Past Flock wisdom
by Máirín Duffy
Hi everybody,
I read through the set of blogs posted about last year's Flock to try to
distill all the ideas / suggestions folks had written about for this
year.
(https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/list-of-flock-blogs-and-more/)
---
Lots of notes on logistics and organization. Highlights:
- Challenge of scheduling Fedora Engineeringteam talks as to not conflict
- 10 sessions canceled; usually only 2-3. Need to figure out why /
manage itto try to avoid so many.
- Remove schedule from booklet, have wall schedule
- Telegram vs. IRC confusion, too many places to monitor."I would
advocate for coming up with an online discussion plan well in advance of
the conference next year and sticking to it."
- Wifi not sufficient to stream all sessions. Recorded sessions and post
after (except for diversity panel which streamed.) Should make a policy
on this probably. (Q: what if we streamed audio-only? Would this save
bandwidth?)
http://jwboyer.livejournal.com/53056.html
---
Takeaway here is to make the transit options really clear. I'm thinking
of making some maps of how to get the airport bus, having a photo fo the
pickup point and also the drop off point in Hyannis.
http://www.colliernotes.com/2016/08/fedora-flock-2016-day-1.html
---
Nice pictures of some collateral, notes about the wallschedule and maybe
we better not put a schedule in the booklet and instead do the wall
schedule as a regular thing:
http://www.ryanlerch.org/blog/flock-2016-krakow/
---
Panels should be more than an hour (not sure about this tho, that seems
excessive to me)
Moderation needs to be stricter in panels so it's not dominated by a few
of the panelists
https://whatamithinks.wordpress.com/2016/08/15/480/
---
Miscommunication situation to avoid with speakers:
"I was a bit relaxed after that and didn’t worry much when there was no
further contact by FLOCK organizers for hotel and travel bookings. But
by early July, I was panicking a lot ! Turns out, I had registered for
FLOCK using a different email id (non f.p.o one) and submitted the talk
using my f.p.o email id and hence was dropped from the list of sponsored
attendees. Anyway, thanks to FLOCK organizers and especially, Joe
Brockmier it all worked out in the end since I was already in Berlin for
my research work and didn’t need a new visa ! So come August 2, I was
all set and ready to fly to FLOCK.."
https://networksfordata.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/flock-diaries-krakow-2016/
---
- flock proxy setup - if we can do this again would be nice, should get
the word out about it well in advance and have it in messaging including
the booklet
- rideshare page - will be good to have this setup for getting folks
from Hyannis station to the hotel
- volunteer organization - we can use volunteers for time reminders for
speakers as well as IRC transcription and video recording
https://www.scrye.com/wordpress/nirik/2013/08/06/flock-notes-of-interest/
Cheers,
~m
6 years, 4 months
Bus ticket logistics
by Máirín Duffy
Hi,
Bex had asked inline on the registration form mockup comments if we
could pre-purchase bus tickets ahead of time.
Yes, butthey only have a paper ticket system right now, which means we'd
be mailing tickets out - I don't think that will work. The other option
is for folks to purchase the tickets (cash only) upon boarding.
However, the bus company is moving to an electronic system where they
can scan tickets on smart phones or provide online ticket purchasing via
PDFs you can print. The system is planned to go live in May. Here is an
article about it -
http://www.capecodtimes.com/business/20170117/bus-line-to-roll-out-tech-u...
So hopefully we'll be able to take advantage of online ticketing.
~m
6 years, 4 months
Idea about T-shirts + sticker info
by Máirín Duffy
Hi,
T-shirts are $6-7/piece toget printed (Plus shipping. I'm willing to do
local pickup to save $.) For 250 peoplethat is $1500-1750:at least one
fully funded Flock attendee, no?
Idea: TakeT-shirt orders up front during registration, and use the fund
as a way to sponsor an additional contributor. Charge $10/shirt and if
only 100 people out of 250 bought a shirt, that's still $1k, close
enough to mostly fund a contributor. Folks buying a t-shirt for a
reasonable cost also get to feel good about helping another contributor
get to Flock.
Just an idea, anyway. And now you know what T-shirt pricing / budget
would be if we decide to fully cover them. T-shirts are going to need at
least 4 weeks turnaround assuming design is ready to go (it is not right
now)and we know quantities/ sizes (we couldn't know until reg is
finished.) I recommend closing registration for people who want a
T-shirt by July 10.
I priced out stickersheets for Fedora badges. The best bet I think is a
5"x7" sheet of multiple KISS cut stickers; $0.62/sheet; for a run of
500, $312 + free shipping (see
https://ethercalc.com/flock-swag-pricing-2017 )
~m
6 years, 5 months
Flock collateral / designs
by Máirín Duffy
I am making an inventory ofneeded Flockcollateral / designsso we can get
started. What am I missing?
Also, we need to decide what swag to do. Do we have a swag budget or do
you want me to go ahead and price out some options so we can make a
decision based on price? (I could put together nice, ok, and cheapo
package options for you :) )
BASICS
======
1) Flock website
Ryan has put together a quick prototype, Mary is working on
developing it more.
