On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Adnan Hodzic
<adnan@foolcontrol.org> wrote:
Hey everybody,
There were many great days for DebConf11, but we should definitely
remember this one.
As you may know I had a meeting with President and Minister of Science
and Technology today. Meeting was a big one, I was there with lady
that's in charge of NGO "DIVA", we were meeting with President and
Minister of Science and Technology of Republika Srpska, along with the
Mayor of Banja Luka along with other government officials, and there
was some press as well.
Many issues were discussed but the main point of this meeting was to
see what are we going to get from the government in terms of
sponsorship. First we were planning to get money from Government,
then we planned to get stuff in compensation, we were basically aiming
for free Venue and Hotel Bosna. To sum it up, this is what happened
and what we got:
President alone gave us 50.000€! From Government we got 100.000€ and
from the City of Banja Luka we got a free Venue (Banski Dvori), we
even got Student Dormitories as bonus and backup option for
accomodation, however I'm planning that we stick with the original
plans and go with hotels as planned. Oh yea, FYI what I just said
wasn't a Disney movie :)
I think that line itself sums how the meeting went, I've also told
President what our plans are for future, and that we are working on,
getting more sponsorship, he even offered his help in getting the
local sponsorships. I've told him that we are planning to start our
work on Penta and have the registrations open within the next month.
And then we'll start acquiring information about all attendees and
their preferences, and where they'll be getting from to Banja Luka and
in what times. Mostly beneficial regarding organized transportation
from airports to the Venue.
We also discussed other matters such as visas, I explained how the
situation was with some of the attendees. Solution to this problem
will be that, we'll start a list people that will need visas, those
people will be granted approval to enter Bosnia on the border, all
that those attendees need to let us know is where/what country will
they be entering Bosnia from in case of transit. I suggest we start
working on making this list ASAP.
After the meeting we also went to the President of our Venue, and we
told him our requests, we got what we asked for 14 days. There's much
more to say on what happened, but I think I said the most crucial
things, please attend next IRC meeting on 8th of March if you want to
find out more.
*Note* for BiH local team, for members that are new, don't just appear
on the IRC meeting or mailing lists just like that, introduce yourself
on our local list firsts before starting discussions or before jumping
into fire.
Here's even an image for all of you :)
http://twitpic.com/43c759
>From left to right, NGO DIVA president, Minister of Science and
Technology, President, me :)
Comments?
P.S: You owe me beer for this one :)