FSCONS 2009/Meeting Notes

Meeting Agendas and Notes

Meeting agenda: 20 oct at 15.00 CET

Where: IRC, channel #fscons on FreeNode

§1 Information

Registrations

Currently 90 registered, whereof 69 have paid. Based on historic data, this puts the number of attending at around 200, plus speakers and staff.

§2 Decisions

Food

We'll hire coffee makers and buy coffee etc from Groovy Foods as last year. Groovy has also offered a lunch deal with soup day 1 and vegetarian lasanga day 2. The cost for this, for us, would be 140 kr for one person for both days. We should include this in the price for the tickets where we already offer this, but we should also offer all existing registrations, as well as future registrations, to buy lunch tickets for 100 kr. This can also be offered on site if we order ~5-10% more.

Speakers Gifts

The place with GNUs never got back to us about it. So we'll go with free ticket for next years conference and chocolate.

Video equipment

Renting equipment to produce videos etc of the talks will cost, according to the volunteer in charge of this, about 10,000 SEK. Jonas will check on this to see if it's feasible.

§3 Discussion

Meeting notes: 13 oct at 15.00 CET

Where: IRC, channel #fscons on FreeNode

§1 Information

Burgården Conference Center

Our budget simply won't manage with the cost of Burgården, and our attempts at finding new sponsors or lower costs at Burgården have not turned out to be fruitful. So we've had to go with another option, the IT University, and have spoken with the administration here and booked the relevant rooms.

Registration information

71 registered, whereof 56 has paid already. According to Henrik, this should be considered very good and we will fill the venue without problems.

Travel information, speaker

As far as speakers are concerned, we've gotten a lot of abstracts up on the website now, and the travel for all speakers coming here from abroad has been booked and arranged, together with their accommodation.

§2 Decisions

Posters

Discussion about whether we need new posters with updated address or not. The existing ones should be completed with a note giving the new address, but it doesn't seem necessary to have new posters, since noone had an idea of where they would be distributed.

Beer, etc, for social event(s)

We are not sure if the plan to co-locate the Friday mingle event with the Open Source Day will work out in practice. There's very little information from them on the subject. An option could be to have the mingle event also at the ITU, which will also help us logistically and with the registration which can then happen from Friday evening and not everyone on Saturday morning.

Speaker gifts

Preliminary a GNU and a free ticket for next year. If someone has another idea, post to staff@ and we'll organise it towards the end of the week.

Additional marketing

TODO: Lennart, can you coordinate with Jardenberg to push for FSCONS through his channels?

TODO: Razor to look into updating the address on the various online calendars.

§3 Discussion

Hesa requests help pushing for the Free Software award.

Notes from meeting: 29 sep at 15.00 CET

Where: IRC, channel #fscons on FreeNode

§1 Information

+10 registrations since last week

Flyers and posters on their way out

Stian says people want to come if they can find a couch.

TODO: Jonas to push the Coachsurfing group to Linuxföreningen and Ubuntu-SE TODO: Make a special A3 poster (just b/w printing) giving FSCONS.org and asking people to help visitors find a couch, linking also to CS

§2 Decisions

Dataföreningen

Förra året fick FSCONS en en artikelspalt på DFSs sidor i Computer Sweden och det är inget som hindrar i år heller(troligen fred. 23 el.ev. 30 okt). Har du FSCONS loggan i tryckformat kanske den kan komma med också. Det innebär också, tror jag, att den kommer med i nyhetsutskickets länkar till alla medlemmar i Sverige och på DFS huvudsidor, som många prenumererar på via rss. Vore bra om programmet kom tidigt till vår journalist Marianne Loor som också gärna pratar med er innan, så sänd Marianne ett mail om när du tror det skulle vara lämpligt att höras.Sen läggs info upp på mina nätverks sidor och kalendrar dvs. i östra, västra och södra avser då webb och Open Source(tillsamman sex olika platser på dfs sajt ) och skickas i samband med mina inbjudningar till mina aktiviteter. Och det gör jag så fort jag har programmet, så ju fortare jag får programmet så.... :-) Och utöver det fixar jag så att det sätts upp flyers på universitetet och troligen på Länsmuséet och ITceums anslagstavla( ITceum flyttar just in i Länsmuséets lokaler och blir Datormuséet).

