| [eclipse.org-eclipsecon-program-committee] EclipseCon PC Minutes - August 5 |
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Meeting Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 9am Central Attendees Chris Anisyczyk, Bjorn Freeman-Benson, Darin Swanson, Doug Gaff, Doug Schaefer, Rich Gronback, Eugene Chan, Kevin McGuire, Ed Merks, Oisin Hurley, David Williams, Scott Rosenbaum Unable to Attend Donald Smith, Mike Milinkovich, Peter Kriens, Jeff McAffer, Markus Keller, Brian Fitzpatrick, Jason Weathersby, Boris Bokowski Schedule Schedule was reviewed. The goal was for category reps to have category descriptions complete by next meeting. Since we have decided to re-work the categories, this deadline is no longer valid. The basic schedule remains: - September Recruit key speakers - October / November review submissions, provide feedback to consolidate and improve talks - December select talks - January schedule complete Program Covered the less is more philosophy for discussion. Discussed tutorials and the move to a four hour time frame instead of two. One concept that I missed was the thought of recruiting professional training companies to provide a tutorial session. I have spoken with two companies that provide Eclipse training, and they have said that they would love to be able to come and present their for pay course for free. Discussed moderated short talks. In general the committee liked the idea of making linking the short talks into a cohesive session. Most agreed that an emcee for the session was helpful. We decided that the category reps would assemble the sessions based on standard short talk submissions and assign a moderator (optional) as they see appropriate. We covered the idea of main stage presentations. Concerns have been raised that by singling out a talk above the other concurrent talks that we may hurt the other talks. On the positive side, recruiting for a Main Stage presentation allows reps to attract better speakers and probably have a better presentation. We are going to keep this in for now. Session Allocations Things got a little interesting when discussing the program allocations. A healthy discussion of the weighting of the various categories ensued. The main point revolved around a couple of concepts: a) the Platform was weighted a little too heavily, b) there is overlap within the existing categories. We were unable to come to up with a solution, but I volunteered to initiate a discussion on a new category structure. I will have a proposal out for discussion soon. Committee Responsibilities We covered the program committee responsibilities with an emphasis on the recruiting and quality aspect. Keynotes Discussed the progress on the keynote presentations. In a follow up email, Donald suggested we look at involving someone from the World of Warcraft communities to speak with Clay Shirky. I think this is an excellent idea and have run it past Clay. QUALITY, QUALITY, QUALITY The discussion on the allocations ate up some of the time that I had hoped to dedicate here. I am very interested in what we can do to insure the very best in the way of speakers. I will return to these topics in the next meeting. - How do we get not only good subjects, but great presenters? - There is no excuse for not being prepared, or not having a good presentation - Can we combine good presenters with strong technical experts (who may not speak as well) - Do we want a references section as part of the submission system? - Can we implement a presentation preview system? (new presenters only?) - Tutorials only? - Main Stage too? Next Meeting By next meeting I plan on have the new categories complete with appropriate changes to the program committee. If you are concerned with the categories and allocations, please engage in the discussion prior to the meeting since we need to have this finished as soon as possible. I will make a proposal on the new categories soon. - Review submission system & discuss logistics - Main stage speaker ideas? - New Conference Ideas. How do we achieve more "You had to be there" moments - Ignite Eclipse (a la Ignite) (20 slides in 20 seconds) - Try Eclipse Karakoe - Try Conference speed dating (I really like this idea, perhaps at lunch?) - Program Committee Blog. I would like to have the entire program committee collaborate on a blog that will help to attract the best speakers, and build excitement about the conference. Thanks to everyone that was able to attend and provide feedback, Scott |