Things to avoid next time

GUADEC 2005 was a great success due to the attendees and speakers. But several things went wrong, and should not happen next time. These were mostly the predictable result of not sharing information on the mailing list and wiki. For instance,

Printed schedule

• Was created by a paid designer instead of using our volunteers.
• Was created late, so there was very little chance for feedback.
• Did not match the online schedule.
• The cover and bios were not shown, so we could not give feedback.
• The cover did not mention GNOME or show the GNOME logo.
• A closing speaker was added without asking the planning or papers
  • commitee.

T-shirts

• There was no chance for feedback on the designs.
• The GNOME name and logo were not present.
• The quality of the blue t-shirts (to be sold) was awful.
• The sizes/shapes chosen were completely inappropriate: We just don't have 50% women attendees.

Name badges

• Were created somehow mysteriously, with no chance for feedback on the design. The GNOME name and logo were not present.

Banner on front of building

• Was created at very last minute, with no chance for feedback.
• The GNOME name and logo were almost completely absent.
  • Instead the obscure GUADEC logo was very large. Therefore it was completely impossible to reuse this (expensive) banner.

Streaming

• We didn't have enough computers, because
  • We couldn't discover whether we had insurance (we did) so people could not bring their PCs.
  • We could not get permission (or any response) to spending money on hardware.
• The streams were low-quality because we had only the minimum number of PCs.
• We had no screen in a central area to show the current streams.
• The archive of the streaming is still not fully online, 3 months later. The archive for last year never went online either.

Facilities

• Power was turned off at 18:00 almost every day in various rooms, crashing computers.
• We had to pay extra (approx 50 Euros per hour) for a "technician" to be present in each room, or else the power would be turned off.

Networking

• This wasn't set up and tested early, so our network volunteers needed to use all of the pre-conference (board meeting) day, and part of the first day, to get the internet connection working. They did wonderful things, but it would have been nice to start earlier. Possibly, the building managers had not allowed this.
• There was a misunderstanding about what equipment the local university wanted to buy afterwards, resulting in us owning 13 Linksys WRT54Gs (approx 60 Euros each) that we will probably never use again.

Organisation of Volunteers

• A paid (wage and expenses) organiser was hired and assigned, without telling the planning commitee, ignoring the commitee's own efforts.
  • This organiser was capable but a) unnecessary, and b) had no knowledge whatsoever of GNOME or the community, or of existing planning.
• volunteers were ordered to be remain at their desks throughout, and not allowed to attend talks.
• volunteers were not assigned to keep talks on time, or to help with projectors.

Registration

• A new registration system was created at a very late stage, without enough time for feedback, without consulting the planning committee.
  • It took several weeks to get this right, though it was never capable of working without Paypal, as the existing system could.

Travel subsidies

• We still have no idea who got subsidies and how much they cost us.