Correspondence with Jane

[Anthony Cole]

Hey all, this is my correspondence so far with Jane.

I was asking her about potentially getting a refundable deposit because the WordPress Foundation says that they can provide for that.

-ac

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On 6/22/10 9:25 AM, Anthony Cole wrote:

Hey Jane,

Yeah, that's fine - Dan's helping us out and has had a ton of input already. We've decided that the venue is going to be the State Library of Victoria.

ok.

We kind of need to lock the dates in at that because of the other events going on - I don't think there will be a problem.  I'm going to call the State Library of Victoria tomorrow and talk to them about locking it in. Can you guys help out with deposits if they need one?

Who do you mean by "you guys"? Are you asking for Automattic to sponsor? I'm not saying no, as it would be Matt and Paul's decision as to whether they want Automattic to sponsor, but it's really the responsibility of the organizers to find sufficient sponsorships to cover the costs of the event they are planning. I.e., if you don't have the money, plan a cheaper event with a cheaper or donated venue. Last time Automattic wound up paying around $5,000 to make up for the lack of sponsorships after James Farmer pulled out, which is far more than we sponsor for other events, and honestly, most events aren't sponsored by Automattic at all, because the organizers round up local and other sponsors. I will pass along the sponsorship request, but you need to have sponsor levels set with benefits associated with each for it to be considered. If you don't think you can raise the money to afford the State Library then you should try to find a place that will donate the space rather than charge for it. College campuses, corporate offices, etc are good bets.

Heard about Jeff Waugh organising WordCamp Canberra. I think they're going to try to get one going on the Gold Coast as well, and people from both of those regions are helping out - we're trying to make this the more "Central" WordCamp that everyone goes to - and everyone's fine with all of that.

You'll still need to call it WordCamp Melbourne, since calling it WordCamp Australia would imply that yours is more official than the others.

I'm not officially announcing the dates yet, but we're more or less locked in with the dates as we're trying to coordinate it around Webstock and with people travelling it can just be a mess during summer. Dan has said that he's fine with working with the date.

Okay, let me know when it's ready for announcing and I'll post it.

I know Sam Bauers has access to the wordcamp.org.au <http://wordcamp.org.au> domain, and as long as we've got domain mapping we'll be fine. It would actually be nice to get that switched over sooner rather than later. A minor, erhm, issue, is that James Farmer has the wordcamp.com.au<http://wordcamp.com.au> domain. He doesn't have a good reputation among any of the committee members, and his a big... problem from what I understand. We'll be fine, but it might be a good idea to chase that up if you can do anything legally.

Yeah, once the WordCamp trademark is all finalized under the Foundation umbrella, we'll ask him to sell it to us. In the meantime, since there are multiple events anyway, that domain is probably less useful being mapped to one event, and would probably be better used to link to each of the individual event sites. Are you in touch with Sam? I haven't talked to him since he left Automattic, but if he's involved, I'll ping him about the domain stuff.

Is there any possibility of getting a custom theme installed if we need it?

We have a handful of themes installed, and you can make a child theme to make them do pretty much whatever you want (for example, this year's wcsf was a child theme of the new default theme, 2010). If there is a specific theme you need, we can see about adding it to he available themes as long as it is GPLv2 and up to the coding standards.

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Hi Anthony. You can't call it WordCamp Australia anymore, and will need to use the city name, as there's one being planned for Canberra by Jeff Waugh, and once a country gets more than one per year they need to start using city names. I'd love to come, it will just depend on the timing. I believe Dan already has dates in mind for February, so you may want to coordinate with him. We're going to start requiring that WC sites be hosted on wordcamp.org for any that are happening after January 1, 2011, so we should talk about moving it over at some point and mapping the domain. Do you already have a venue lined up? In general we recommend not calling a date official until there is a venue locked down, because a free or cheap venue is a good reason to change the dates. :)

I'm going to be putting out a WC Organizers Handbook this week with all the new rules (speakers and sponsors cannot be drawn from businesses currently in violation of the WordPress license), so will make sure you are on the list that gets that, so you can be aware of the new regulations as you start planning. I've taken over managing the WC program from Maya, so when your details are a little more firmed up, I can take care of getting you listed on the central WC site schedule, getting shwag sent over, etc.

Looking forward to hearing more!
j

On 6/22/10 8:22 AM, Anthony Cole wrote:

Hey Jane,

I'm taking charge of organising WordCamp Australia as I've relocated to Melbourne.

We've just had our first committee meeting (you can see the summary at http://wordcamp.org.au/2010/06/wordcamp-meeting-summary-22-june/ ). The most important point of order we decided on was the dates of the conference - we've set the dates at the 20th and 21st of February, 2011.

I know there's been talk with Dan about coordinating a massive WordCampFest with something on in Wellington as well. Webstock is also on around then, and that should attract a big crowd to what we're doing. I haven't had a chance to talk to him about things yet solidly, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind coordinating something either the weekend before or after.

Just wanted to keep you in the loop. Dan mentioned you were keen on potentially coming?

-ac

[Dion Hulse]

On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:27:33 +1000, Anthony Cole <ant...@radiopicture.com.au> wrote:
>> I know Sam Bauers has access to the wordcamp.org.au <http://wordcamp.org.au> domain, and as long as we've got domain mapping we'll be fine. It would actually be nice to get that switched over sooner rather than later. A minor, erhm, issue, is that James Farmer has the wordcamp.com.au<http://wordcamp.com.au> domain. He doesn't have a good reputation among any of the committee members, and his a big... problem from what I understand. We'll be fine, but it might be a good idea to chase that up if you can do anything legally.
> Yeah, once the WordCamp trademark is all finalized under the Foundation umbrella, we'll ask him to sell it to us. In the meantime, since there are multiple events anyway, that domain is probably less useful being mapped to one event, and would probably be better used to link to each of the individual event sites. Are you in touch with Sam? I haven't talked to him since he left Automattic, but if he's involved, I'll ping him about the domain stuff.

Just like to point out here, That the wordcamp.org.au domain is actually registered to "WordCamp Inc" with Sam as the primary registrant contact..

I do agree with the lack of "WordCamp <country>" however, If it was only one event per country then sure. but with a canberra event too.. its all too official.. Although i do question if Canberra should be a wordcamp in the first place, but rather, a local meetup/users group..
Just like to point out, what i'd like to do on the gold coast is NOT a wordcamp, One day, a gold coast event would be nice, but a casual user-group meeting is what i'd like to get going (and would like to see people get going elsewhere too), all pitching in towards a main event each year somewhere in the country.

-- Dion Hulse / dd32

Contact:
e: con...@dd32.id.au
msn: m...@d32.id.au
skype: theonly_dd32
Web: http://dd32.id.au/

[Dan Milward]

It looks to me like Jane has been awesome. Shes given prompt replies and a ton of information to work with.

Did you guys all agree to ask Automattic to sponsor the WordCamp? A bold move :P

Ciao,
Dan

Sent from my iPhone

[Anthony Cole]

I just kind of asked... I mean, the wordpress foundation site stated it somewhere a while ago. Looks like it's since been removed, but I have a good memory - and it was stated somewhere that the wordpress foundation had the capacity to help with deposits for WordCamps.

I mean, it doesn't hurt to ask.

PS - Dan, I need access to the list admin... please please please?

-ac

[Dion Hulse]

Yes Yes, I'm an idiot. .com.au. != .org.au.