FOSS4G 2010 Lessons Learned

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communication inside the organization
every LOC is different and it's not easy to establish the connection between OSGeo Board, the Conf Com and the LOC. It's curious how, even if we all want to help each others, it's so easy to get into misunderstandings. The Chair has a key role to make this process smoother and bridge between these groups.

suggestion: don't sub-estimate the difficulties that can arise from the LOC and the OSGeo communities. Keep supporting an open minded approach.

when to start
Get ready with your website so we can link to your site while many visitors are still on ours.

public website
The home page of the conference and all the contents to show to the public can be easily made in pure HTML (little php can help). Check other events websites.

abstracts platform
this can be the real PITA. As far we've seen there's not yet a good open source platform for this and the one from our conference company is nice to see but not even sufficient in terms of bugs, usability, features.

So double check your opportunities, you can avoid recursive heart attacks.

Academic track submission

 * definitely also collect keywords

Sponsors

 * don't wait for sponsors knocking at your door.
 * avoid mass e-mailing to potential sponsors.
 * prepare one-to-one e-mails to justify their involvement and offer support even to download a manual that's so easy to do. Let them feel comfortable.

abstract selection

 * We have received way more abstracts that what expected. 360 for 120 places.
 * coupling the selection of the Academic Committee and the Community Review is a tough job. We where 4 people during a long day together and we had to review our choices for the three days after from home.
 * Using a Google Spreadsheet has been really a good help. The chat included helps to let the LOC group to refine the selection but I would not use it instead of a face to face meeting.
 * suggestions: after the first selection, it's a good practice to leave 3-4 slots free to give the time to the community to react and help you choosing from the discarded presentations. There's always a good presentation that the LOC can miss and that can be added in a second moment.

media and communications
Start the media agreements ASAP, we've been little lazy with it. We decided not to spend money or free entrances with Media Partners and the time will tell if we did right. Anyway relations with media are important and we dedicated a person to it, choose one soon; he should take care of magazines and mailing lists for you. We hope to give a good list of international magazines and you will have just to extend the agreements.

Lessons at the Venue
Put a short bio of the speakers in the webpage with the abstract, hand them out to the session chairmans.

It would be a really nice thing to provide a backchannel from twitter in different places of the venue there is a whole paralel meeting there!

add other lesson
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