FOSS4G'13

The working site for the conference committee of FOSS4G 2013

Programme: draft v2 done

Posted by Rollo Home on May 28, 2013

The long we/e was put to good use and the programme has been programmed, but requires additional 'reality checks' from the Programme Committee (I've also CC'ed Ian Holt to this discussion). Barry is going to provide you with password access to the 'slot drop' web application that he developed to handle this process.

Some points to consider as you review the programme:
1. Themes: these will not make it through to the final version seen by the delegate. We are going to rely entirely on 'tags' to guide the user through the papers.
2. The one exception to this is the 'newbie' session (day 1) - for which we need a better name: "Introduction to FOSS"
3. Rooms: the rooms are not going to be allocated at this stage - ignore the names at the top of the columns. A vertical does indicate a single space however.
4. We have not promoted any of the papers to 'plenary' slots as was discussed as a potential idea at F2F. We can still do this. Speaking of Plenaries (the invited kind: http://2013.foss4g.org/programme/keynoters/), can anyone confirm how much time we gave to them? 
5. It's required for the workshops anyway, but an extension to the EB is a sensible idea due to the late release of the programme for which I apologise.

Comments

Rollo Home on May 28, 2013:

Poster sessions - we don't want one, right? Maps is (pain) enough?

Barend Köbben on May 29, 2013:

Can we already see the provisonal programme somewhere, to do the reality check? (probably missed an earlier message on that, sorry)

Rollo Home on May 29, 2013:

I've asked Barry to see if that can be done easily, but in the meantime use
http://ma-wwwprod.lancs.ac.uk/slotdrop/#
rollo
foss4g2013
(please don't make any changes at this stage - note suggestions down and we'll compile them together).

Barry Rowlingson on May 29, 2013:

If you're going to tell everyone your password at least tell them how to log in!

1. Go to: http://ma-wwwprod.lancs.ac.uk/admin/
2. login with Rollo's account details
3. Go to: http://ma-wwwprod.lancs.ac.uk/slotdrop
4. DONT DRAG ANYTHING AROUND!! All changes are made to the database, there's no undo.

5. Click on presentations for details.

I might try and make this read-only later.

Barend Köbben on May 29, 2013:

Thanks for that, won't touch a thing!

I do notice that you propose to put the Academic Track papers spread through the programme, not in a separate track. I assumed they would be separate, I guess  only because they were so in past conferences. I guess there are advantages to both systems, not really sure at the moment what I'd prefer. Having a separate AT would mean we could have AT committee members chairing (who would know the papers). Mixing would mean that academics meet normal people and vice versa. What do others think...?

Whatever we come up with, I would prefer NOT to have academic track papers in parallel, as they seem to be at the moment in some cases...

Rollo Home on May 29, 2013:

This was a difficult decision, but when I looked at the AT as a whole, it had no structure to it - papers were very diverse. The grouping into the overall structure therefore made more sense to me.
Ultimately there will be clashes - we've worked to minimise the most obvious ones, but are we to assume that the AT is really that distinct and of universal interest that people will a) not want to see anything else or b) want to see all the AT papers? I'd fear that the only people in the AT would be the presenters of other papers......

Rollo Home on May 29, 2013:

(Sorry Barry!)

Steven Feldman on May 29, 2013:

Personally I like the idea of mixing the academic track and the regular presentations as long as someone who specifically wants to hear all of the academic papers can do so (ie no scheduling conflicts). The tag filters aren't active yet so I can't tell whhether that is the case.

Not sure what the colours signify

Barry, yet again a massive thank you is due

Steven Feldman on May 29, 2013:

Re Poster sessions

We have no capacity for organising anything else and even getting volunteers to organise would suck up time and logistics support. My vote is to avoid.

If we have a couple of unconference sessions there is nothing to stop some poster folk morphing into unconferencers or self organising an informal lightning session

Barend Köbben on May 29, 2013:

I do concur with Steven on both items: No Posters and  AT mixed in (but as much as possible non-parallel).

