[TOS] Proposing "Education" Track for OSCON 2010

[Heidi Ellis]

+1 for these ideas. I think that floating the idea by oscon-info sooner
rather than later is a good idea. We might get some feedback on what might
make the proposal more attractive. 

Heidi

-----Original Message-----
From: tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org
[mailto:tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org] On Behalf Of Karsten Wade
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 3:18 PM
To: tos at teachingopensource.org
Subject: Re: [TOS] Proposing "Education" Track for OSCON 2010

On Mon, Jan 04, 2010 at 01:23:29PM -0500, Luis Ibanez wrote:

> My understanding is that the process of submitting proposals to OSCON 
> is very informal, but I have no previous experience with it.
> 
> Can anyone in the list provide some advice ?

I asked an OSCON contact (Sharon Cordesse), and she pointed me to:

http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2010/public/cfp/92

I followed through to the proposal link from there, and I see how it could
be used to propose a new track, by choosing 'Other' under the 'Topics', then
filling in details in the 'Additional Notes' field.

I'm not fully satisfied with that, but let's start there.  I can follow up
with Sharon to see if there is someone specifically we can talk with for the
proposal.  However, I followed a link for more
contacts:

http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2010/public/content/contact

... and it has this:

  Speaker/Program Ideas
  Have a suggestion for a speaker or topic at OSCON?
  oscon-idea at oreilly.com

How about this as a way to proceed?

1. Put together our proposal for an education track

2. Specify at least 50% of the speakers we would recommend to fill the
   track; it's unclear to me who would decide the speakers and what it
   takes to run a proposed track.  So, we want to indicate in our
   proposal something like, "We are prepared to fill all the speaker
   slots, already have these recognizable names and subjects, but we
   didn't want to promise away all the slots without knowing who gets
   to make that choice."

3. Use the paper submission process to enter the proposal, using the
   'Additional Notes' method.

4. Simultaneously, email oscon-idea at oreilly.com with a pointer at the
   proposal and an invitation to talk with some of us about the idea
   soonest.

One challenge is, if OSCON expects to fill the track to any degree, it needs
to get on their Topics list yesterday.  Perhaps we want to float the idea by
oscon-info immediately, letting them know where we stand and what we are
doing, etc.?

- Karsten
--
name:  Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
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