[Menai-LUG] Meeting/Seminar

[Kevin Donnelly]

A couple of weeks ago I raised this on these lists. Anglesey Business Centre
is willing to do a deal on the room, but I get no vibes re doing anything
much beyond this. By a process of inexorable logic, I conclude as follows:
getting a decent programme needs a decent number of attendees to make it
worthwhile -> getting a decent number of attendees may be more likely in
Llandudno/Colwyn Bay -> places there will cost significant amounts of dosh ->
to cover this I need more attendees -> to do this I need a bigger event.

This is not an entirely welcome conclusion, because it points to (in effect)
doing a mini-expo, which is a lot of organising, and needs to end up with me
not being out of pocket. So it's risky. The other alternative is to have a
few presenters making a trip to Anglesey to speak to what may turn out to be
a limited number of people, which is less risky, but will still take a good
bit of organising to do right.

So I suppose I'm soliciting responses on whether I should (a) do nothing, (b)
go for small meeting, or (c) go for larger meeting.

As regards (c), I would be thinking along the following lines:
- venue with exhibition/stand area, presentation area, and "business" area;
- one day, 10am-4pm;
- "stands" to be low-tech; ie FOSDEM or computer fair-style - a table with
some space around it;
- stands to be free, but donations accepted;
- 4 presentation tracks: business (deployment, office stuff, servers),
multimedia (edutainment, games, music, etc), home (office suites, email,
internet, etc), Welsh (software in Welsh, how to get more of it, etc);
- ?4 for anyone (?2 if booked in advance), ?40 for business track (?20 if
booked in advance) - these might not be remotely sustainable, so more info is
needed;
- presenters to have travel expenses paid, and equal share of any profits (if
I see any!);
- date in October, to give more time for organising and publicity;
- all screens to be running Linux;
- basic (ie no stuff like RAID, or 3D drivers) installations done for ?Ubuntu
and ?openSUSE, at a fee of ?10.

Sounds pretty onerous, but not impossible in theory.

[Kevin Donnelly]

Post by Kevin Donnelly
- venue with exhibition/stand area, presentation area, and "business"
area; - one day, 10am-4pm;

Are their sufficient Linux based businesses/organisations in the area to
take the stands?

Good question. The answer is probably no, but I was also thinking of .orgs
like KDE, GNOME, Debian, etc, and also Welsh orgs like Urdd, MyM.

Post by Kevin Donnelly
- "stands" to be low-tech; ie FOSDEM or computer fair-style - a table
with some space around it;

With lots of power points, some venues not really adaptaded for lots of PCs

Indeed.

Post by Kevin Donnelly
- stands to be free, but donations accepted;

How about free to charities, social entrepreneurs etc, but a (small) charge
for businesses?

Fine.

Post by Kevin Donnelly
- presenters to have travel expenses paid, and equal share of any profits
(if I see any!);

Do they share in losses too?

No!

Post by Kevin Donnelly
- date in October, to give more time for organising and publicity;

Who do you aim to attract and how? Companies will only take trade stands if
they think they will gain customers. Charities etc will want to collect
funds and advertise their service. I'm happy to talk about "Beginners'
Linux", but how do you get the average Windows user to take any notice of
an event connected with something he's never heard of? (I'll try to plug it
in MM, but how may readers live in N Wales is anyone's guess).

Good question - of course, we have the same question if we do a smaller event
too. I'm not sure that there would be many "trade" stands (though I would
expect people like Agored to be at least slightly interested ...), and the
low entry-barrier should help charities. It may indeed be non-doable, but I
think I'll try and get some prices just to see what the ballpark figures
would be.

Post by Kevin Donnelly
- basic (ie no stuff like RAID, or 3D drivers) installations done for
?Ubuntu and ?openSUSE, at a fee of ?10.

One Gnome, one KDE?

Yes, that would make sense.

[Kevin Donnelly]

What about approaching ITWales and seeing if it could be some sort of
joint venture?

Yes, good point. I need to get some prices first, though.