MozBalkans 2016 Tirana, Albania - Proposal

[Elio Qoshi]

Hi MozBalkanians!

A bit late, but as promised our proposal for MozBalkans in September
2016 to be held in Tirana, Albania. We calculated costs and efficiency
of logistics and came up with this. Tirana is pretty small compared to
other capitals in the balkans, so everything is near to each other. Here
is some overview of the logistics:

-----------

Proposed date: 9-11 September
Place: Tirana, Albania

Venue: Protik (www.protik.org)
Estimated Costs: 200-1000 EUR (depends if they are sponsors or not)

Venue: UMT - Metropolitan University of Tirana (www.umt.edu.al)
Estimated Costs: 0-500 EUR (depends if they are sponsors or not)
Note: (UMT is also hosting OSCAL'16)

Hotels (proposal):
- Jolly Hotel: http://booking.com/5e47371f4a92d (25-30EUR Room)
- Hotel Nobel: http://hotelnobeltirana.com (30-40EUR Room)
- Vila Alba: http://www.vila-alba.com/ (60-80 EUR room)

Travel to Tirana Estimated Costs (as of 10 April, return trip):

Athens 160 USD DIRECT FLIGHT
Belgrade 190 USD DIRECT FLIGHT
Bucharest 280 USD
Istanbul 140-230 USD DIRECT FLIGHT
Ljubljana 150 USD
Prishtina 18 USD BUS
Sarajevo 320-370 USD
Skopje 40 USD BUS
Sofia 250 USD
Zagreb 310-330 USD

Dinner: Mystic Restaurant
http://www.spottedbylocals.com/tirana/mystic/
Estimated costs for a dinner of 25 people: 100-160 EUR

Catering: Mystic Catering
Estimated costs for lunch with salads, fingerfood and similar (25
persons): 50-100 EUR

Airport shuttle cost: 2 EUR (20min)
Airport Taxi: 11-15 EUR

------------

Flight prices are not the cheapest, but this is easily balanced by the
cheap accommodation and food prices. We have worked with those Hotels,
Restaurants and Venues before for our local and regional events (Mozilla
Weekend, OSCAL) so we have good experience with them. The date of the
meetup is just a proposed one, we need to discuss that of course.

Something which I want to emphasize here is the presence of Mozillians
from Kosovo. They do not need visas for Albania, but they need for any
other country. So that would make their life much easier.
In Tirana we currently have 5-7 active Mozillians, plus the whole
manpower behind the Open Labs Hackerspace to kick this off.

I obviously talked only about logistics here, as we need the help of all
communities to determine the content, so that would be the next step if
we agree on Tirana, Albania.

I probably have forgotten something, so feel free to ping me!

On behalf of the Albanian community,

--
Elio Qoshi

Open Source Designer
Board Member at Open Labs
Representative at Mozilla
E: pi...@elioqoshi.me
W: www.elioqoshi.me

[Elio Qoshi]

A small note: I included 2 venues to choose from. Same with hotel. Just
so we have a backup plan or an alternative.

Elio Qoshi

Open Source Designer
Board Member at Open Labs
Representative at Mozilla
E: pi...@elioqoshi.me
W: www.elioqoshi.me

[Francisco Picolini]

Hi Elio,

Thanks for this email.

A couple of comments here:

1) Venue: I don't know if it's my OpenSource vein, or what, but the part of "if they are sponsors" doesn't sound too good, or at least sounds that we need to give something in exchange. I think that you are missing that this is a Mozilla Community event, I don't think that it's a good idea to have sponsors, even if they offered us a discount. The event won't be public, so I don't get which benefit they will get for this. Isn't the OpenLab available?
Aside that, do they have enough space for 30 people?, do they have space for break out rooms?, are there any restrictions for placing the catering? Are they good located and have easy access?

2) Hotels: Apologies for my ignorance on this, but are these options close to the venue?, or where they are located? What services do they have?, does this price includes breakfast?

3) This is only a logistics proposal. I miss: Objectives, plan for the event, what was achieved on last MozBalkans, and what can be the goals for this one. Aside that I also miss the part of the selection process (how many people will be invited, how they will be invited, if last year approach worked or not). Perhaps it's not a dependency of the people that host the event (but for the whole communities involved). And the agenda (or a draft of the agenda), but again, perhaps this should be something to be discussed by the community, and not only the country that organizes the meetup.

4) People involved: I know that albanian community is very active, but we also need space for the others communities. I think last time there were 5 romanians, so it should be ok have 5 or 6 from the hosting community.

As a last note, and more like a disclaimer than other thing:
We (from the Participation team) are still looking for a plan on how to support these meetups. Meaning that we are still working on decide which communities we should support and help planning this. Having said this, I've already indicated that Balkans should have a meetup in the short-medium term


Regards,
Francisco.-

-- 
Elio Qoshi

Open Source Designer
Board Member at Open Labs
Representative at Mozilla
E:  pi...@elioqoshi.me
W:  www.elioqoshi.me

--
Francisco Picolini
Community Events Coordinator
/Participation Team
@Mozilla

[Elio Qoshi]

Hi Francisco,

Thanks for getting back.

1) You might be right, I was just thinking out loud. Open Labs is
available of course, but it's pretty small as of now (60m2). We have had
events of up to 30 people there, but it is probably too small for a
whole day of working there (that is, if we are more than 20,1 which we
will be). UMT has enough space for breakout rooms and catering and we
have an established relationship with them ready. UMT is 100m close to
Open Labs (in any case, Tirana is not a huge city to not be accessible
easily).

2) The hotels I proposed are 12-20min far away from Open Labs/UMT on
foot. I can find closer hotels however. All of them I proposed include
breakfast and free wifi. Vila Alba is the best among them (we had Chris
Heilmann there last year and he liked it). What other services are you
thinking of?

3) Of course this is only about logistics thus far. Objectives, goals,
roundup should be discussed with whole MozBalkans as you said. We need
to work on a good part of this with the Romanian community, as they have
experience from organizing last year. Also, I was not at MozBalkans
personally last year, so I will definitely need help on what worked and
what not in 2015.

4) You mean members from Mozilla Albania? We are quite active but not
that huge either. Excluding Kosovo, we will be 5 members from the
Albanian community. We expect 2 (or maybe 3) community members from
Kosovo. So no problem about that.

Thanks for the questions. Let me know if there is anything else.

Elio Qoshi

Open Source Designer
Board Member at Open Labs
Representative at Mozilla
E: pi...@elioqoshi.me
W: www.elioqoshi.me

[Francisco Picolini]

Hi Elio and all,

Yes, I didn't want to say that you should carry all the things. The content, agenda and objectives has to be worked with more than one person.

In any case, I was also worried about the fact of the sponsor part you mentioned (I don't remember if we had any meetup sponsored by anyone).

The rest of the options seems good.

Regards,
Francisco.-