GR8 Conference #gr8conf

[Colin Harrington]

Bill,

I saw your tweet about the conference saying that you were "Organizing GR8 conference in US to be held in Minneapolis this fall. #gr8conf"

So does that mean that we are officially going to call it a GR8 Conference?  I personally like the idea of assuming the name.

We would want to get the word out in a bunch of different channels when we are ready to announce it.

• Twitter
• Grails Podcast
• Blog posts,
• mailing lists
• http://gr8conf.org
  
• etc...
  

Just let us know when its time to announce it  :-)


Colin Harrington
Harrington Consulting, Inc
colin.ha...@gmail.com
http://www.twitter.com/ColinHarrington
http://www.colinharrington.net

[Bill Turner]

Perhaps I jumped the gun a bit, but it does seem that no one objected
to Soeren's terms (we'll have to find someone willing to work on the
website, I'm willing to help don't think I am ready to lead the
effort).

Also, I hope no one is thinking that I am presuming to much, setting
myself up as THE organizer. I just twittered to start getting a buzz
and also, hopefully, keep the fire burning under our feet. What we do
need to do is get that survey pushed out. That'll give us plenty to
chew on.

I've also been introduced to someone else that has experience with
organizing a few different conferences. I am trying to hook up with
her.

On May 28, 12:52 pm, Colin Harrington <colin.harring...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Bill,
>
> I saw your tweet about the

> conference<http://twitter.com/bill_turner/status/1949541501>saying

> that you were "Organizing
> GR8 conference in US to be held in Minneapolis this fall. #gr8conf"
>
> So does that mean that we are officially going to call it a GR8 Conference?
> I personally like the idea of assuming the name.
>
> We would want to get the word out in a bunch of different channels when we
> are ready to announce it.
>

>    - Twitter
>    - Grails Podcast
>    - Blog posts,
>    - mailing lists
>    -http://gr8conf.org
>    - etc...

>
> Just let us know when its time to announce it  :-)
>
> Colin Harrington
> Harrington Consulting, Inc

> colin.harring...@gmail.comhttp://www.twitter.com/ColinHarringtonhttp://www.colinharrington.net

[Chad Small]

a blog on "GR8 Conference in Minneapolis, MN USA?" -
http://www.grailsblog.com/archive/show?id=16

[Colin Harrington]

Hey Guys,

What did you end up discussing last Thursday?

I'd be interested in hearing about how the announcement of SpringOne2GX - Oct 19-22nd might effects the GR8 Conference, timing, delivery, etc.

2 vs 8, GR8 has to win over 2GX right?
 
It might be nice to have some Spring buy-in / Sponsorship to another GR8 conference.
I wouldn't mind hearing more about what SpringSource does/offers...

 
Colin Harrington
Harrington Consulting, Inc

colin.ha...@gmail.com

[Robert Fischer]

Note the SpringOne is co-located with 2GX, so the SpringSource crowd won't really have a choice
about which of the two conferences they will attend. Punting to the spring (season, not framework)
might be a good idea, so you're not fragmenting the Groovy/Grails community.

~~ Robert.

Colin Harrington wrote:
> Hey Guys,
>
> What did you end up discussing last Thursday?
>
> I'd be interested in hearing about how the announcement of SpringOne2GX

> <http://www.springone2gx.com/coming_soon.jsp> - Oct 19-22nd might

> effects the GR8 Conference, timing, delivery, etc.
>
> 2 vs 8, GR8 has to win over 2GX right?
>
> It might be nice to have some Spring buy-in / Sponsorship to another GR8
> conference.
> I wouldn't mind hearing more about what SpringSource does/offers...
>
> Colin Harrington
> Harrington Consulting, Inc

> colin.ha...@gmail.com <mailto:colin.ha...@gmail.com>

>
>
> On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Chad Small <chad...@gmail.com
> <mailto:chad...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
> a blog on "GR8 Conference in Minneapolis, MN USA?" -
> http://www.grailsblog.com/archive/show?id=16
>
> On May 28, 1:11 pm, Bill Turner <worldwidewi...@gmail.com