TODO: Jonas to accept and prepare registration page with DF discount.

§3 Discussion

Swedish Model

Stian has been in touch with Swedish Model who have offered a band to send to Gothenburg to play at FSCONS if we can sponsor their travel.

TODO: Stian: Reply to them that we are interested, and looking for funding to bring the artists here.

TODO: Stian: Check a potential cultural house in Majorna that's just starting out as a potential place for social event

TODO: Stian: Contact Pallin and ask if he's interested in co-organising the social event.

Notes from meeting: 22 sep at 15.00 CET

Where: IRC, channel #fscons on FreeNode

§1 Information

Mozilla Foundation Europe joining as a sponsor

We got a mail two days ago from Mozilla Foundation saying that Mozilla Europe has agreed on a 1000 eur sponsorship of FSCONS

Flyers are now available

Jonas informed that we now have flyers in A6/A5/A4 available. They have been distributed to Linköping University, .SE and Wikimedia Sweden (Lennart) and should now also be sent to ljo for Humanisten. If anyone wants flyers, let Jonas know so he can send.

Registration status

As of yesterday we had 35 registrations, whereof 25 had paid already. I don't know how this stands against previous years, but according to hesa, more than 15 is good, so we seem to be doing fairly well in terms of registrations, and we know that most of the registrations will appear in the last weeks before the conference.

§2 Decisions

§3 Discussion

Dataföreningen

We have been approached by Ralf Andersson at Dataföreningen asking if they can get a discount on the admission for the conference. 20% has been suggested. Jonas will ask what kind of promotion will be done in Dataföreningen for this, and get back to this as a decision point next meeting.

Notes from meeting: 15 sep at 15.00 CET

Where: IRC, channel #fscons on FreeNode

§1 Information

§2 Decisions

Budget: Travel sponsorships

We have been asked by Shriram and Yousuf, travelling from India and Bangladesh, to pay for their travel and accommodation expenses. The total cost of this would be ca 25,000 SEK (possibly somewhat more, depending on the flights). They have been provisionally accepted into the program, assuming that we have money to pay for their costs. At this point, it seems unlikely that we'll be able to pay this. Suggested decision is to inform them that we can't pay for their travel and accommodation. They are both academics and it is possible that they might be able to find funding through their own universities. We can allow them at most two weeks for this before removing them from the schedule.

DECISION: Jonas to implement this according to the suggestion.

§3 Discussion

Notes from meeting: 8 sep at 15.00 CET

Where: IRC, channel #fscons on FreeNode

§1 Information

Invitation to FSCONS 2009 has been sent out. Please distribute widely!

TODO: Jonas to create a printable schedule.

TODO: Lennart distributes flyers to the library; Henrik does CTH; LJO does Humanisten.

§2 Decisions

Admission fees for Co-Organisers

There's been a question from the FSFE if their members (Fellows) can get a reduced admissions fee to the conference. We've discussed a €10 admission fee for Co-Organising organisations (essentially a 50% cut from the €20 default fee). Does this make sense? The same deal would in that case apply to all members of Co-Organisers.

DECISION: Co-Organisers get 4 free registrations, which they can use in whatever way they please. Additional registrations are 10€ per person. Ideally, this will be dealt with by the Co-Organisers itself, who then report the names and country of origin one week in advance of all people registered through them. WMS will sponsor attendance for its members, and recommends that other organisations do the same.

§3 Discussion

Subscriptions to Linux Journal and Linux Magazine

Henrik has negotiated two subscriptions to LJ and LM to be handed out in an award ceremony. Someone needs to organise a competition for this though.

Henrik will ask around more generally for a volunteer.

Nordic Free Software Award

Henrik requests help pushing for the Nordic Free Software Award

Volunteer staff during the FSCONS days

It's become time to involve volunteers to work on FSCONS during the FSCONS days (and preparations before that).

