FOSS4G'13

The working site for the conference committee of FOSS4G 2013

Workshop Community Vote Results

Posted by Matt Walker on June 11, 2013

Hi,

I've just received the results for the workshop community vote from Paul Ramsey which I've converted to a spreadsheet and attached.

So what's to be done?

Decide how many workshops we're going to run and when?
There is a preference to avoid running workshops Thursday morning or Saturday afternoon. I believe we've got the following rooms Thu, Fri and Sat:

Room | B29 Sir Clive B | B29 Sir Clive A | Hallward Lib 101 | Trent B16
-----+-----------------+-----------------+------------------+----------
No.  | 45              | 45              | 30               | 48
 
I'm wondering about us running a full day (8 half day workshops) on The Friday?

Which workshops do we select?
OpenGeo where in touch with Steven to say that they wished to withdraw :
OpenLayers Application Development (Tim Schaub) was ranked 3rd so needs to be removed.

One thing that strikes me is that GeoSolutions and OpenGeo have 2 high ranking workshops (when the above has been removed) and it's all a bit GeoServer heavy when we already have several GeoServer workshops in the main program...

Here I think we should keep it fairly simple and go with the community but perhaps say that GeoSolutions and OpenGeo have one workshop each?

I think we should try and publish the list of accepted workshops tomorrow as it will help with the Early Bird.

Thanks,

Matt.

Comments

Steven Feldman on June 12, 2013:

I suggest that we run two rooms Thursday pm, Friday and Saturday am = 32 hours of workshop time.

Suggest that we insert workshop durations against the community votes and clip at 32 hours (excluding OpenGeo withdrawn one). If the last workshop exceeds the 32 hours we cut it. 

Let's not apply any smoothing or balancing to these workshops, give the community what they voted for, but recognise that it doesn't appear that all that many people actually voted.

If you are happy with that we can knock up a simple page with the results on it and showing the workshops selected. We can do the timetabling a bit later. We can link to it and tweet it for those who seem to be making their Early Bird purchases on the basis of these workshops (I guess it is one or two presenters only)

Steven Feldman on June 12, 2013:

I have uploaded the vote to a google doc and added the times, delegate numbers and short abstracts.

With 32 hours of content across 2 rooms we get to number 11 (who will have to trim his workshop from 8 to 6 hours). Is everyone happy to go with this?

A couple of the presenters have very low delegate numbers and we will need to go back to them to check whether they can handle more (if not would we respect community vote or change?)

Unless someone wants to do some work putting these workshops into the timetable and republishing I suggest we make the google doc public as a quick way of getting the info out there for those who want to see it before the EB closes

Jo Cook on June 12, 2013:

We ought to contact the ones who didn't make the cut first, then take them out of the spreadsheet- then yes let's just publish that asap.

Rollo Home on June 12, 2013:

Why are we limiting this to 2 rooms? Just wonder if 11 papers is low cut off.

How much time would it take to slot those 11 workshops into the attached spreadsheet format (my working copy of the programme) and then update this page? http://2013.foss4g.org/provisional/workshops.html ? (Steven - have you shared that Google Doc?).

The main people affected are the presenters I guess? We should do a clash detection with the papers (bound to be some overlap). However are we still offering them EB rates after close of EB?

Steven Feldman on June 12, 2013:

Re notifications - if someone wants to do the mailing before we publish fine but I don't think it is essential given that we have a competing pressure to publish for the EB. I think we should publish the full vote so that there is no further debate re transparency etc

Re 2 rooms - my view is that we don't want to make the program too rambling, the workshops will have to compete with presentations so someone may be disappointed at attendance. We are scheduling some extra space to respond to the complaints we received but I don't think the volume of votes tells us that there is massive interest in these workshops. if we go with 2 rooms we can use the 2 in Clive Grainger which is a shortish walk from the EMCC.

We need to decide:
  1. Do we go with 2 rooms or more?
  2. Do we publish full vote?
  3. Do we mail presenters before publishing? If so who will do?
  4. Do we worry about scheduling and updating  http://2013.foss4g.org/provisional/workshops.html before or after publishing vote? If so who will do?
The google doc has been shared with all of you, if you can't connect let me know

You will sense that my preference would be 2 rooms and to make the vote public in the next hour or so, mails can go to all presenters subsequently (remember to tell Markus Neteler to reduce to 6 hours) and add to scheduling when Barry has finished his database thingmy.

Jo Cook on June 12, 2013:

My votes:

1) If we decided on 2 rooms then 2 rooms it is
2) We should publish the full vote
3) We should definitely mail *all* presenters, particularly those who didn't make the cut- just out of politeness
4) Let's get the google doc published asap then tidy the workshops page on the web site

Jo

Abi Page on June 12, 2013:

Is mailing the presenters a big task? A standard email to everyone thanking them for their submissions and a link to the results would be polite.
I agree on the preference on the other points.

Antony Scott on June 12, 2013:

+1 to what Jo said.

Steven Feldman on June 12, 2013:

I have added the email addresses into the sheet. Could someone volunteer to do the two mails and then we should remove/hide the mail addresses before we make the sheet public.

I need to grab a bite before a 2pm call

Steven Feldman on June 12, 2013:

OK I am off my call so I will do the mailings and then publish the Google doc

Steven Feldman on June 12, 2013:

  1. All workshop submitters mailed
  2. List made public without email addresses
  3. Posted to discuss and foss4g lists
  4. Tweeted
  5. Added link to Workshops page on site
I'm off  now