Thoughts on the future of FUDCon/DoCon

[Robyn Bergeron]

On 07/27/2012 10:46 AM, Kévin Raymond wrote:
> Replying here is easier (don't have wordpress login).
>
> Yes, keeping Users event is good, but that's one of the Ambassador role.
> IMHO we could not have an efficient event for Contributors AND Users.
> We have ambassadors who are dealing with users, that's enough. But
> contributors events should always stay open to users.
>
> One yearly event is a really nice idea. We always work with world wide
> contributors and can only meet few. So sad to not be able to join  all
> FUDCons, having only one make it easier and more efficent.
>
> Some regions are so wide that it is as hard to join the FUDCon as to
> travel around the world.
> See about EMEA going from Africa to Russia…
>
>
> Yes, we spend so much time organizing FUDCons, and discovering how to do it…
> Having only one big, yeah, *BIG* event let us really focus on the
> schedule, with people gathering experience about this event
> organization. Only one subject let us define one process for one
> event. That would be "DoCon"-(meeting|trac
> tickets|schedule|website|mailing list|.*) and not one tool for each
> regions. We would get more free time.
>
Context for those who didn't see blog post:

http://wordshack.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/the-future-of-fudcons/

So a few comments:

* Much of this was around the idea of gathering people together at a 
time where we can actually *plan.* Seriously plan, and have the ability 
to participate in multiple sessions of planning - many folks participate 
in multiple groups.

* Nothing about this excludes users who want to participate, nor would 
it be an invite-only event.

* Nothing about this excludes:
** The ability to have regional events - whether they are "User-focused" 
events, where we can get a few folks together with a schedule/plan, 
appropriate speakers, in a location where we think we can draw a good 
number of users/enthusiasts - or events like FADs where we gather people 
together to *actually execute on a task* - whether that is a regional 
ambassador FAD, or otherwise (we already do this today in some regions).
** Having said event 2x a year, perhaps with different groups/teams 
attending one event or the other, but still tied to 
shortly-after-release-while-you-can-plan-ahead.
** Doing it somewhere not north america.
** Rotating the event around to a different global location each year.

I think a lot of people - those who were not enthusiastic, I'll put it 
that way - got confused by the names of events, etc.,or felt that this 
was somehow diminishing the things that happen in their region of the 
world. I absolutely don't want to abandon doing outreach to users and 
having events in any region of the world and contributors being able to 
gather in other areas of the world.

What this is about is providing a forum where people can gather together 
to plan, at an appropriate time, with their team, which is nearly always 
globally distributed.

More than anything else, and as I pointed out in my post: I think that 
we are capable of great things, as a project.  We have incredibly smart, 
creative contributors. But I think that a lot of the time we are just 
looking at a list of tasks and going through them, and never saying to 
ourselves - where do we want to be in 6 months, how can we improve this 
piece of the project that we work on, the things we do as a team?

I would like to see people dream big, and be able to do it in a forum 
where those ideas can be exchanged and sorted through rapidly, and where 
the impact on other groups can be measured / assessed/ receive feedback.

But that's just my thoughts.  There's nothing saying we can't continue 
as we are, and nothing saying we can't have FADs around specific plans 
right now.


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