On Dec 17, 2015, at 1:45 AM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Hi All,
In the Council meeting this week, we noted that Flock lands in late August/early September and this is high tourist season in Europe. It is also a time when many take vacation. This drives prices up across many of the regions.
We wondered aloud if we could shift Flock to dates outside of this window. The two most likely alternatives would be sometime in July or sometime in November. We also noted that we should try and avoid conflicting with any other major open source conference, and that July and November seem to fit within that small goal. There are pros and cons with each date window, but we wanted to see how feasible people thought this would be.
As others have noted, we need to pick the best time for the Project as we will always inconvenience someone, bump into another event, hit a holiday, etc.
One thing that I think we should do is to encourage proposals over a year in advance. Planning a conference the size of Flock less than a year out can cause venue and pricing problems regardless of season.
I hope we can pick a good month (my vote is still August) and get the US proposers started today. Ideally we should be able to announce the next Flock at the end of the current one. This also would set us up for geo-specific proposers to start working on bids while they are still excited by and remember the pros and cons of the last Flock in their Geo.
Along those lines, perhaps we should ask previously successful teams if they are willing to mentor or advise proposers. Until you'e planned a few events it is hard to know what to ask for and how to negotiate.
regards,
bex