A proposal for your thoughts, as we plan future FUDCons...

[Chris Tyler]

On Mon, 2011-04-11 at 07:04 -0700, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
> I'd like to get feedback on a possible thought around FUDCon.  I've 
> spoken with some folks about it in passing but I think it might be 
> worthwhile to bring up as an idea for pondering.
> 
> The idea is fairly simple: Trying out the idea of having a US-based 
> "worldwide" FUDCon for a year. I think we had a great deal of success, 
> and quite a bit of added productivity, in bringing in a handful of 
> contributors from other regions for the Tempe FUDCon just a few months 
> ago.  I believe that adding larger numbers of contributors from other 
> regions might help to scale that productivity and "getting things done" 
> in a great way.
> 
> I'd suggest that this would work in the following way: Rather than have 
> the NA FUDCon in Q4 of Red Hat's 2012 fiscal year (December 2011 - 
> February 2012), we allocate Q4 budget, plus the majority of next year's 
> budget for ALL FUDCons, towards a FUDCon in sometime between March and 
> July of next year (2012). We still use the regional money for the 
> 2012-2013 fiscal year by region, ie: 20k for bringing in folks from 
> Europe, etc. I think we could bring in a BOATLOAD (or airplane-load, I 
> suppose) of regional folks for that money.
> 
> And then shift back to having regular regional FUDCons the following 
> year, and then possibly back to another worldwide fudcon the year 
> following that, depending on success/fail.
> 
> (This might also have the benefit of having fudcon in the US in a season 
> that, quite frankly, doesn't suck for travel with snow.)
> 
> Thoughts, comments, flames? I think it's worthwhile to at least consider 
> the idea. I realize that we already have had the deadline pass for 
> submitting bids for a FUDCon in NA late this year/early next year, 
> though I suppose it's not entirely set in stone.  Pros/cons welcome!
> 
> -Robyn

Sounds like an interesting possibility.

If you do this, I'd like to suggest that the worldwide FUDCons be
specified as NA-based rather than US-based, because there are some in
the community (Alan Cox comes to mind, and other too) who flat-out
refuse to travel to the US because they are not confident that they are
welcome due to their work with cryptography and/or US-patent-encumbered
and/or DMCA-related technologies (or simple visa issues) - no one wants
to risk being the next Dmitry Sklyarov, for example.

Occasionally hosting the worldwide FUDCon outside of the US would permit
these people to attend, and I think that FUDCon Toronto proved that it's
not necessarily more expensive to "go north".

-Chris