Re: GUADEC 2016: length and schedule

Benjamin Berg <[email protected]> wrote:
...
> The issue of having fewer social events and less time for general
> conversations is a real one, and I actually consider this the main
> argument to stick with three days right now.

Yeah, it's a concern, particularly since quite a lot of people only
come for the core days. Although perhaps if we could make the hack
days more of an event, and more of an opportunity to socialise, it
could offset the loss of a core day...

Another concern I have is that reducing the number of talk slots could
make the conference less inclusive: fewer talk slots means fewer
presentations on what's happening in the project, as well as other
projects. While some of these status update talks aren't always the
most entertaining, they do serve a purpose.

> Maybe the best way forward would be to create some mock schedules of
> how a two day event might look like. Then the paper committee can
> comment on whether they think the amount of slots would be reasonable
> assuming a similar pool of submissions as last year.

It is a little tricky to predict each schedule, since location and
venue factor often have an impact. This year we had a longer lunch
than normal, at the request of the organisers, for example.

Also, as I previously mentioned, it really depends on the other
sessions we have on the schedule. Based on this year's schedule, if we
dropped one of the lightning talks and the keynotes, we could have 20
talks over two days - that's only three less than this year. But then,
if you stick with keynotes, we'd be down to 16 talks, and if we also
kept both sets of lightning talks, we'd be down to 12 talks.

If we wanted to move forward with this, the first thing to establish
is whether we would keep the lightning talks and keynotes.

...
> Alexandre already mentioned Elementary and Cinnamon. Do people agree
> that we would like to invite representatives from other desktop
> environments that use GNOME technology to GUADEC? Anyone up to
> contacting them?

I think we have invited some of those people in the past, actually.
Funding for travel has been a limiting factor, if memory serves me
correctly.

Allan