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FUDCon Pune Planning: CfP closing edition

by siddhesh on Mar 10, 2015, 08:40

It has been a month since we opened the CfP for FUDCon Pune and it was time to close the CfP. We had a great response to our call for speakers with over 140 talk submissions from around the world. The final list will be much shorter, but I would like to thank everyone for expressing their interest in the event. FUDCon however is much more than just the talks and speakers; it is about contributors and users of Fedora and Open Source getting together, meeting face to face and sharing ideas. To that effect, we have some more interesting announcements to make in the coming weeks. If you’ve been following the FUDCon planning meetings (they’re all open, so you can even dial in if you’re interested and awake), most announcements won’t be surprises, but I’d like to pretend that they are anyway ;)

We had a pretty good meeting a few hours ago and we officially closed the CfP link and removed it from the fudcon.in website. This meant that a few talks snuck in after the 9th March deadline (which is sufficiently vague - which timezone?!) but we’re letting that pass. Amit, Kushal, Neependra and I will be going through the talks list in the coming weeks to make a shortlist and will try to inform selected speakers as early as we can so that they can make their plans. Likewise, some of us will be looking at sponsorship tickets in about 2 weeks time. More on that in the coming meetings.

The full meeting minutes are pasted below for record. We edit the same set of points, so some of the points are repeated, but they’re there to complete the picture of the state we’re in.

Last meeting : http://piratepad.net/fudcon-pune-planning-20150203

10 Mar 2015

Agenda + Minutes
-----------

  • Outreach
    • http://piratepad.net/FudCon-outreach-list
      • this is for industry + mailing lists (communities)
      • we need help here with more lists + more volunteers to do the outreach.
    • http://piratepad.net/FUDCon-College-Outreach
      • (nothing new; we will remove this from next week’s agenda)
      • this is for colleges / educational institutes
      • separate cfp needed because we need to mention open source in education here -- we could have a track for professors / teachers here to get them together and discuss problems specific to their area.
    • Please think of more companies which deal with RH / CentOS / Fedora; reach out for CFP.
      • (al closed, remove from agenda)
      • Rupali emailed some RH contacts
    • Video series
      • (no updates) -- let’s have something next week though.
      • Videos from FPL (Matthew Miller), jsmith, Kushal, Parag, Rahul, Joerg, etc. -- extolling the virtues of FUDCon + Pune
        • Kushal and Shreyank to work on this
        • Two videos:
          • One in April
          • One in May
        • Reach out to design/marketing team for editing help.
    • also reach out to ambassadors in apac for confirmation / planning
      • Siddhesh: announced during apac meeting; ambassador panel discussion at fudcon welcomed by all; Siddhesh to announce it on ambassadors list.
        • Siddhesh to do this today.
    • open trac for sponsorship requests
    • We should send email to fudcon-planning@ and india@ lists to announce CFP is open
    • Amit to write blog post on barcamp idea
    • Based on that, we’ll open barcamp CFP in a week or two.
      • Kushal says barcamp style should have a whiteboard at the venue, and not have it online beforehand.
      • Shreyank suggests we could do barcamps on last day too.
      • 2-3 people suggest we should not have a cfp at all for barcamp (because this is not how they’re done anyway)

  • CFP
    • CFP is now closed!
    • We have > 130 talks!
    • Confirmed we can’t add new sessions -- website updated.
    • We will have to scale this down -- we can’t handle these many.
      • 2011 fudcon had 60 talks; we had to have 6 parallel tracks.
    • Amit suggests we keep a CFP open for barcamp-style, since that is how FUDCons have been conducted this way so far.
    • Everyone agrees, but let’s not call it CFP; let’s call it barcamp-track
    • Also there are lightning talk, which will be decided on same day.sch

  • BOFs
    • We will provide some empty space, people will organise themselves.
    • whiteboards to provide a space to book and reserve spaces

  • Marketing
  • FUDCon planning
    • We should start a tradition to announce the next fudcon at the current one
    • We should start the bid process beforehand and get a bid selected before the current one starts
    • The FUDCon pages on the Fedora wiki already mention 1 yr of lead time is needed for starting the fudcon planning process.
    • https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_organization_process

  • Scheduling
  • Website
  • Travel updates?
    • Let’s start looking at tickets
    • Email fudcon-planning@ to set up an IRC meeting to discuss tickets
    • Let’s say 2 weeks from now - Thursdays 2000 our time
    • Fedora contributors, speakers, APAC people - priorities.
    • Identify people to book early (esp people who travel from far).

  • Budget
    • Make and maintain a publicly visible sheet to track expenses?
    • Sent a reminder to Ruth
      • Ruth replied; she’s OK with using RH expense system

  • FUDPub (no update)
    • Rupali reached out to Venue1
    • Potential Venue 1
      • Space for 100 people
      • Reasonable (approx 1800 per person)
      • RH has relationship; payments are easier
      • Close to cocoon
      • No limitation on sound limits - a nice party can be had.
    • Rupali continuing to reach out to others
      • Another venue visit next week

  • Swag
    • Let’s start thinking about this now; approach vendors.
    • Niranjan suggests some programmable arduino boards manufactured locally with our logos
    • Swag for Volunteers
      • tshirts
    • Swag for Organisers?
    • Swag for Speakers
      • Mugs?
      • Umbrellas (for sweet Pune rains)
    • Fedora badge for attendees?(added to the FAS account)

  • Venue
    • WiFi
      • They don’t have this on-campus; they had said they would set it up by FUDCon.  Follow up.
      • MIT COE are keen on doing it; they need input from us.
        • We will get in touch with their IT person.
        • Also talk about the Fedora mirror with them.
    • Power connector extensions
      • MIT were going to set this up.  Follow up
    • Note to speakers (include in prep email): In seminar hall: projectors are 4:3, screen quite small (don’t include small text)

  • MIT meetups
    • First one proposed on 28th Feb
      • Didn’t happen; we need to discuss when it’s possible for them (they have exams going on these days)
    • What to do?
    • Siddhesh to reach out to MCUG
    • Set up a Fedora mirror (Chandan)
      • Best way to seed will be to get an archive on 

  • Volunteers
    • College reopens on Jun 15
    • Many students will be on leave till Jun 15
    • We should identify students who will be available in the break - e.g. students from Pune who don’t plan to travel elsewhere; we don’t need too much of their time anyway

  • Mobile Application
    • Siddharth + Rohan had volunteered
    • Rohan to adapt an app used by the OpenStack folks.

  • Creating FAQ for FUDCon India 2015
    • Kushal to draft it
    • Kushal has a list of Q
      • Amit will get creative with answers.

  • Videographing
    • kpoint: Not an option. Rates too high (20k per day just for recording)
      • asked for clarification on rates; they might have subsidised options for us
    • hasgeek
      • They’re  allowing us use of their equipment + train a few volunteers who can do  the recording.   Equipment needs to be brought from BLR to Pune.  Nice  gesture by them; but sounds complicated given the expensive equipment +  need to get volunteers to be trained.
    • Look for cheaper quotes from other professionals (Bipin)
    • Buy our own cameras? (Rupali)
    • Check if local RH marketing has cameras they can spare for the event (Rupali)
    • Open source solutions for streaming (amit)
    • Last option will be to have a tiny webcam doing live Hangout -- advantage is it has auto-archival on youtube.
      • amit: +1 for this option (or using the open source one for streaming)

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