> <mailto:worldwidewi...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> > Perhaps I jumped the gun a bit, but it does seem that no one objected
> > to Soeren's terms (we'll have to find someone willing to work on the
> > website, I'm willing to help don't think I am ready to lead the
> > effort).
> >
> > Also, I hope no one is thinking that I am presuming to much, setting
> > myself up as THE organizer. I just twittered to start getting a buzz
> > and also, hopefully, keep the fire burning under our feet. What we do
> > need to do is get that survey pushed out. That'll give us plenty to
> > chew on.
> >
> > I've also been introduced to someone else that has experience with
> > organizing a few different conferences. I am trying to hook up with
> > her.
> >
> > On May 28, 12:52 pm, Colin Harrington <colin.harring...@gmail.com

> <mailto:colin.harring...@gmail.com>>

> > wrote:
> >
> > > Bill,
> >
> > > I saw your tweet about the
> > > conference<http://twitter.com/bill_turner/status/1949541501>saying
> > > that you were "Organizing
> > > GR8 conference in US to be held in Minneapolis this fall. #gr8conf"
> >
> > > So does that mean that we are officially going to call it a GR8
> Conference?
> > > I personally like the idea of assuming the name.
> >
> > > We would want to get the word out in a bunch of different
> channels when we
> > > are ready to announce it.
> >
> > > - Twitter
> > > - Grails Podcast
> > > - Blog posts,
> > > - mailing lists
> > > -http://gr8conf.org
> > > - etc...
> >
> > > Just let us know when its time to announce it :-)
> >
> > > Colin Harrington
> > > Harrington Consulting, Inc
> > >
> colin.harring...@gmail.comhttp://www.twitter.com/ColinHarringtonhttp://www.colinharrington.net

> <http://www.twitter.com/ColinHarringtonhttp://www.colinharrington.net>
>
>
>
> >

--
~~ Robert Fischer, Smokejumper IT Consulting.
Enfranchised Mind Blog http://EnfranchisedMind.com/blog

Check out my book, "Grails Persistence with GORM and GSQL"!
http://www.smokejumperit.com/redirect.html

[Shaun Jurgemeyer]

Sorry we haven't updated the group. I think we were both planning on
having further discussions tomorrow after GUM with those that are
interested.

After talking with Rosemary, who was extremely helpful, we are now
leaning more towards pushing the conference back to a spring time
frame and leaving it at one day instead of 2. Some of the reasons for
this have been discussed here before, but the main factors are
1) Getting everything organized within just a few months is a bit of a
stretch
2) We want to make sure that this first conference goes very well so
we have the opportunity to continue.

It's definitely better to wait a little longer and put on a really
well-run conference rather than rushing and putting on a so-so
affair. Since we're looking a little farther away, we felt like we
had some breathing room to wait until GUM to discuss with those
interested

Rosemary also mentioned setting up a non-profit instead of an LLC for
a variety of reasons. This requires at least 5 people to sign up as
board members. There's really not much involved there, certainly no
financial risk, but we'll need all 5 people present to set up a
business account.

In regards to the 1 day schedule, we discussed a basic layout that I
think covers most of our needs, but still fits the time

7:30 breakfast
8:00 opening keynote
9:00-12:00 - breakout sessions
12:00-1:30 - lunch, noon keynote
1:00-4/5:00 - workshops for those interested
1:00-4/5:00 - breakout sessions for those interested
5:00 - wrapup/givaways etc
5:30 - social hour

Obviously as usual, this isn't set in stone, but I think this schedule
works pretty well for a lot of the needs we discussed, so hopefully
we're getting closer.

There was a lot more that we discussed, but I'll relate that tomorrow
after GUM for those that are interested.

