GUADEC 2017: Length and Format

Hi all,

Yes, you heard me right: 2017. :)

The location of next year's conference has yet to be officially decided,
but with only one bid on the table and a requirement to book the venue
soon, we are being forced into some forward planning.

Last November there was an interesting discussion about the length of
GUADEC [1]. I would like to pick that up again and make a tentative
proposal for GUADEC 2017. This is as follows:

   - Switch to two days of talks and two days of "hack days".
   - Advertise the conference as a four day event. The fact that the first
   two days are talks would be a minor footnote only; when people say they
   want to come, we give them the dates for the four days.
   - Maximize the inclusiveness and activity of the hack days. There are
   lots of possibilities here, including:
   - Holding the workshops during the hack days rather than the day before
      the conference.
      - Making sure that there's space for people to hack and talk.
      - Having some kind of led session on the morning of the first hack
      day, which will help people to form groups to work on the same things.
      - Having a space where people can do impromptu lighting talks.
      - Setting up areas for particular kinds of activity, like an "apps
      zone" or an "engagement zone".
      - Providing spaces where people can hold meetings and BoFs without
      needing to book or plan them in advance.
      - Having wrap-up sessions at the end of each day, where groups can
      feed back what they have done that day.

The key goals/advantages of this proposal are:

   - Maximise interaction between attendees: give them more time to talk
   and hold discussions.
   - Be more inclusive. One of the problems of the current format is that
   there's a lot of ambiguity: there are two sets of dates, newcomers don't
   really know whether the BoF days are for them, or how to get involved. A
   primary goal therefore is to encourage people to stay for the full event
   and to provide opportunities for them to fully participate throughout.
   - Get more stuff done, and give the conference more of a hackfest feel.
   - Reduce costs, reduce stress. Fewer days would place less of a demand
   on the local team. It would also reduce the cost of venue hire.

The main disadvantage of this approach is that it gives less time for
talks. After the discussion last time around, I'm confident that we could
have around 22 talks. However, we'd lose at least one keynote and we'd lose
the lightning talks (we'd keen the interns lightning talks). There are
possibilities for juggling things a little, of course: we could lose all
the keynotes and reinstate the lightning talks, or we could introduce a
mixture of short and long talk slots.

Any thoughts or opinions? We might not have long to book the venue
(following the Board's final decision about where the conference will be
held), so it would be good to have reactions sooner rather than later.

Thanks,

Allan

[1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/guadec-list/2015-November/msg00001.html

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