GUADEC 2016: length and schedule

Hi everyone,

Huge thanks to the team that are putting on GUADEC this year. It's
fantastic that you've stepped up, and Karlsruhe looks like a cool
city!

I've been involved in the papers committee for a fair few years now,
and I've been involved in doing hte conference schedule for at least
the past 3/4 years. I was interested to see that your bid proposes
only having two core days for GUADEC next year.

Until 2014, GUADEC had 4 core days. Then, this year, we switched to 3
days. This was a bit of a challenge for the schedule: we just managed
to squeeze everything in, but only just.

If we want to go down to two core days, we'll probably have to
radically rethink the schedule. Possibilities might involve cutting
the lightning talks, and/or cutting the length of the talks. It seems
like a good idea to talk about this early on.

I'll also say that I'm a little hesitant about cutting down the length
of the core days from a social point of view, and that it would be a
big change from the 4 day conference we were holding until just last
year. That's not to say that there might not be advantages to the
change, but it probably deserves some discussion.

Thanks again,

Allan