Core team meeting 2017-06-26, at https://bluejeans.com/6361797715/

Present

• AllanDay

• NeilMcGovern

• NuritziSanchez

• LeneRastaad

• SamThursfield

Absent

• AlbertoRuiz

• JavierJardon

Actions

TBC

Agenda

1. Merchandise & printing

2. MOSI party

3. Other social events

4. TBD slots

5. BoFs

Meeting notes

Merchandise

• Water bottles -- we committed to these with PIA and need to order
• Bags

  • If we are giving out flyers and a water bottle, we need something for people to carry them in

  • Cotton drawstring rucksacks -- these can be good but cost would be about £400
  • By comparison 200 brown paper bags would be about £15
  • We could also get fewer drawstring bags made up and sell them for ~£5
• Sunglasses, umbrellas, ponchos
  • Ties in nicely with UK weather
  • We need to be aware of quality
  • If we sell these, we need to also be aware of size so that we can physically fit unsold ones into the events box for future events
  • Seems to be a 10 day lead on these so we don't have to decide right away
• In general should we be spending money on giving out freebies?
  • We used to do this back when there was more sponsorship money (the Nokia days)
  • One goal of GUADEC is to raise a moderate amount of money for the Foundation -- we should at least be breaking even
  • Currently we're on track to more or less break even
  • On the other hand, it's the 20th annivery of GNOME...
  • We'll look at getting merch to sell rather than give away for now; we might ask for a further float from the Foundation since we expect to make the money back
• Socks
  • Bastian Ilsø has 50 or 60 pairs of GNOME socks that he can bring to sell
• T-shirts
  • Plan is to do four different designs, two GUADEC ones, one Flatpak and one GNOME
• Babywear
  • We have some requests for this
  • Size makes this complicated -- sizes of babies and children vary significantly!
  • Is there some kind of one-size-fits-all thing we could get?
  • A teddybear / toy -- like OpenSuSE stuffed geekos for example -- hard to make this GNOME specific though.

MOSI party

The cutoff date for final numbers is Friday 14th July. The meal is a sit-down buffet so we do have an upper limit for that.

• We won't close registration but we need some kind of limit in case we go way over our estimate at the last minute
• Let's give the final numbers as total registered on that date + 30
• But, we should also communicate over the next 2 weeks that if you don't register for GUADEC by Friday 14th July then we can't guarantee you'll be able to attend the party
• How do we reach people that haven't already registered?
  • foundation-list
  • planet
  • the website?

Welcome drinks

• We should have at least one welcome drink, after that a cash bar
• Need to fund this somehow though
• Centricular have offered sponsorship of around the right figure, let's use that
• Need to promote fairly compared to other party sponsors (Codethink)
• Let's do a party invite with Codethink logo, and a separate drinks voucher with Centricular logo
• We should speak to Codethink about "brand presence" at the event in general too

Cake

• Obviously required
• A 200 person cake is quite expensive
• Maybe a smaller designed cake plus something generic to feed everyone?
• How does this tie in with the buffet we're already getting?
• Lene to check with MOSI

Paper wall

• Lene struggling to explain what we want
• Concerns about sticking stuff to the painted walls
• Some eazel / flipchart could work as an alternative

Media wall

• Allan trying to organize a video to show here, but nobody within GNOME seems keen to work on this right now

• We could do with details on how the screen work -- resolution & file format. Lene to find out

• Alternative idea: crowdsource photos taken by people during the event
• Something like hashslider.com to show photos off Twitter -- this is proprietary but there may be a Free Software alternative
• We should pick what hashtags to use for the event too

Other social events

BBQ -- struggling to find a place.

• The Wharf on Friday might work, but they worry about having a backup plan in case of bad weather
• It does have a big grass area where we could do games

Rain Bar -- great but capacity about 110 people. For non-core days it might be nice.

Walking tour -- would be good if we had a social event in town centre so that it's easy to find for people who do the walking tour.

James' friend's place (near Aatma) would be good if it's open by then.

Games, picnic

• Again, this would be great if the weather is nice but it's hard to have a backup plan
• We don't want to make 200 sandwiches but then have to go to a pub where we can't eat them, for example
• Hiring a marquee ??? We'd probably have to negotiate well with the park authorities...
• There's space outside Brooks building where we could do games, and we could schedule them fairly last-minute... which would allow us some flexibility based on the weather report
• We should know during the week of the event what the weather is likely to do

Sunday

• Joshua Brooks could open specially for us for about £100. What's capacity? Where would people at?
• Group dinners such as womens' dinner need to happen one night, and Sunday probably best
• We could send people down the Curry Mile to different restaurants -- this could work well as group dinners would just book specific restaurants in advance
• Newcomer's meal might be good to ensure nobody gets left behind
• Drinks after in Joshua Brooks - might not work if they are opening specially but we all arrive really late after the meal
• Not many pubs in the area but we can look into this, Big Hands is an option

Lene will create a spreadsheet to track all of this, and share with Engagement team.

Nuritzi will collect various ideas from Engagement and tasks where they need local assistance.

Allan still organising Peak District trip on Wednesday afternoon,

Website

We should enhance the travel info on the website for people who have never visted the UK before.

https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16 is a good example.

BoFs

The room allocations are confirmed with The Shed. Allan will send out the call for BoFs.

We want to rename the rooms -- this is fine if we can make our own signs? Need to check with The Shed but there seem to be posters up there already.

Me might need extra board markers and post-its -- we can figure this out on the day.

TBD slots

All three people we approached have confirmed.

One wants to swap slots to Fri or Sat -- we should coordinate with Kat.

20th birthday party schedule

Nothing planned out yet.

Band or DJ?

• Band can be too much too soon -- we want more "background music", but that can also create a party atmosphere later
• PRS license might be needed. Lene can check with MOSI if they have one.
• What about a short circus/entertainment performance of some sort?

A speech or two. An interview with Frederico for example?

Are we assigning seats? Not really as we don't have a strict RVSP so we don't have a full list of names.

The tables will be moved after the meal.

Next meeting

Next meeting will be Monday 3rd July at 18:00 BST.