Re: [OSCOM] volunteers?

Michael Wechner wrote:

>> oscom got started by drinking beers together,
> 
> OSCOM was not really started by drinking beer together.
> 
> Just to get the facts right:
> OSCOM was started by Eric and myself, thinking it would be a good idea
> to have a conference on FOSS content management systems. After the very 
> first
> conference in Zurich which Eric and I organized alone, Eric and I went 
> snowboarding to Engelberg and on our way back on the train to Zurich, we 
> wrote down a list on things to do to keep going (one item was the CMS 
> matrix).
> 
> At the station we met by coincidence Gregor and Henri and we told them 
> our ideas.
> By this Gregor and Henri become involved. After a short period of time
> Paul and Roger Fischer (Christian's ex-partner) also became involved.

i was referring to OSCOM the organization, which only formed because 
competitors came together, drank beers, and found that they had common 
interests.

>> oscom4 was a failure.
> 
> why was it a failure? Just because not that many people showed up as one
> would have expected? IIRC money wise it was break-even.

it had minimal organization, not enough lead time to allow people to 
factor it into their plans, minimal exposure, was too expensive for what 
it offered, the talks were not held together by a strong program 
committee. half the tracks were not even about CMS, but about generic 
apache technologies. the hoped-for synergies with apache(at the time 
there had not been an apache conference in europe for many years) were 
not realized, mostly because the necessary marketing was not in place.
overall, a bland conference that failed to live up to what we showed is 
possible at oscom3.

> Did you also read the positive part of the sentence above?

yes

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