Help with conference
Ola Bini
This is a really great idea, and I hope I'll have a possibility of
helping out with it.
That said, in the Nordic region I recommend taking contact with Bekk and
Trifork, since these companies did the RubyFools conferences this
spring. It might be a smoother path to have them helping out.
Cheers
--
Ola Bini (http://olabini.com)
JRuby Core Developer
Developer, ThoughtWorks Studios (http://studios.thoughtworks.com)
Practical JRuby on Rails (http://apress.com/book/view/9781590598818)
"Yields falsehood when quined" yields falsehood when quined.
marius
> That said, in the Nordic region I recommend taking contact with Bekk and
> Trifork, since these companies did the RubyFools conferences this
> spring. It might be a smoother path to have them helping out.
last year there was one in Oslo and one in Denmark. Although the
conference last year (well, this year) was great, there really wasn't
that much involvement from the communities. I think having people
engaged in organising a conference will be a real booster for activity
and communication in the Nordic countries. Besides that, having
"amateurs" speak at the conference will give us valuable training in
presenting Ruby; were there any Nordic presenters at RailsConf europe
at all this year (apart from DHH)?
The emphasis on the social aspects that CJ mentioned in the first
post, along with what the process of putting this together will give
us in terms of relationships and experience makes me all for rolling
our own.
Regards,
Marius
Carl-Johan Kihlbom
> From what I hear, there will only be a Danish RubyFools next year -
> last year there was one in Oslo and one in Denmark. Although the
> conference last year (well, this year) was great, there really wasn't
> that much involvement from the communities. I think having people
> engaged in organising a conference will be a real booster for activity
> and communication in the Nordic countries. Besides that, having
> "amateurs" speak at the conference will give us valuable training in
> presenting Ruby; were there any Nordic presenters at RailsConf europe
> at all this year (apart from DHH)?
Jarkko did an excellent tutorial on Accessible Ajax. Other than that I
don't think there were any presenters from Scandinavia.
> The emphasis on the social aspects that CJ mentioned in the first
> post, along with what the process of putting this together will give
> us in terms of relationships and experience makes me all for rolling
> our own.
Right, that's exactly what I'm thinking too.
/ CJ
Jarkko Laine
> On Sep 9, 2008, at 12:42, marius wrote:
>
>> From what I hear, there will only be a Danish RubyFools next year -
>> last year there was one in Oslo and one in Denmark. Although the
>> conference last year (well, this year) was great, there really wasn't
>> that much involvement from the communities.
I think the problem with a commercial entity being the main organizer
like in RubyFools is that it inevitably makes the conference too
expensive for many community members and also easily makes them feel
like they're "just visitors". That's why I'm not very keen on leaning
too heavily on professional conference organizers. I'd rather keep it
small and cheap and get the speeches from within the community (+
maybe pay a few interesting speakers to come over) than raise the
admission fee to be able to hire more high-profile speakers. Like I
said before, for me the most interesting aspect of a conference like
this is to hang out with smart people and learn from them, be it
during the sessions or in the hallways.
>> I think having people
>> engaged in organising a conference will be a real booster for
>> activity
>> and communication in the Nordic countries. Besides that, having
>> "amateurs" speak at the conference will give us valuable training in
>> presenting Ruby; were there any Nordic presenters at RailsConf europe
>> at all this year (apart from DHH)?
>
> Jarkko did an excellent tutorial on Accessible Ajax. Other than that I
> don't think there were any presenters from Scandinavia.
There were a couple of other Finns co-presenting in some sessions, but
I don't think any of them actually live here anymore.
>> The emphasis on the social aspects that CJ mentioned in the first
>> post, along with what the process of putting this together will give
>> us in terms of relationships and experience makes me all for rolling
>> our own.
>
> Right, that's exactly what I'm thinking too.
Agreed.
//jarkko
--
Jarkko Laine
http://jlaine.net
http://dotherightthing.com
http://www.railsecommerce.com
http://odesign.fi
Carl-Johan Kihlbom
> I think the problem with a commercial entity being the main organizer
> like in RubyFools is that it inevitably makes the conference too
> expensive for many community members and also easily makes them feel
> like they're "just visitors". That's why I'm not very keen on leaning
> too heavily on professional conference organizers. I'd rather keep it
> small and cheap and get the speeches from within the community (+
> maybe pay a few interesting speakers to come over) than raise the
> admission fee to be able to hire more high-profile speakers. Like I
> said before, for me the most interesting aspect of a conference like
> this is to hang out with smart people and learn from them, be it
> during the sessions or in the hallways.
it's too damn expensive. The max price should be under €100/day I
think. I don't know if that is possible, it depends on the sponsorship
we can get I guess. I hope so though.
oc
All sponsors pay equally and get the same promotion. This model seems
very sound to us as we want to keep the main focus on the conference.
One of our main goals is to keep the admission fees as low as
possible.
Granted, we do not pay any of the speakers at this conference, and the
size of the conference is around 500 people. We manage to keep the
earlybird fee down to 900NOK (~€110) and full price 1400NOK (€165).
The fees include two entire days with Confreaks filming all sessions,
conference dinner as well as location in the middle of Oslo (the
nordic capital of expensiveness). So it is feasible!
I also agree with Jarkko; There is no reason to pay for speakers,
there are plenty of high-skilled Rubyists in the nordic countries that
would be pleased to hold a speech and hook up with the other rubyists.
Aslak Hellesøy created a nifty Ruby/Radiant-extension called Ba
(http://github.com/aslakhellesoy/ba) in order to help arrange this
conference, I hope Nordic Ruby could make use of this and possibly
improve on it!
Ole Christian Rynning
BEKK / Smidig 2008
Carl-Johan Kihlbom
> At smidig2008.no - we chose to not differentiate between our sponsors.
> All sponsors pay equally and get the same promotion. This model seems
> very sound to us as we want to keep the main focus on the conference.
Interesting. I'm all for keeping it simple.
> One of our main goals is to keep the admission fees as low as
> possible.
>
> Granted, we do not pay any of the speakers at this conference, and the
> size of the conference is around 500 people. We manage to keep the
> earlybird fee down to 900NOK (~€110) and full price 1400NOK (€165).
> The fees include two entire days with Confreaks filming all sessions,
> conference dinner as well as location in the middle of Oslo (the
> nordic capital of expensiveness). So it is feasible!
Sounds great! What are your experiences with Confreaks? Worth it?
> I also agree with Jarkko; There is no reason to pay for speakers,
> there are plenty of high-skilled Rubyists in the nordic countries that
> would be pleased to hold a speech and hook up with the other rubyists.
I agree, a Nordic Ruby conference without nordic speakers wouldn't be
right. But I'm definitely open to having speakers from other
countries, but we probably won't pay them.
> Aslak Hellesøy created a nifty Ruby/Radiant-extension called Ba
> (http://github.com/aslakhellesoy/ba) in order to help arrange this
> conference, I hope Nordic Ruby could make use of this and possibly
> improve on it!
Cool! I'll look into it!
/ CJ