[Wolves] Weekend pics!

[Andy Robinson (blackadder)]

chris procter wrote:
>Sent: 21 July 2008 9:50 PM
>To: Wolverhampton Linux User Group
>Subject: Re: [Wolves] Weekend pics!
>
>
>--- Peter Oliver <p.d.oliver at mavit.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, Zeth wrote:
>>
>> > Well if they do it again, they might want to be
>> explicit about the
>> > focus so people that have not heard of lugradio
>> would be interested.
>> > What I mean is, what Lugradio does well is that it
>> is an open source
>> > __user__ conference.
>>
>> I'd like to echo this.  LRL certainly isn't only
>> suitable for people who
>> listen to Lugradio, but I suspect lots of people
>> might not realise this.
>
>I actually dont like the idea of calling LRL a "user
>conference" partly because it sounds like a newbie
>conference but mainly just because it sounds dull!
>
>> A significant number if people put their hands up
>> when asked if it was
>> their first LRL.  This suggests that to get the same
>> turn-out next year,
>> LRL needs to continue to attract new attendees.
>
>My unofficial, of the record, back of the envelope
>guesstimate of the number of attendees puts us about
>15-20% up on last years equally erroneous guesstimate
>(you can get rough numbers but the international
>visitors get in free so its very hard to estimate how
>many of them there are).
>
>> Selling a conference tied to a podcast that doesn't
>> even exist anymore
>> might be tricky.  Perhaps some thought needs to go
>> into the brand?
>
>Speaking for myself (and, just to be clear, not the
>other presenters!) LRL should be, as everyones
>favourite highwayman says "a place where once a year
>we can all get together and have a laugh, meet new
>people and catch up with those you've not seen for a
>while" *and* a place that has talks that are of
>interest to a wide cross section of the community both
>newbie and expert. I thought Jeremy Allison, Barbie
>and Mathew Garrett's talks for example all struck the
>balance pretty well.
>
>I take the point that to up the numbers again next
>year without the podcast as the publicity engine will
>require a certain amount of thought and emphasising
>that its not just for hardcore geeks is a good thing
>but scaring off the hardcore geeks is a bad thing :)
>
>Food for thought that I will save up for when I'm a
>little more awake :)
>
>chris
>

Assuming the timing fits I think I would probably plan on making
OpenStreetMap's attendance at anything next year a mapping party for OSMer's
as well. If Bytemark are there with their box again then it becomes more of
a hands on event for some. If you could find more hands on stuff that was
cool and fun (beyond the beer ;-) ) then it stops the event just being a
talking shop. Even if its not recorded in the same way, 4 stooges on stools
still works for me as a communication devise for setting the morning off and
rounding up each day of activities and talks.

Cheers

Andy