On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 03:19:16PM -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 3:00 PM, Toshio Kuratomi
<a.badger(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 01:31:28PM -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 12:37 PM, Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>> > = Overview
>> >
>> > In one of Robyn's early messages envisioning flock, she used the term
Do-Con
>> > to embody what she was hoping could be achieved. The idea being that
FUDCon
>> > often ended up with less being accomplished than the participants hoped
for.
>> > A larger, more inclusive Do-Con would have a greater focus on having
>> > participants accomplish tangible goals than the current FUDCon.
>> >
>> > If this is something we'd like towards for future flocks, I think we
might
>> > be able to help achieve that by changing the schedule process. In looking
>> > at the schedule, I realized that I'm involved with a lot of different
>> > portions of Fedora. As such, I'm a needed participant in many diverse
>> > topics. I have the feeling that this affects many other people as well.
>> > The core people that have time to spend on Fedora naturally acquire roles
>> > in multiple parts of the organization because they have the time to jump
in
>> > and do work that is required. That works out well in the day-to-day work
of
>> > Fedora but when it comes to scheduling a conference, it means that
they're
>> > often involved in the topics that are taking place in two places at the
same
>> > time.
>>
>> Having read your proposal 3 times now, I'm not immediately seeing why
>> the current flock schedule doesn't already accommodate your ideas.
>>
>> We have hackfests scheduled, but we also have an entire timeslot open
>> for hackfests/talks/whatever Sunday evening, and then all day Monday
>> is open as well. That allows for the scheduled talks and workshops to
>> proceed, and then follow-on FAD type activities later. Also, there is
>> at least one room (not counting the quiet room) that is entirely
>> unscheduled from the later 1/2 of the second day onwards that can be
>> used for whatever.
>>
> The problem is scheduling conflicts. For instance, I'm going to miss most
> of the Future of Fedora track because I must be present in sessions that I'm
> giving and in sessions where the discussion is even more central to my work.
Then it's clearly more important
> The question is whether there's any way for me to attend all the sessions in
> three categories:
>
> * The session I must attend
> * The sessions I should attend
> * The sessions I want to attend
>
> While also allowing everyone else to attend the sessions that fall into
> their three categories.
The last section suffers. I'd like to attend quite a few talks I
won't be able to, but that is a product of having good talks and not
being able to tailor schedules to individual needs. Having group
information might help, but won't magically make the problem go away.
> At the moment, the only information that any one person has about that is
> their own personal fit into those three categories. Adding essential group
> information into the workshop/discussion/hackfest proposals would let the
> people planning the schedule determine more about the must attend category.
Then do that. Email the committee with that information now.
I'm frustrated that you've essentially written off flock as making
this "not possible" a month and a half before the conference even
happens.
> But with the current information that includes only the speaker,
not the
> group necessary to effect action, there's no way to know this.
See above about emailing.
To be clear, I'm not writing off flock. I'm pointing out that the vision
I heard about having a new conference was to try making a conference that
enabled more accomplishing of tasks rather than reporting, that some things
about how we planned this flock could be better for accomplishing tasks if
we looked at the FAD model and integrated some of the procedures and ideas
from that instead.
But, if you are talking about improving the current flock, my attitude is it
is what it is. I don't want to interrupt the current planning by asking for
too many changes for the current flock process. So I don't want to come
across as seeming to say "Hey, the schedule totally doesn't work for me, can
you make massive changes to accomodate my personal interests?" I'm just
trying to point out changes we could make to future flock planning so that
next flock would be even better.
If the committee really wants to try to put some of this into effect now,
I could bring this up at the fesco and infrastructure meetings and see who
we can list out people who are needed in order to discuss certain items on
our respective agendas. I'm not sure if that's what's desired though...
I think I'm getting mixed messages about whether that's something that we
want now or something that we want to discuss later (rsuehle's mail seems to
be to do it at or after flock :-)
> To me the problem is: We can be pretty sure that a
representative selection
> of people will be present at flock but we don't know that a representative
> selection of people will be present for each session where they're needed.
I don't think that is a problem that is insurmountable. I also don't
think it's a problem that some people have conflicts because they're
involved in a huge number of activities or committees. Those
conflicts can be handled by other members with recaps, or *gasp* by
new people volunteering or being asked to step in.
Really, I want to stress that last point. If we are creating a new
conference for contributors, we need to give new contributors an
opportunity to contribute. By not scheduling completely around the
relatively small number of us that are involved in multiple areas, we
create opportunities for others to help in attending and recapping
sessions.
That really depends on what the vision is. If the vision is that things get
worked on and completed at this conference then you need to have all the
relevant current contributors. new contributors are a bonus.
If you want to get new contributors, then that's a different focus with
different needs. I'm just going off of what I remember of rbergeron's
original message on the Do-Con topic were (and who knows -- I might even be
misremembering those... I had the experience of Board phone calls in addition
to the public messages). It's totally fine if the focus is shifting, just
let me know that it has and I didn't realize it.
There's also IRC. I'm sure we'll have a #flock-staff channel or
something running that will be manned the entire time. Anyway, I
don't believe what you suggest is beyond what the staff already
planned on doing.
Cool. Happy that we're all thinking along similar lines here.
And lastly:
You are clearly overbooked.
Yes.
:-)
-Toshio