For anyone interested we will be discussing further after GUM (http://
groups.google.com/group/groovymn) tomorrow night to see who wants to
be involved and hopefully assigning some tasks to those people





On Jun 8, 11:35 am, Colin Harrington <colin.harring...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hey Guys,
>
> What did you end up discussing last Thursday?
>
> I'd be interested in hearing about how the announcement of

> SpringOne2GX<http://www.springone2gx.com/coming_soon.jsp>- Oct 19-22nd

> might effects the GR8 Conference, timing, delivery, etc.
>
> 2 vs 8, GR8 has to win over 2GX right?
>
> It might be nice to have some Spring buy-in / Sponsorship to another GR8
> conference.
> I wouldn't mind hearing more about what SpringSource does/offers...
>
> Colin Harrington
> Harrington Consulting, Inc

> colin.harring...@gmail.com

[Hamlet D'Arcy]

>> we are now
>> leaning more towards pushing the conference back to a spring time
>> frame

I kinda expected this.

>> and leaving it at one day instead of 2.

Why?

--
Hamlet D'Arcy
haml...@gmail.com

[Dean Del Ponte]

As someone who would be traveling to this conference from out of
state, I would prefer it run for 2 days as opposed to 1. It's hard to
justify the travel time and expenses for a one day conference.

Just my 2 cents.

- Dean

[Peter Bell]

I think spring '10 is a great idea, but I'd consider keeping it at 2
days. It doesn't make sense for most people to fly in for a 1 day
conference, so it'd be more likely to become a "locals" conference and
I'd love to see a national one . . .

Best Wishes,
Peter

[Robert Fischer]

+1 for 2 day conference. A 2 day conference is more much compelling for those traveling.

~~ Robert.

--

[Hamlet D'Arcy]

Were the survey results in favor of 1 day conference?

I have a feeling that everyone willing to sign up for a "GroovyCon"
mailing list would prefer to have an entire summer long conference...
much less just a measly 2 days. What were the people not so excitable
about Groovy thinking?

[Andres Almiray]

+1 on a 2-day conference

[Shaun Jurgemeyer]

We want to keep this affordable and we want to maintain quality throughout.  Adding an extra day adds significantly to cost.  While there is certainly enough material to cover two days, we felt that people could still get a lot of value out of a one day conference and we'd have an easier time keeping costs down and quality up.  If we were to extend the conference into a second day we would be effectively doubling the cost to our attendees.  That could be as much as $300 for a conference that we initially wanted to keep cheap to free. 

If we get significant sponsorship, then that won't be the case, but I'm not optimistic about covering our entire cost through sponsorship.  Plus, we have a bit of a chicken and egg problem in that we'll probably need to schedule dates before getting sponsorship commitment.  If we commit to a two day conference and don't get much sponsorship, then our fee could be pretty high.  Obviously I'm being conservative here, but I'd rather err on the side of keeping costs down.

Obviously there's interest in keeping the conference 2 days, but I guess we then need to decide if our priority is really making an affordable conference or if a longer conference is more important.

[Dave Klein]

You might want to talk to the folks that put on CodeMash. It was two days and
under $200.

Dave

[Andres Almiray]

Codemash contact details (just in case)
Jason Gilmore <wj at wjgilmore.com>
Jim Holmes <jim.holmes at codemash.org>

[Shaun Jurgemeyer]

$300 is certainly a high end cost given our current budget, but we've hardly worked everything out.  I'm being very conservative on costs, because we have an unknown quantity of interest, sponsorship and just about everything else.  $200 is feasible, but that's still much higher than was initially being discussed.

Also, please be aware that the people completing the survey and those responding here are pretty passionate about GR8 technologies and are willing to travel and pay more, but a large number of potential attendees won't be in that same boat.  A high price tag turns them away and possibly keeps our total numbers down.

My point still stands that we need to decide if we are more interested in having a 2 day conference than keeping costs low.  If the answer is yes, so be it, but there is a trade off here.

[Peter Bell]

Hi Shaun,

I think you need to consider the travel time/hassles and flight costs as part of the equation. If the plan is just to create a local conference for people in the Minneapolis area, I understand 100%. If not, I suggest you plan as if the conference was going to be in Florida and then ask yourselves if you'd all be willing to fly there for a one day conference.

I fully understand the concerns about the cost and not knowing about sponsorship, but I just don't see many people flying in (to attend or to present) if it's just a single day. Would you be willing to fly to the conference for a single day if we held in in New York or Orlando?

Best Wishes,

Peter 

[Shaun Jurgemeyer]

I understand that there are trade offs here and I certainly have not "made a decision" (as if it were mine to make).  For those not part of the initial conversation on this conference, cost was mentioned as a very high priority.  The survey results seemed to list relatively low costs as well for what people are willing to pay. 

I'm not telling, I'm asking.  We can certainly change our priorities.  As I've said before: if a 2 day conference is more important than keeping it cheap so be it. 

Early on in this conversation I was asked why we were leaning towards a one day conference and I'm simply giving my reasoning.  Our reasoning was based on our understanding of the priorities set up in discussions and the survey.  If those priorities have changed, then our decision can change. 

[Peter Bell]

Fully understood. Might be worth a quick surveymonkey at an appropriate point - maybe give two options - 1 day for $x and 2 day for $y (guestimated prices for judging interest only). I'd also ask whether the respondent considered themselves local (maybe a reasonable proxy would be "Will you be flying to the event" or something similar) to get insight on the breakdown of responses.

Best Wishes,

Peter

[Chad Small]

raw comments on price from the survey results are a bit all over the map:
<<

1.	If in country, will attend. $495 would be fine.
2.	prefer east coast location. cost < $120. sat/sun schedule.
3.	Depends on my financial situation etc.
4.	This is Hamlet, so I'd attend
5.	Depends on conference structure and agenda. 400-800 USD.
6.	tight budget, school starts in Sept.
7.	distance. I would pay up to $350 USD for the conference
8.	Two most important factor: Location (STL) and Cost
9.	100% if it's in the twin cities, 75-90% elsewhere in the midwest, maybe $100-250 depending on content?
10.	one month old baby at home. have to get a reprieve from the warden (my wife)
11.	A fair price for me would be ~$100/day. Times are tough. I'd also be interested in volunteering or helping out. My twitter name is ddelponte
12.	cost (air fare + hotel + conference)
13.	$75~100 or so seems fair. Might be willing to go higher with stellar line-up (incl. Groovy/Grails committers). Maybe.

>>
+1 for a 2 day conference if a majority of attendees are attending from out of town.  I know MIMA (MN Interactive Marketing Assoc) has a very popular 1 day conference (MIMA Summit - http://www.mimasummit.org/) and bring in speakers from around the country (Seth Godin keynoting this year), but I think a majority of attendees are from the Mpls/St Paul area.  However they have a larger user group to draw from.
Look forward to discussion tomorrow at GUM.

thanks,
chad.

[Shaun Jurgemeyer]

I need to make a correction on the numbers I threw out earlier.
Again, this is very high level, but our preliminary budget is for a
little less than $200 per person and that was calculated for two
days. For some reason I was thinking that number was for one day
only, so I guesstimated doubling the cost minus some sponsorship
money. Sorry for the confusion.

Plugging in numbers for subtracting a day reveals only about a $50
savings per person for the loss of a day. So, the cost savings
argument doesn't hold up as well as I thought, although I'm assuming
the same number of paid speakers for a 1 & 2 day conference which, if
not true, would be a big difference in the budget.

The other big issue I mentioned is keeping a consistent high quality
experience for two days. It's certainly possible to do that, but it
will take more work. We'll discuss some next steps at GUM and perhaps
we can determine from speaker interest etc, how able we'll be to fill
that time.

