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Hi!
It would be nice having definitive dates for DebConf9 for the sake of
everybody wanting to plan the holidays.
So far we have this:
http://debconf9.debconf.org/dates.xhtml
Thursday 16 - start DebCamp
...
Wednesday 22 - Arrival day
Thursday 23 - 1st Day of DebConf
Friday 24 - 2nd Day of DebConf
Saturday 25 - Open DebConf day (formerly known as Debian Day)
Sunday 26 - Day trip
Monday 27 - 3rd Day of DebcConf
Tuesday 28 - 4th idem
Wednesday 29 - 5th idem
Thursday 30 - 6th idem
Friday 31 - Departure day
We can not have the venue in August, so we are forced to end DebConf on the
31th (departure day).
Usually we had DebConf from Sunday to Saturday, minimizing the days people
have to ask for vacation in their paid jobs [1] and the money spent in
lodging/food. Both are very important points.
[1] This works better for people coming from the same continent, but it also
can mean at least 1 day less from people coming from other continents.
Where I see a problem here is in having the Open Day in the middle of Debconf,
it makes DebConf one day longer than usual.
I understand the goal of having the Open Day in Saturday is having more attends,
but I am not completely sure this will be the case:
- it is summer, and given the temperature people in the weekend go to a colder
place, you might be a geek, but you have friends/partnerts that are not.
- in july some people is in holidays, and if they stay in extremadura, they do
not care if the open day is in workday or weekend.
- if it is a normal work day for you, and your work is free software-related,
you might get at least half-day paid off to go to some talks.
- maybe better transportation to the place in a workday (we should remember it
is summer and usually there is less transport)
Also and we should study if it is worth it in the extra money it will cost us
(food+lodging) and having some contributors show up in saturday 25th because they
can not afford take so many days off from work.
I think by now my proposal is quite clear:
Thursday 16 - start DebCamp
...
Thursday 23 - Open Debconf day / Arrival day
Friday 24 - 1st Day of DebConf
Saturday 25 - 2nd Day of DebConf
Sunday 26 - Day trip
Monday 27 - 3rd Day of DebcConf
Tuesday 28 - 4th idem
Wednesday 29 - 5th idem
Thursday 30 - 6th idem
Friday 31 - Departure day
And I am sure we'll still have people missing the beginning of DebConf, but
nothing can be done against that. At least, they will miss a day less of
talks.
Alternatives are:
- kill Day trip
- kill day trip, Open Day in thursday 23 (interesting in case of budget
problems).
- Day trip in the same day than Open Day.
But i am not sure we want any of these.
Extra point: minimizing the days can be also important in case some people does
not stand well the high temperatures. I mean here people getting slight health
problems. High temperatures will be annoying for everybody but they can be
tolerated with some care (we already had this in Mexico and we survived).
All this is very conditioned to the opinion of the localteam, and if they
have/need do DebConf day in a certain day.
Just my thoughts.
Ana
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On Mon, 2009-02-23 at 13:33 +0100, Ana Guerrero wrote:
> Usually we had DebConf from Sunday to Saturday, minimizing the days people
> have to ask for vacation in their paid jobs [1] and the money spent in
> lodging/food. Both are very important points.
The last time we had this discussion I was aware of the holiday time
part but I hadn't noticed the sponsorship-period part.
At DebConf8 and DebConf7 we had arrive on Saturday, leave on Sunday,
which means paying for seven nights accommodation. The proposed
schedule for DebConf9 is arrive on Wednesday, leave on Thursday, which
means paying for eight nights. Accommodation is usually the largest
unavoidable cost to DebConf, so a 14% increase there is significant.
(There would also be more meals to pay for, of course.)
Of course, if the regional government will pay for the accommodation
then that's not a problem, but the last news seemed to be that that was
unlikely?
I also agree with Ana that I'd expect many people to only want to take
one week off work, and so to arrive on the middle Saturday/Sunday.
(Although the conference will finish earlier than usual, the end day is
pretty much the same in terms of the working week.) The non-ideal dates
come from the availability of the venue, but we can still try to
minimise the impact by what we put on each day.
--
Moray
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