2) Flock booklets
(Ryan Lerch traditionally creates these and has some scripts that
generate them: https://pagure.io/flock-booklets)
(In Krakow we had 242 registrants so we printed off 280 books)
(specs: 16 pages, full color, saddle-stitch)
3) Large wall schedule
(http://www.ryanlerch.org/blog/flock-2016-krakow/)
4) Lanyard badges
(https://pagure.io/design/issue/457)
(we did 280 for krakow)
5) Room signage
(https://pagure.io/design/issue/454)
(for Krakow we requested for these to be laminated, there were 7
rooms so we had 2 done for each room - 14total)
5) QR code sign for evening party badge
(https://pagure.io/design/issue/458)
(for Krakow we had 3 copies of this and they were laminated)
6) Projector downtime looping video
(https://pagure.io/design/issue/396)
7) Wifi portal logo
(used in Krakow)
https://pagure.io/design/issue/463
8) "I'm going to" Flock banners for people to use on their blogs
9) Flock banners for Fedora magazine articles about Flock
SWAG IDEAS
==========
We should decide what we're going to do. Some options:
- T-Shirt
- Fedora badge sticker sheets
- Lunch bags (Rochester)
- Water bottles (Krakow)
- Tote
- (your idea here)
~m
6 years, 5 months
Flock registration and session proposals now open
by Máirín Duffy
Hi everybody,
Patrick and I were able to finalize the Flock registration and proposals app (regcfp) today and with Stephen Gallagher's help we tested it and turned it on. Things to note:
- I don't have the hotel code yet. I will ask for it tomorrow.
- I have seen one report of a PayPal redirect issue. It was sent to flock-staff. I will forward to Patrick in case he's not on that alias.
- I announced it to the 2017 attendees list but have not yet put together any other announcements. A community blog post would probably be good. I'll work on drafting something. If anyone wants to help please hit me up!
- The deadline for CFP / funding request is set to June 15 right now.
- flocktofedora.org has also been updated, of course.
Check the registration app out here:
http://register.flocktofedora.org
Cheers,
~m
6 years, 6 months
Telegram Group Idea
by Brian Exelbierd
Hi All,
Yesterday in the #fedora-flock channel there was some conversation
around electronic messaging and Flock. I'm writing to summarize the
ideas and get some feedback:
A recent survey done by the hubs team found that the top 2 communication
tools used by respondents (community members) were IRC and Telegram.
Last year at Flock we used both and we found that there was a lot of
traffic on the Telegram channel and a moderate amount on the IRC
channel. I personally attribute this to the fact that most folks don't
have an IRC client on their phone.
The gut feeling from the group seems to be that we should continue to
use both methods during Flock.
Therefore, I believe we should bridge Telegram and IRC
Goal: Prevent the conversation from being Split
There are existing ways of bridging an IRC channel and a Telegram group.
This is currently done between #fedora-telegram on freenode and the
Fedora Telegram Group (https://t.me/fedora)
Proposal: If people like this idea, I will talk to whomever is running
the teledora bot and work to get it set up for #fedora-flock and the new
Flock 2017 Telegram group.
During the conversation I also mentioned an idea for having the Telegram
group require a FAS ID in order to join. This would allow us to prevent
harrassment like what happened last year by non-attendee
non-contributors showing up to cause problems during some sessions.
Unfortunately, the only way I can evision this happening requires a
telegram bot be able to add a person to the channel. The Telegram Bot
API does not include this call. Therefore a new bot would have to be
written that used the Human API. Modifying a bot like teledora is a
reasonable thing to do before Flock. However, writing a new bot before
Flock seems unlikely unless someone wants to really devote some effort
to this. Any takers? I can outline my ideas if you'd like.
regards,
bex
6 years, 6 months
Flock registration app status
by Máirín Duffy
Hi!
Patrick put together the updates based on the mockups and I've spent the past couple of days on the HTML/CSS. The look / feel is pretty close to done; I added some field types (textarea + fixes to radio) but there are some pending issues with the registration site.
Here is the current status:
- HTML/CSS + graphics 95% complete except for select pages I don't have access to at this time (registration desk, paper submission, review submissions (no data), vote on talks (no data), get receipt, view registrations, accepted talks, list all registrations). I don't know if every single one of these is used but theyre mentioned in the handlerbars template.
- I added a "Logged in as {{name}}" area in the upper right, but {{name}} only works on index and not the form pages (not sure why :-/)
- I put a due date for registration in the page of June 15. Hope this was ok. Obviously easily changed.
- The registration fee is not editable. I think we want the field to suggest the fee based on country but for it to be editable by the person (right?) I don't know how to implement this.
- I don't know what the maxlimit is for textareas in the backend so the textareas don't have a set limit in the front end. We should probably fix that.
- When you click next, because of how the javascript is managing the paging, you stay at the bottom of the page and have to manually scroll up every time. I experimented trying to add an autoscroll up to each page in the JS but didn't get too far.
- A bunch of questions need a default value to be set. I see how to do this in the JSON but i'm not confident it works yet.
- If you indicate you don't need funding, the form with all the travel details is still visible. Which leads me to -
- There seems to be a bunch of logic in the JSON that the front end isn't reflecting. E.g., the question that asks if you'd like to contribute to help someone else attend is linked to a form field where you type how much you'd like to contribute, except even though it says it should only appear is the value is yes, you'd like to contribute, it's always visible... I don't know how to fix this. There are multiple instances of this.
- the lodging "other" option needs a way to input a number of nights, but I don't know how to do this using the json :(
- (major / devel) The calculation of the total funding ask + radio selection of what % funding you'd like to request isn't implemented yet.
- (major / decision) Right now the reg form has everything including travel details. There is a concern the travel research will take a long time so data will be lost due to timeout. Since the form currently doesn't have required fields set / they aren't being enforced, the full form can be submitted / saved partially blank and returned to later to finish. The down side of this is that people could "register" yet leave essential fields blank yet the app would consider their reg complete if they pay I am guessing. The alternative is to break out the financial request as a separate form, if we wanted required field enforcement.
- (major / decision) The fee allows you to pick between paypal and pay at conference. IIRC we are only allowing prepay so before launch the opt to pay at conference should be removed.
Hope this is helpful,
~m
6 years, 6 months
