[osol-mktg] OpenSolaris Developers Conf

[Glynn Foster]

Heya,

> Our challenge will be to keep the format in line with You guy's (bad 
> grammar!) line of thought, or that fantastic Linux agenda Glynn 
> forwarded around...and resisting the overwhelming urge to reincarnate 
> the SunNetWork extravaganza.

So having read some of the replies, Keith basically highlights the
potential conflict of interest in any approach taken -
	
	o Developer - lots of planning sessions, few if any talks
	  and keynotes. Useful for developers getting their job
	  done and contributing to OpenSolaris.org

	  Could potentially expand to anyone involved in opensolaris.org
	  - discussions about how to marketing opensolaris.org, various
	  communities [smf, tools, desktop, xorg, ...] each having
	  mini-sections.

			vs

	o User/Business - This is probably your extravaganza marketing
	  conference. A really good opportunity to have some highly
	  technical *user* focused talks, highlighting the technology
	  involved

You generally have to get this right, and separate the two, so the
developers can't get distracted and actually get some useful stuff
discussed, rather than the usual 'Why can't the default shell be bash?'
type of arguments ;)

> Couple of interesting ways to go--what's your reaction?
> 
> 1--Solaris/OpenSolaris  Developer Conference--BLEEDING EDGE Solaris 
> based technologies from developers, venue aimed at the higher end 
> advanced developer, focus on Solaris / OpenSolaris development issues.   
> 2-3-days--keynotes at a minimum...Tutorials, hands on sessions, and BoFs 
> would be the sweetspot of the agenda. (Like Glynn's example from 
> australia...so cool!)  With this scope, we could expect to draw at least 
> 2,500 attendees, and if we opened the event up to sponsorships and 
> coordinated promotions, we could get as many as 5,000.  Registration 
> fees would be minimal (Cost of event/production)

This is probably my preference. But cut down your numbers by more than
half and we're probably in the right direction. Depends on the above
decision - developer or user/business? or both? If both, then you want a
very, very clear separation of the conference - with the developers
being able to do their thing for the first day or two alone :)

> 1a--Hosting the above format as a feature track at JavaOne, or ETech, or 
> OSCON (Note--that means waiting a long time to hold this event!)

Bleh - it makes no sense to hold this at JavaOne. Completely unrelated.
I don't know about ETech, but OSCON seems big enough already.

> 2--"Open Mic" Developer Conference--venue aimed at Open Source 
> developers only. Showcase all Sun's open source projects, featuring 
> OpenSolaris and Solaris development issues. 2-days--keynotes at a 
> minimum...tutorials, hands on sessions and BoFs would be sweetspot of 
> the agenda. (Like Glynn's example from australia...) With this scope, we 
> could probably expect to draw 1,500 attendees, and if we opened the 
> event up to sponsorships and coordinated promotions, we could get as 
> many as 2,000. NOTE--THIS COULD BE A FREE EVENT TO BE REALLY COMPELLING!

Then it probably wouldn't be a developers conference anymore. By
developer, I mean the people actually contributing kernel code. It would
be a more user/developer conference if that makes any sense at all :/

> 2a--hosting the above format as a Solaris kernel "pure oxygen" approach 
> like Jim has suggested  (No Signs, lots of code!)

That's probably something that's more useful to talk about right now, or
at least coming up with a conference plan that includes a very much sand
boxed kernel dev pre-conference session.

> Timing:  Early March 2006 (so we don't collide with  JavaOne juggernaut...)

Sounds rocking to me ;)


Glynn

_______________________________________________
opensolaris-mktg mailing list
opensolaris-mktg at opensolaris.org