We want to get this started now, so we don't end up running into last minute
problems. Also, as I think many people know but was never officially
announced, it'd be nice for Red Hat engineering travel budget if we end up
in a cycle with expensive-travel EU Flock in a different year from
expensive-travel San Francisco Red Hat Summit. (Next year's summit is
Boston, so that doesn't constrain us, but the year after that shouldn't be
in the EU.)
We talked about all sorts of possibilities including doing an APAC or LATAM
Flock, but the general consensus was that those areas need something more
user-focused than Flock. It's additionally the case that having the
confernece within reasonable ground transit distance from Brno means a lot
of Red Hatters who work in that RH office can easily attend (this year there
was a bus with, like, 50 people!) — and that has turned out to _not_ be the
case with proximity to Westford/Boston. (That's not to say that we shouldn't
do NA — see earlier point on travel costs — just that when we do EU, there's
significant benefit in keeping to, say, 5 hour bus/train from Brno.)
We also talked about relying more on the RH events team (hi Jen!) to provide
their expertise in finding a venue. We've had some great success with this
being community based, but also a lot of challenges. And we've definitely
found the hotel-with-venue model to work better for us than finding
university or other low-cost or donated space and then finding lodging
secondarily. The events people have the contacts and expertise to do this.
So, as we go forward, I'd like to let them help us with logistics in this
way, while we as a community focus on the conference *content*.
With all that in mind, I'm thinking of a model like this:
1. Fedora Council decides on a general region.
2. Events team comes back with several possibilities in that region.
3. We get community feedback on ability to attend and excitment for
each of those, and return a ranked list to events team.
4. Fedora Council and events team pick final location.
5. Community people in or around that location who are able and willing
to volunteer to help with logistics, finding awesome evening events,
etc., are absolutely invited to work together.
6. Awesome Flock conference!
And, actually, assuming something like this is what we want, in the future
I'd like to get started even earlier than now, so we can do what many
conferences do and announce the location for the next Flock at the end of
each one.
What does everyone think?
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader
