Great Lakes Ruby Bash…for real this time.

[Brandon Keepers]

Hey folks,

After some delays, we're going to kick the conference planning into
high gear. At this point, we're thinking the January-February
timeframe would be good for a conference. It's not the best for
travel, but there's nothing else going on so it'll help lift our
spirits.

We'll be meeting every Wednesday at 9am EST to get updates on the
planning. Anyone that wants to participate is invited to join us.
This week we'll call in on the phone (218-486-1600, access code:
779500). In following weeks we'll try IRC or something else easily
archivable.

The agenda for this week is to make some progress on dates and a
venue. Come with your venue suggestions, and if you can, a rough idea
of pricing and capacity for the venue.

If you aren't able to call in tomorrow, then feel free to post your
thoughts to the mailing list.

Thanks,
Brandon

[Brandon Dimcheff]

At our last a2rb meeting we were totally conspiring to bring this this
back to Ann Arbor if you guys weren't interested in doing it, but I'm
glad you guys are getting rolling. ;) We were thinking that March/
April would give us enough time to arrange speakers and venue and
stuff, but if you think you can get it done that quickly then Jan/Feb
seems fine to me. A lot of people will be at CodeMash, so you'll
probably want to stay away from that by a couple weeks.

I think that $50 worked out pretty well last year. It gave us enough
cash to cover our venue (~$500) and some food for people. It also
keeps people from registering when they don't intend to attend like
they did at Ruby Hoedown. We had about 70 registrations last year, so
hopefully you guys can beat that.

Also, we could have gotten sponsorships last year if we had been a bit
more on the ball. A decent brochure explaining exactly what sponsors
would get for each level of sponsorship is key. We didn't strictly
need sponsorship to make the conference work, but with sponsors we
could cover travel/lodging for speakers and get some high-powered
speakers.

I think we can use #midwest.rb on freenode for planning if we want...
there's not much other activity going on there. Someone else has
registered #glrb. There's also the greatlakesrubybash google group
that I've cc'd that I *think* was intended for conference organizing,
but it might have attendees on it too. We might want to make an
organizers list.

- Other Brandon

[Daniel Morrison]

Brandons, et al. :

> We were thinking that March/
> April would give us enough time to arrange speakers and venue and
> stuff, but if you think you can get it done that quickly then Jan/Feb
> seems fine to me.

I think either time frame would work. One think we've heard is that
summer isn't good. Much nicer everywhere, but too much going on.

> Also, we could have gotten sponsorships last year if we had been a bit
> more on the ball

I'd like to focus on 2 things this year in regard to sponsorships:

1.) Focus on local/regional businesses as much as possible. I think
many of our companies would give a bit if we just asked.

2.) Have goals so we all know what we're shooting for. If we get X
money, the price will be A; if we get Y money, the price will be B.
(Free?)

> with sponsors we
> could cover travel/lodging for speakers and get some high-powered
> speakers.

Personally I'd like to have 1-2 paid speakers max, and draw from the
community for the rest.

> We had about 70 registrations last year, so
> hopefully you guys can beat that.

I want to give a good amount of lead time so we can make it bigger.
Also see what the community wants. Do we want to be as big as the
other regional conferences, or smaller?

I can't wait. Let's rock!

-Daniel


--
Daniel Morrison
[i] Collective Idea
http://collectiveidea.com
http://ideafoundry.info
349 Pine Avenue
Holland, MI 49423
616-990-0155
dan...@collectiveidea.com

[Brandon Keepers]

On Nov 3, 2009, at 12:06 PM, Brandon Dimcheff wrote:

> At our last a2rb meeting we were totally conspiring to bring this this
> back to Ann Arbor if you guys weren't interested in doing it, but I'm
> glad you guys are getting rolling. ;)

Thanks to you and Winston for continuing to nudge us on getting the
ball rolling. We'd love to have you all involved in helping us this
year.

As for location, I don't care where we have it. It'd even be nice to
go somewhere outside of Michigan if we can swing it.

