[RFC] CUDCon - Cloud conference to parallel FUDCon

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 16:25, Karsten Wade <kwade at redhat.com> wrote:

> Bigger conferences pair stuff all the time and it works. I'm just
> wondering if CUDCon is the thing that grows FUDCon to be bigger-er so
> it doesn't suffer from the brain-drainage problem.

The key word to me in the above is "bigger" conference. FudCon's have
been at the breaking point in various ways lately from the number of
people attending to the number of people who are organizing/making it
happen. I would say it is at the maximum of a sustainable volunteer
effort. From looking at various "cons" that go from this size to the
next, you are looking at the usual "Selling out" stage. The amount of
time/personell you need to get it working and not falling apart goes
up quite a bit (it is a discontinuous point on a cost curve). We
aren't looking at say "doubling" a budget but a quadruple or more for
maybe less than 2x times the people going.

We would also have to rethink deal with the barcamp format because one
of the complaints we hear over and over again is that there are two
many things going on and people can't see the things they want. I have
seen more than one developer just not go to anything because there was
too many things and they found sitting in a chair and hacking more
enjoyable than choosing. [WHat many seem to be waiting for is someone
from some group to come out and ask them to come in.. which they
gladly do.]


tl;dr
Do I think a FLOSS Cloud conference a good idea? Yes.
Do I think it is a good fit to the current FUDcon structure? No.
Could a mixture be possible? Yes
Could that mixture be ready by Blacksburg? Maybe if the current
organizers really want it and aren't at their limits.


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
"The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance."
Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
"Let us be kind, one to another, for most of us are fighting a hard
battle." -- Ian MacLaren