event the > right one to collocate with? If this FUDCon is not collocated, why > is > an independent event better? > > ## Programming > > Programming for FUDCons is extremely important. In 2016 one event > was > run as a Bar Camp and the other was run as a programmed event at a > Bar > Camp. While Bar Camp voting should result in the conference that > people > want to attend, that also means that the speakers need to be talking > about topics that matter to the audience. In the case of a > programmed > event, this is also critical. > > Therefore programming at FUDCons should be based on the goals and > target > audience, not just based on which Fedora contributors want to > attend. > Ideally the proposal should include the kinds of topics that will be > presented and even a provisional list of speakers who will be > approached. > > ## Funded Attendance and Costs > > To increase the number of activities, we should cleanly divorce > FUDCons > from Regional FADs. FUDCons are necessarily a reason to fly in > contributors from all over a region or the world. Let's keep them > locally focused. Depending on the goals and target audience all of > the > speakers do not even need to be Fedora contributors. For example, a > non-Fedora contributor speaking about Eclipse (on Fedora) at a > developer > focused FUDCon may make a lot of sense. > > Therefore I believe that budgets should trend toward the smaller side > with an emphasis on impact being directly related to budget size. To > give some (highly contrived) examples, a +1 day event for FOSDEM may > have a large budget because the event needs good publicity to draw > the > huge attendance opportunity from those attending FOSDEM. A +1 day > event > for DevConf.cz may have a small budget because we have a friendly > environment for advertising and a ton of local contributors to help > with > programming. A +1 day event for FISL may need a medium size budget > because of the need to fly in Spanish speaking presenters for some > sessions. (These are just examples, don't read into them.) > _______________________________________________ > council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.o > rg > To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists.fedorapro > ject.org
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