> We were thinking that March/
> April would give us enough time to arrange speakers and venue and
> stuff, but if you think you can get it done that quickly then Jan/Feb
> seems fine to me. A lot of people will be at CodeMash, so you'll
> probably want to stay away from that by a couple weeks.

March/April sounds good too. January/February may be pushing it, but
if we can get some of the big things nailed down soon, I think we'll
have plenty of time.

> I think we can use #midwest.rb on freenode for planning if we want...
> there's not much other activity going on there. Someone else has
> registered #glrb. There's also the greatlakesrubybash google group
> that I've cc'd that I *think* was intended for conference organizing,
> but it might have attendees on it too. We might want to make an
> organizers list.

Thanks, I totally intended to post this to the greatlakesrubybash
list. Not sure what I was thinking.

Brandon

[Brandon Dimcheff]

On Nov 3, 2009, at 12:20, Daniel Morrison wrote:

>
> Brandons, et al. :
>
>> We were thinking that March/
>> April would give us enough time to arrange speakers and venue and
>> stuff, but if you think you can get it done that quickly then Jan/Feb
>> seems fine to me.
>
> I think either time frame would work. One think we've heard is that
> summer isn't good. Much nicer everywhere, but too much going on.

Yeah, people tend to be busy in the summer. Fall was a really bad
idea for us, especially since we did it during a home football game.
Probably can't do much worse than that. ;)

>
>> Also, we could have gotten sponsorships last year if we had been a
>> bit
>> more on the ball
>
> I'd like to focus on 2 things this year in regard to sponsorships:
>
> 1.) Focus on local/regional businesses as much as possible. I think
> many of our companies would give a bit if we just asked.
>
> 2.) Have goals so we all know what we're shooting for. If we get X
> money, the price will be A; if we get Y money, the price will be B.
> (Free?)

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I think that "free" is
problematic due to the issues I mentioned before.. namely people
register and then don't show up and it's a lot harder to figure out
how many people will show.

>
>> with sponsors we
>> could cover travel/lodging for speakers and get some high-powered
>> speakers.
>
> Personally I'd like to have 1-2 paid speakers max, and draw from the
> community for the rest.

Yeah, I agree. Regional conferences are a good opportunity for less
experienced speakers to get some experience. I'm not really talking
about actually paying speakers, either. I doubt that most
enthusiastic rubyists would ask us for cash to speak, but I guess I
don't really have any data to back that up. I'm just talking about
being able to cover the costs of travel and lodging for people who
have to come from far away. Like if we somehow convinced Matz to show
up, we'd probably want to pay for his plane ticket and hotel. ;)

>
>> We had about 70 registrations last year, so
>> hopefully you guys can beat that.
>
>
> I want to give a good amount of lead time so we can make it bigger.
> Also see what the community wants. Do we want to be as big as the
> other regional conferences, or smaller?

I definitely like the smaller feel of the regional conferences that
I've been to. I don't think we need to get into some kind of
attendance competition or anything. I just suspect that since the
popularity of Ruby has increased since last time, and you guys are
pretty close to Chicago, you could attract a decent amount of people.

[Brandon Dimcheff]

On Nov 3, 2009, at 12:24, Brandon Keepers wrote:

> On Nov 3, 2009, at 12:06 PM, Brandon Dimcheff wrote:
>
>> At our last a2rb meeting we were totally conspiring to bring this
>> this
>> back to Ann Arbor if you guys weren't interested in doing it, but I'm
>> glad you guys are getting rolling. ;)
>
> Thanks to you and Winston for continuing to nudge us on getting the
> ball rolling. We'd love to have you all involved in helping us this
> year.
>
> As for location, I don't care where we have it. It'd even be nice to
> go somewhere outside of Michigan if we can swing it.

I like the idea of alternating east side/west side every year if we
can get into the rhythm of it. You guys can attract people from
Chicago, which is nice. We might be able to get those people down in
South Bend to host sometime too. I hear there's some kind of mediocre
university down there that probably has a room or two we could use. ;)

- Brandon