FUDCon NA Decisions: Recap of meeting, next steps

[Robyn Bergeron]

Hi folks,

Apologies for lack of timeliness. Life popped up and reared its head. 
Also, apologies for cross-posting, but wanted to catch folks on both 
lists here.

This mail is a recap of the FUDCon NA location discussion we had at last 
week's NA ambassadors' meeting; I volunteered to recap and re-schedule a 
continuation/conclusion of the discussion.

Please note: If you have any comments, questions, objections, etc. to 
anything I've laid out below, by all means, please respond.  This mail, 
in case you're not wanting to look above, is sent to fudcon-planning, 
and cc'd to Ambassadors-list, since the ambassadors' meeting is where 
the original discussion took place - and I'd like to try and corral the 
mail to fudcon-planning, if at all possible.

Status:

At the 2011-04-19 NA Ambassadors' meeting, we discussed, as requested, 
the two candidates for the upcoming NA FUDCon, to be held in late 
2011/early 2012.

* Logs: 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2011-04-20/famna.2011-04-20-01.01.log.html
* Minutes: 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2011-04-20/famna.2011-04-20-01.01.html

We attempted to utilize the spreadsheet that was used for LATAM FUDCon 
decision-making, but didn't quite understand the context of some of the 
questions. (IE: "Located in NA." Yes, the NA FUDCon *should* be located 
in NA - should this be a rank of how good the location is? Not sure. Etc.)

After some confusion, we came to the consensus that perhaps we should 
just discuss the merits of both proposals. Which we did, and then ran 
out of time after an hour of discussion, with no decision as to a 
recommendation.

I'd like to propose that we have a special meeting to wrap up this 
discussion.  Based on availability of the folks making proposals, I'd 
like to set a time of THIS Wednesday, April 27, at 9PM Eastern, 6PM 
Pacific, in #fudcon-planning.

Before we get to the meeting-time, however, I'd like to cover a few 
bases (aka, next steps):

1.) Do we want to reassess the idea of using the spreadsheet, or work 
without it? I think it may be more handy when we have more than 2 bids. 
Are there any ways to measure where a FUDCon should be that we should be 
taking into consideration?

2.) Come up with a brief agenda for the meeting so that we can use 
everyone's time as wisely as possible, and come to a decision on 
recommendation by the end of that hour.  THE AGENDA NEEDS TO BE CREATED 
AS FAR IN ADVANCE AS POSSIBLE, preferably over the course of today, so 
that people can prep as needed. If there are any discussion topics you'd 
like to see, please pop into #fudcon-planning at any time today and make 
it known, or alternately, send an email to the fudcon planning list.

3.) Ensure that we have a timeline for follow-up and final decision - 
Jared, can you please make sure this is on FAMSCo's agenda for this 
weekend, and that you can attend or send an alternate, and arrange a 
date for next week to do any final decision-making / announcing? (Red 
Hat Summit is next week, so I'd like to make sure we can get a decision 
out prior to departure for that event, which may mean Monday - but I 
don't want to leave people hanging for another week.)

-Robyn