Budget issues

The budget is right now -172 tkr (ca). Jonas will send an estimated budget to the board.

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Board meeting: 18 aug at 15.00 CET

Where: IRC, channel #fscons on FreeNode

§1 Information from Staff:

• Organisation of FSCONS and introduction to the working structure

FSCONS is governed by the Board, which consists of all participating Co-Organisers, under the direction of the Conference Manager. The Board meets every week on IRC and takes the most important decisions that need involvement of all Co-Organisers. It's also a way for the Co-Organisers to be kept informed about what's happening. The Staff consists of the on-site staff where each person has a specific role and function to play during the implementation of the conference. Staff meet more frequently in person and in a more ad-hoc way as the needs change.

• Planning public activities before FSCONS

There is a proposed and planned communication structure at FSCONS 2009 Communication Strategy which will outline where and how various types of information should be released and pushed for to up the interest in the conference in the months to come.

• ACTION ITEM: Stian adds dates for press-releases to the list
• ACTION ITEM: Hesa adds dates for interviews

• Schedule for FSCONS

Following the work of the Programme Committee there is a schedule now online at http://fscons.org/schedule.php which is not yet public, but can be used as a reference. There will be some small changes to it, and some of the speakers have not gotten back to us yet. Hopefully the complete schedule can be published soon!

• ACTION ITEM: Jonas asks Lennart about keynote (Sue)
• ACTION ITEM: Leif-Jöran to send information about Haralanova and Weiden as potential keynotes (if they are not already on the list)

§2 Decisions

• Tickets in geocaches

There is a proposal to put free tickets to the conference in geocaches. This should probably be of the form of some discount coupons or similar that the finder can cash for an FSCONS ticket. Proposed 20 free tickets, distributed in some reasonable way between the countries, as per what is easily implemented so that not too much time is spent on this task.

• DECISION: Accepted, but more concrete plan for logistics needs to be worked out with the geocache community for distribution of the caches, which needs to include distribution in the nordic countries and not just Sweden.

• Streaming and recording of speeches

There's a need to at least record the speeches during FSCONS, and preferably if it can be arranged, to also stream them online as the conference progresses. Bambuser is a service which primarily is intended for streaming information via 3G from cell phones and similar, but can be a useful service for streaming events. Proposal that we get in touch with Bambuser and invite them to participate with us at FSCONS to stream all talks during the two days.

• DECISION: Declined. Jonas should contact Öppen Kanal Göteborg and GU simultaneously to ask for help with streaming and recording the conference, and then report back on the next meeting what their replies are.

• Get-together event on Friday

Proposal to combine the efforts of Resource Point, the GNU Hackers Meeting and FSCONS to have a combined event on friday evening, the day before the conference. This would be an informal get-together event for FSCONS, and closing event for Resource Point and GNU Hackers Meeting. Jonas and Henrik have a meeting with Resource Point on tuesday lunch, and will inform about the outcome of that, but a proposal is that these are all merged and that we do the get-together meeting together.

• DECISION: Accepted, continue the discussions with Resource Point for how to implement it.

• Flyers for FSCONS

Joakim Ljungblad has been working on some flyer designs for FSCONS. Will be available on tuesday, after which a decision is needed during the meeting on which flyer to go for, and any comments we have. Joakim will then finalise the design. Other designs will potentially also be available.

• DECISION: All designs are great and we'd like to have all of them eventually. For now though, the decision falls on #3 with the following additions:

- Not the same woman on both left and right side - "Burgården Conference Center" (without the s) - Date should be 13-15th of November - More space between "Re-build" and "Politics"

§3 Discussion

• What other organisations do we want to have participate at FSCONS to present their work? These might not be Co-Organisers, but just participating with people to present their projects or organisations in the common areas of the conference.

• We're still lacking a bit in the area of sponsors, especially when it comes to travel funds. What organisations might be available for giving funding for visiting speakers, or general conference sponsorship of FSCONS?