Shaun

On Jun 8, 2:49 pm, Chad Small <chadem...@gmail.com> wrote:
> raw comments on price from the survey results are a bit all over the map:
> <<

> 1.If in country, will attend. $495 would be fine.2.prefer east coast

> location. cost < $120. sat/sun schedule.3.Depends on my financial situation

> etc.4.This is Hamlet, so I'd attend5.Depends on conference structure and
> agenda. 400-800 USD.6.tight budget, school starts in Sept.7.distance. I
> would pay up to $350 USD for the conference8.Two most important factor:
> Location (STL) and Cost9.100% if it's in the twin cities, 75-90% elsewhere
> in the midwest, maybe $100-250 depending on content?10.one month old baby at
> home. have to get a reprieve from the warden (my wife)11.A fair price for me

> would be ~$100/day. Times are tough. I'd also be interested in volunteering

> or helping out. My twitter name is ddelponte12.cost (air fare + hotel +
> conference)13.$75~100 or so seems fair. Might be willing to go higher with

> stellar line-up (incl. Groovy/Grails committers). Maybe.
>
> +1 for a 2 day conference if a majority of attendees are attending from out
> of town.  I know MIMA (MN Interactive Marketing Assoc) has a very popular 1

> day conference (MIMA Summit -http://www.mimasummit.org/) and bring in

> >> On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Hamlet D'Arcy <hamlet...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>> >> we are now
> >>> >> leaning more towards pushing the conference back to a spring time
> >>> >> frame
>
> >>> I kinda expected this.
>
> >>> >> and leaving it at one day instead of 2.
>
> >>> Why?
>

> >>> On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 11:54 AM, Shaun Jurgemeyer<sjurgeme...@gmail.com>

> ...
>
> read more »

[Peter Bell]

Some things that I think might be good to consider:

- Some true hands on classes for one of the two days. Maybe two tracks
if we had the space one with an a "getting started with grails" build
your own gTunes kind of intro piece followed by a "create your first
plugin" where you pull out elements of gTunes into separate plugins in
the afternoon. For more advanced developers you might want to have a
morning session on "best practices grails" showing how to architect a
real, non-trivial app using real world best practices and maybe an
afternoon of "advanced groovy" getting people used to actually working
with custom AST transformations and the like (or maybe a "building
internal DSLs using Groovy" that is a real hands on for generating a
real app using custom internal and/or external DSLs - maybe even start
with API, refactor to internal DSL, then refactor to external DSL to
compare and contrast).

At the same time, I'd fill that day with non-paid speakers giving
experience reports of real world groovy and grails apps they've
developed. I'd then make day 2 the one day conference you'd originally
thought of with quality speakers giving the latest presentations
relating to groovy, grails and the latest plugins and best practices.
I'd also like to see a session on CI with Grails just covering the
gotchas in terms of what you do and don't check into vcs, anything
special about firing Grails tests off using Hudson, etc. I'd love to
see a Hudson/git stack but would be fine with CC and svn.

I think we should have a meetup the evening before for people who get
into town early - perhaps make it coincide with a Groovy User Group
preso that evening. Afrterwards I'd like to see BoF sessions that
evening and at the end of the first day. I've been BoF manager for
other conferences. Given the likely size it'd probably be fairly
straightforward and just a matter of different tables in a quiet bar
(to cut down on the cost of having lots of different spaces). We could
also just move chairs around in the main track rooms.

I'd also suggest the option of sharing your contact information with
other attendees for networking purposes, so anyone who opted in would
have their email (use a junky one if you're concerned) shared on the
attendees list with other attendees to help with networking, and I'd
recommend a google group before the event for both sharing official
announcements and for getting participants to sign up on so they can
do anything from figure out ride shares from MSP to start to get to
know other attendees in advance.

If you want a hand with the organization (or some presentations - I'd
do a gr8 conf for free as I'm still getting known in the Groovy/Grails
world), just let me know :-)

Best Wishes.
Peter

[Bill Turner]

Sorry for not getting into this sooner. As Shaun stated, since we came
to the conclusion that we would target a spring time conference, I
felt we would just present what we learned from Rosie at the GUM
meeting tonight. She gave a lot of excellent advice and has a lot of
background in organizing conferences, which none of us have (at least,
those of us locally coming out of GUM). Her advice, I believe, is well
worth respecting and believe ignoring it is done out our own peril.

