[TOS] OSCON Track Thoughts

Stephen Jacobs itprofjacobs at gmail.com
Sat Jan 16 18:41:15 UTC 2010


Ok, the following thoughts come from a couple of years experience as a professional conference organizer.  Take them as you will :-)

Most of this is based on a look at last year's conference structure.

FIrst, notes to be considered from a grossly practical POV:

1.  We're late to the party,  They've got a specific number of rooms booked and a history of topics that have already worked.  The bad news is these are formulas that conference organizers tend to stick to.  The good news is that, at least as last year's schedule goes, they aren't locked into the kind of planning that's hard coded into "Python gets one room for the length of the conference and that means we have a hard limit of 14 python sessions over the three days of short sessions."  In the past they've mixed things up with multiple sessions on multiple topics over multiple days.

2.  The above said, we're most likely to be taken seriously if we can offer 14 sessions.  They may not use all (or any) but it least it proves there's enough going on out there to be considered worthy.  We've got ten combined between presentation and panel suggestions so far but we're well on the way here.

3.  While they do say they'll take proposals for group discussions and panels, a quick scan through last year's program shows that the content they had was primarily single person presentations.  Our balance of 30% panels is good.

4.  Writing Sprints are both good topics. Since the have two days of tutorials before the main conference and have had hackathons run for a day at last years conference I'd suggest that we offer The writing sprints as either type of programming.  We could run them during one or two days during the tutorial sessions as a way to bring less technical folks to the conference early (always an attractive prospect for organizers) or put it up as an option during the main conference.  Their call.

5.  Something that happens at the Game Developers conference that doesn't happen at others is that they offer smaller round-table community discussion sessions more than once during the conference so more people get a chance to sit in.  I'd suggest that a session that gives OS industry folks an opportunity to "Tell the Profs" what they'd like to see universities teach as part of TOS, what they'd like to see as an "ideal" intern candidate and/or an "ideal" entry level hire might be a good choice as something that we run several times because we want to hear this kind of info.  SImilarly I'd like to see the panel on "What should be taught in a FOSS course"  either add a question mark or the word "else."  I think we should be letting folks know what's happening in our courses now and then get feedback and additions to that as opposed to telling other folks what needs to be done :-)

SJ


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