Next meeting: Tuesday 5th July 2016

Where

Manchester, England

When

Proposed dates: 28th July - 2nd August 2017

Local Team

• SamThursfield

• JavierJardon

• AllanDay (based in Sheffield, so semi-local)

• MarkSimpson

• LaurenPerry

• AlbertoRuiz (based in London, used to live in Manchester, so para-local instigator)

• TiagoGomes

• ChristosKaramitsos

Add your name here to sign up!

Local support

• Marketing Manchester conference bureau: Angela Dickinson: helped write the bid, and can provide help with hotel rate negotiation, event booking, invite letters & visas, and other stuff

• MIDAS (Invest in Manchester): Alberto knows Martha who works here. They have

• Manchester Metropolitan University:

  • - in the conferences dept. Kate McCorry has been our contact & is very helpful - we're on the radar of Hayley & Paul in the Digital Innovations dept

Immediate TODO

Overall todo: https://wiki.gnome.org/GUADEC/HowTo/BurnDown

• Assemble local team, assign roles: https://wiki.gnome.org/GUADEC/HowTo/Team

• Create a draft budget
• Find or create a VAT-registered financial entity or charity to handle funds
• Reach out to local groups, looking for volunteers, sponsors, general interest
• Collect ideas for designs/logo, events, keynotes, sponsors, outreach

Also: https://wiki.gnome.org/GUADEC/HowTo/CheckList

There's now a Trello board (currently private).

Local companies and organisations

• http://www.codethink.co.uk/

  • - Stephen willing to commit some amount of staff time towards the organisation

Still to contact:

• http://www.manlug.org/

• http://madlab.org.uk/

• https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Manchester

• ? BBC
• ...

• (Bristol) www.centricular.com/

• (Cambridge) https://www.collabora.com/

Sponsorship

Possible

I'm trying to see if Marketing Manchester/MIDAS can give us an overview of the local companies who would be (potentially) interested in GNOME and the event.

• Codethink (hopefully)
• ? Manchester Uni, Manchester Met Uni, Salford Uni ?
• ? BBC
  • investigate what FLOSS they use
• lots of other small tech firms / startups around Manchester these days
  • look into shared space buildings
  • Google I/O events have been hosted at spaceportx (was techhub) - investigate who is in there
• ...

Travel

Manchester Airport has many connections, Liverpool Airport is close by (< 1 hour by direct bus) and has some more. Train from London airports is 3-4 hours, can be expensive.

Train connections from Paris & Brussels (5 hours from Brussels).

Ferry connections in Hull (2 hours from Mcr), Holyhead (3 hours from Mcr), Portsmouth (5 hours from Mcr)

Cheap bus connections (Megabus) from Paris & Amsterdam (24+ hours travelling)

Train connections from all over Britain, very expensive unless booked in advance.

Bus connections from all over Britain with Megabus & National Express, also needs advance booking, normally cheaper (but slower) than trains.

Accomodation

University of Manchester cannot provide halls of residence, according to conference@manchester.ac.uk.

• "Regarding halls of residence, unfortunately we do not have any accommodation available during the summer, but we can look at other providers for this, would this still be of interest? We do have specially negotiated rates with local hotels which we can pass on to our clients."

Manchester Metropolitan University also has halls in city centre which may be available.

There are a few hotels around t Oxford Road area:

• Holiday Inn Express (Oxford Road)
• The Palace Hotel (Oxford Road)
• Novotel (Portland Street)
• Hotel Ibis (Portland Street)

plus others (& prices?)

Various youth hostels are available. £20-£40 per person per night for 2 people sharing a room.

Food / dining

Need to investigate cafeteria options once we have a venue.

Possible Events

• Group dinner in Rusholme (curry mile, enourmous restaurants)
• Football somewhere (Trinity Sports Center?)
• Trip / games event in Whitworth Park (or some other park)
• other stuff

Budget

References

https://wiki.gnome.org/GUADEC/PlanningHowTo/
Oxford 2013 bid
https://wiki.gnome.org/GUADEC/2014/Feedback

Ideas

• 2 factor authentication usb keys

• Catchbox (throwable)