Part of what prompted us to go with a spring time conference is the
amount of work that is involved, especially if we want a truly top-
notch event that people will be excited about returning to. This has
given me a great amount of respect for what Soeren was able to do in a
relatively short time frame. The other thing that has prompted this
has been the number of people doing the leg work (mostly Shaun and
myself, as far as I can tell) and the amount of time they have spent
on that (a lot). This is not meant to chastise others, btw. Certainly,
ideas that are posted here are helpful, and this is all volunteer. I
expect over time others will come to the fore while others spend less
on it as other demands in life come and go. That said, if the amount
of hands on time is as great as it seems, we definitely need the extra
time to complete it.

The discussion of number of days I was sure would cause quite a buzz.
I was an early advocate of multiple days, even pushing for three early
on. Our goals included having a low-cost event. I believe we all want
to have something memorable. We have little or no experience with
putting on such events. GR8 in Copenhagen was a good conference, but
single tracked. Some of the presenters were unprepared. Others had
good information but did not know how to present it well. And, there
was at least one session in which I was not really very interested (I
didn't need to see "Build Twitter in 45 minutes" again, for example).
This leads me to believe that multi-tracking is a better option. If
Soeren had done that, it would've been a one day event. A one day
event may limit the attractiveness of the conference for people
traveling a long distance, but it might not matter that much. If the
one day event looks powerful, you may get the same numbers traveling
from the East and West coast as we would get for a two day conference,
especially if the two day conference is "thinner". I do believe we'd
likely get the same pull from other regional cities such as Chicago,
St. Louis, Madison, Milwaukee and Omaha. We might even do better
because people would not have to miss as much work. The concern about
getting speakers, I believe, is a non-issue. In fact, that, too, might
be better for they might not want to present over multiple days or
engage in the networking/meet the experts happy hour, or closing panel
discussion, or what have you. So, my position has changed radically
and advocate for a strong, single day event. That said, we have some
time to decide. If we can get enough quality speakers to present and
enough quality workshops, two days may be viable. That is something we
can determine after we receive our responses to Call For
Presentations. I strongly stress that we do this well if our intent is
to do this annually. If the first one goes well, with our new found
experience and the good will we have, it will be much easier to stage
a bigger event the following year.

[Shaun Jurgemeyer]

Peter,
We would love to have your involvement with organizing this
conference. We're meeting after the GUM meeting tonight (http://
groups.google.com/group/groovymn) and we're often asking for help here
on the Google group.

To your specific points:
Workshops are almost certainly going to happen. Even on the potential
one day schedule I had them listed as a half a day track in parallel
to some presentations. If we go with two days we can certainly look
at doing different levels or tracks for workshops.

As Bill mentioned, we're planning on sending out Call for Presentation
forms to potential speakers to see what they're interested in speaking
about. As part of that we are planning on including questions about
leading workshops, BOF sessions and/or being part of an "expert
panel". Local & unpaid people are certainly on that list. I think
that will give us a better result than pushing for specific topics.

We discussed the idea of contact information as well and we'll likely
implement something as part of the registration process that allows
them to opt (in/out?) of a contact information list.

A tie in with GUM the night before seems possible, but I'd urge that
we make that a little more informal. Depending on what speakers are
coming into town we could see if they'd be willing to do a pre-
conference presentation, discussion, whatever. The organization of
that can certainly wait awhile.

Shaun

On Jun 9, 7:47 am, Peter Bell <pe...@pbell.com> wrote:

> ...
>
> read more »

[Peter Bell]

Sounds great. More than happy to help. I'm based out of NYC, so I'm
not gonna make the in person meetings, but I'm up for anything you
need a hand with!

Best Wishes,
Peter