Ok, now that I've gotten that Obama rant off my chest. I want to raise a few concerns that are totally on-topic, about this proposal. Please do not take these concerns as blocking for this idea, I just think we need to be clear here what is going on. 1. Making a proposal[0] to have NYC as the Debconf venue with less than 24 hours notice to NYC people seems a little rushed and disorganized to me. I'm not even sure I know what the list 'debian-events-na' even is, but asking on that list, at the bottom of a long email: "Please speak up if you would be willing to help put in the significant amount of time it would take to organize DebConf10 in the US. I'll need to hear from some of you by Tuesday if I am to go ahead with the proposal." Without even mentioning it on the list that has a much wider NYC debian subscriber base (the Debian NYC Social list), strikes me as the first step towards certain chaos. I would expect the debconf organizers are expecting that a local NYC group of people are meeting and talking about the possibility long before making a proposal. I would expect a decision about the relative viability and how to make such a presentation would be carefully planned, rather than simply thrown over the wall the day beforehand and hope that people will step up to the plate. If I were responsible for picking the venue for next year, this would make my eyebrows raise and I'd be concerned that this serves as a model of how the organization of the conference was going to happen. 2. The criteria for hosting a debconf[1] do not seem to be met here. "Strong, mature, experienced local team"? Getting a list of people who say that they can help out, less than a day before the proposal is to be made does not strike me as a "strong local team" that has any sort of committment. This could change, but lets be honest here, Debian NYC people are not strongly organized. We maybe get together for a beer every 6 months, but only if someone just names a time and place. 3. Space is a premium in this city, and hard to come by for a large group of people. I think its possible to get something, but I do not think a major university is going to have space to give up for several hundred people for a week (or more). Even with connections to NYU and Columbia, I know that space is the biggest problem at these universities, and I am sure at the others in the city as well. Perhaps a warehouse in brooklyn is more realistic. 4. "everyone speaks English, so no language barrier for a 3rd year in a row" -- I suspect this is just a mistake, as everyone seemed to speak English in Scotland last year. 5. "Many countries (e.g. Argentina, Brazil, Russia) can get a visa within a month". At least Brasilians will be required to pay $150 USD for a visa, thats a lot. 6. Organizing debian NYC social get-togethers is not easy, and those are just about drinking beer. I am having trouble imagining how it would work or local NYC debian related people to organize an entire conference without any prior experience trying to organize something together. 0. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-na/2008/08/msg00004.html 1. http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/PriorityList and http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/LocationCheckList
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