Debconf11: Contrast and Compare

[Igor Galić <i....@brainsware.org>]

Hey folks,

I attended DebConf11 (http://debconf11.debconf.org/) a few weeks ago
and I would like to share my impressions from that experience.
Hopefully we can gain some insight for our own conferences.

The conference was in my birth down: Banja Luka http://bit.ly/ohD0tE
Banja Luka has no public air port, and yet people from all over the
world arrived - about 320-380 throughout the week. (This is
neglecting the Bar Camp week before the actual event.)

What really striked me as marvelous was how warm and welcoming people
were - most of them even after I told them I use Ubuntu ;)
Everything felt familiar, not just in a geeky kind of way such
conferences feel, but I really mean in a family kind of way.

I met the local organizers - who were actually from Tuzla (and
Vienna). They told me exactly how the conferences are actually
organized:

* Every year the conference is held on a different continent 
* Two years before a bid is held, and it's decided later in a vote
  where the next conf will be
* (Almost) every year the conf is organized by a new team with no
  or hardly any experience - someone said this gives each conference
  a "fresh" feel
* There's no fee for the paricipation, so *everything* needs to be
  sponsored
* Some people will have their flights/hotel/food sponsored as well

Aside from these things there are a couple of peculiar fix spots:

* Cheese and Wine party 
  http://penta.debconf.org/dc11_schedule/events/699.en.html
* Day trip
  http://penta.debconf.org/dc11_schedule/day_2011-07-27.en.html
* Conference banquet
  http://penta.debconf.org/dc11_schedule/events/735.en.html

Finally: I have been shangaied into paricipating as local organizer
for a DebConf13 in Vienna.

To summarize:

* location doesn't matter
* price doesn't have to matter
* organizers don't really matter
* sponsors matter, but not as much as
* people matter

That's all folks, o/~

-- 
Igor Galić

Tel: +43 (0) 664 886 22 883
Mail: i.galic@brainsware.org
URL: http://brainsware.org/
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