Talking about efforts that suck up time and logistics support: How sure are we that we want to go through with the Map Exhibition if the main organiser (Ken Field) is not supported by his employer...?

Steven Feldman on May 29, 2013:

Good point re map gallery from Barend. Rollo have you heard anything more from Ken?

Barry Rowlingson on May 29, 2013:

I've tidied up the programme, made a static web version and pushed it to the site:

http://2013.foss4g.org/timetable/

Comments etc, otherwise we tell the world.

Rollo Home on May 29, 2013:

Re: Ken. Ken has booked his flights and is coming and therefore will be involved with the Map Gallery. To the only question is to what extent BCS will cover his costs. This is dependent on Ken selling the sponsorship options that Steven agreed on for BCS. We will hear shortly.

Rollo Home on May 29, 2013:

Steven - the AT track is the very nice mint green. (Slot 32 is an AT track).
Clashes currently exist:
Slots 23 & 42
Slots 10, 17 & 38
Slots 71 and 101
Slots 72 and 120
Slots 69, 109 and 117
hmmm....that is clearly too many.

Steven Feldman on May 29, 2013:

some swapping around needed :)

Barry Rowlingson on May 29, 2013:

I've just looked at those clashes and I can't really see any reason why someone would want to go to more than one of them. A case study in New Zealand or a Multi-scale vector rendering algorithm? Bolivian SDI or graphic API benchmarking? And so on. There seems to be very little commonality across clashing academic track talks.

Rollo Home on May 29, 2013:

well, that would be the argument for not placing all the papers into an AT, but we may have some flexibility to swap papers within blocks to avoid clashes. I'll have a look.....

Franz-Josef Behr on May 29, 2013:

In my case I am widely interested in many topics (perhaps of my academic
field of work). Hence I'd like to hear more than one of them.

Rollo Home on May 29, 2013:

some clashes removed.
Left with just slots 10/17/38 on day 1.

Rollo Home on June 7, 2013:

Barry, I've been contacted by author of paper in slot 167/Saturday (later moved to 133/Friday). They can only do Thursday or will have to pull out. I've said I will see what I can do....but I can't access the slot-drop currently. Can you add to your huge list of things to look at?

Barry Rowlingson on June 7, 2013:

There's a lot of changes coming in to various people. We need a way of
queuing them and handling them. Is there an online shared task list where
we can dump them and tick them off when done? By 'we' I mean me, you,
claire, everyone. Can basecamp's todo lists be tagged? So all programme
changes get tagged 'programme change' or something? We need a framework...

Now I've got django working on 2013.foss4g.org I want to get all the
presentations onto there and then we do all the management there - that
becomes the master copy. then anyone with admin rights can tweak the
programme, or the presenters and so on. I then need to think about how much
of the conference management framework we can use...

I can't do anything until Sunday, and that is 'workshop res goes live' day
(am currently working on that at the moment, but I can't do it all since
I'm on a laptop away from my sisters and... well its complicated). I can
probably spend some of next week getting the presentations onto the system.
But I can see possible problems (and solutions).

Rollo Home on June 7, 2013:

I'll investigate options....

Rollo Home on June 7, 2013:

All

If you receive a change request to the Programme - here's what to do:

  • I have created a 'to do' list (Programme Changes) under which you can add updates for change request that we receive.
  • https://basecamp.com/1920286/projects/762306-foss4g-13/todolists/7937999-programme-changes
  • These can be assigned to anyone else (which I fear will have to be me so that I can act as coordinator for these changes). Note: we may not be able to accommodate all the changes requested. Please include as much detail in the task as possible (including the contact email address). 
  • You can add comments to a task - if you spot something that needs addressing, comment away!
  • You can also define a deadline (keep it short). 
  • We need to have a final date for the programme after which no changes are accepted.  I suggest 31st July. Does this need to shared or do we just assume that if we've not received anything by then, it's OK?

Barry, The Task / To Do list does not allow tags but I see that documents now do! That will be a help in future. http://basecamp.com/help/guides/projects/todo-lists