Giacomo Catenazzi <cate@debian.org> writes: > Hello Marga, > >> On 24 Aug 2015, at 23:48, Margarita Manterola <margamanterola@gmail.com> wrote: > > (…) >> The pre-registration period is for people that are requesting >> sponsorship or submitting event proposals. They would only express >> their intent on going to DebConf (and DebCamp if applicable) and then >> fill in the sponsorship fields and/or submit proposals. Nothing else. >> We can also allow other people to sign up for this, but this would be >> only in order for them to get notified when actual registration opens. > > I agree. Previously it was so, but having a different (simplified) form will help twice: users will see what are the essential data, and we will not have the problem of default when adding new necessary fields (on the later phase). > > I like also to change the name. > >> When the registration period opens, everyone needs to fill in all >> their registration data (dates of attendance, t-shirt size, food/accom >> choice, etc). This avoids a problem that we've had over and over of >> people filling in random dates when signing up, and then never >> correcting them, > > Fully agree. penta was more in such direction than summit. I think in summit we tried to have “sensible default”, which caused a lot of problems. > >> or people registering because we tell them to, but >> then never reconfirming, because they don't intend to attend anymore. > > I don’t follow it. I think we will have the same problem with people > not registering but with preregistration. But with calling it preregistration and making clear that it's mostly for people who request sponsorship there will be less cancelations. > > >> The timeline of when things need to happen would be tied to the dates >> for the conference. In order for bursaries to have decisions 3 months >> before the conference (needed for not-so-expensive flight tickets), >> the pre-registration needs to close 4 months before it. >> Pre-registration needs to be open at least one month, maybe two. > > From past experience, the bursaries needs more than one months. The important part is travel sponsorship, especially for Cape Town, and this take much time. But let’s see commentary of bursaries team. (OTOH on your timeline, we have 2 months before opening registration and an additional month before sponsored registration close, so enough time. > > On past we had A queue and B-C-… queues. Possibly only A queue is > processed in such timeline (and other people are notified about they > status), so that when sponsored people cancel, we can move fund to the > next one. One month for bursaries is tight, but doable if we are well prepared. 1 1/2 months would be better. It mostly needs someone to drive the process as David did it this year. At the bursaries Bof we thought that the idea of sponsoring more people as others cancel or don't need the sponsorship anymore worked quite well this year. So we will continue to do that. Gaudenz > > >> Regarding the actual registration, it should probably start 3 months >> before the conference. The deadlines regarding this period need to be >> clarified. i.e. "last date for sponsored attendees to register", "last >> date to get a conference T-shirt and conference bag", "last date to >> register for accommodation at the venue", etc. There were several >> comments this year of people claiming that it was not clear what the >> reconfirmation deadline meant. > > Yeah, but it was also not clear to us. Now we know better about “worst case", we can do it better. > > >> We could make all of these the same >> date, but it needs to be clear for everybody involved what happens if >> you register after that. >> >> As far as I understand it, for DC16, this would mean: >> * Pre-registration starts sometime in January. >> * Pre-registration closes end of February. >> * Bursaries decisions by end of March. >> * Registration opens in April >> * Last day for sponsored attendees to register: Apr. 30th >> * DebConf16 starts first week of July. > > What about end of official registration (to have guarantee t-shirt, bag, printed badge …)? > [But this should be decided probably by DC16 team, according the local venue/suppliers requirements)] > > Note: Pre-registration and final registration (for sponsored people) could be as short as 2 or 3 weeks. > > >> Regarding talks > (…) > >> This year we had the submission deadline in the middle of the >> reconfirmation process, which meant that approved talks were not >> announced until after the reconfirmation process had ended. Also, >> bursaries was interested in knowing if an attendee had submitted a >> talk and the approval status of it when deciding whether to sponsor >> them or not, but this information was not available at all. It is my >> opinion that both things should be avoided if possible. > > I don’t see this as a huge problem. There are not many people (AFAIK) who needs a talk to get sponsorship, and I’m not sure giving 10 more point to people having an approved talk (for travel sponsorship, just an example) will help DebConf to have the best talks (vs. many talks). > > (…) > >> Adding it all up, the timeline I'm proposing would be: >> >> * Pre-registration + official event submission starts sometime in January. >> * Pre-registration + official event submission closes end of February. >> * Bursaries + official events decisions by end of March. >> * Basic schedule announced + registration opens in April >> * Last day for sponsored attendees to register: Apr. 30th >> * DebConf16 starts July 3rd. >> >> I hope this makes sense. I'm not trying to put artificial pressure on >> people, but rather trying to have a timeline that makes more sense for >> more people. > > Just that we don’t have yet a registration system. Having a simplified pre-registration will help, but we have also a lot more requirements about login and user handling (corporate/families). So this could be a nice target, but we need to be ready about the worst case, with pre-registration opening only in April (see registration system problems in DC13). > > ciao > cate > > _______________________________________________ > Debconf-team mailing list > Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org > http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
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