RE: [eclipse.org-eclipsecon-program-committee] EclipseCon 2010 Conferenc

["Donald Smith" <donald.smith@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Bernd,

Here's my take on some of the points here.

 - Last year people could attend at most 2 tutorials because so many were in
parallel.  This year it will be possible for attendees to attend at least 4
tutorials (maybe five if I have my way on the other thread :) (up to 3 hours
in length) because of the changes to the conference.  This will hopefully
attract more users of Eclipse technology and give more hands on time.

 - There is room for an additional 30 BOF sessions (or "unconference") -- an
attendee could go to as many as 6 (last year they could only go to 4 max).
Last year an attendee could only go to a max of 16 "regular" sessions
(because so many were in parallel).  This year, an attendee can still go to
15 sessions.  So, the average attendee can go to 2 more tutorials, 2 more
BOFs, 1 less "regular" session this year.  I see this as a win!

 - There was a mention of 5 parallel sessions, but there will be more on the
schedule once we include things like sponsor organized sessions, and
events/meetings not directly related to EclipseCon like the OS Strategy
Summit, etc.  I just think that a conference of ~1000 people 7-8 parallel
activities feels about right to me.

 - My expectation is that we will have well over 1000 full conference
attendees again this year.  We had ~1100 last year.  If you're wondering why
we have different perspectives, remember that Bjorn is tasked with "Profit
and Loss", so he should be very conservative.  I do agree that it's better
for a fiscally conscious non-profit organization to plan modestly and expand
as needed, than to plan extravagantly and try to contract.  Especially since
no on really knows if more travel restrictions will snap in unexpectedly.
When dealing with hotels, conference facilities, catering, travel, etc, it's
way easier to expand than contract (in current conditions at least).

To summarize - There's little doubt in my mind we're going to have an even
better conference this year than last.  Attendees will be able to do more
this year with their time, not less.  I think we can make these changes by
focusing a bit more on quality and not just rubber-stamping some of the
talks that routinely get low attendance and low feedback.

 - Don





-----Original Message-----
From: eclipse.org-eclipsecon-program-committee-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse.org-eclipsecon-program-committee-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Kolb, Bernd
Sent: October 19, 2009 4:59 AM
To: Eclipsecon Program Committee list
Subject: RE: [eclipse.org-eclipsecon-program-committee] EclipseCon 2010
Conference Call 14oct09

Hi Bjorn,

To me one of the exiting things about the EclipseCons has been that it had a
wide variety of different people, projects and topics. I agree with you that
we need high quality talks. But as opposed to TED talks we have a pretty
narrow focus (Eclipse) and we need a possibility to go into details. One
nice thing about the EclipseCons have been the amount of Eclipse users and
committers going there. This always had a huge value for us. This is a
unique opportunity to meet your users and other committers or interested
parties. And BTW, this is one of the reasons I think why many Europeans came
over the EclipseCons. If we make EclipseCon more something like ESE there is
no longer a reason to have a 10hour flight. You can have that cheaper with
less effort in Ludwigsburg.

Speaking from a SAP perspective Eclipse is getting more and more important.
And as the economic situation gets better again we hope to be able to send
more people to next year's EclipseCon than ever before. (For the Eclipse
summit this year we are sending over 40 people) We hope that this will be
true for many other companies as well. So while I obviously may be wrong, my
strong hope would be that EclipseCon will grow again.

So while I agree with your points regarding quality my fear is that by
reducing the spectrum we will also loose people (again) and by that we make
the conference less interesting to others. 
Eclipse has a very diverse community which is one of its biggest values.
>From my point of view we should make sure that we have a platform for our
community where they can present their work. I think this should be the
Eclipsecon.


Just my 2 cents

Bernd


-----Original Message-----
From: eclipse.org-eclipsecon-program-committee-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse.org-eclipsecon-program-committee-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Bjorn Freeman-Benson
Sent: Samstag, 17. Oktober 2009 18:20
To: Eclipsecon Program Committee list
Subject: Re: [eclipse.org-eclipsecon-program-committee] EclipseCon 2010
Conference Call 14oct09

Esteemed Program Committee,
I think the emphasis on talk length is the wrong place to be putting 
energy - we need to be thinking about what we need to do to emphasize 
*quality*. In the past we've emphasized *quantity*, partly in the hopes 
that by having one of everything, we would end up with enough of the 
best. That didn't really work: instead of gold we ended up with sort of 
a brown color.

This year EclipseCon is different. It's different in a lot of ways. In 
no particular order:

* People are discovering that they don't need conferences to read slides 
(slideshare) or to have slides read to them (youtube). Conferences need 
to have great talks (TED) and great social networking. [Note that TED 
talks are ~20 minutes and they are some of the best talks you've ever 
seen, so length is not the determining factor in quality.]

* Eclipse has survived the downturn so far and so we need to celebrate 
the continued success and diversity of Eclipse. We're planning some 
really awesome interactive social events. Great panels to close out each 
day will "prime the pump" and get people talking to each others (which 
is, of course, the purpose behind conferences). We could have as few as 
one panel per day: a "keynote"-style panel at the end of the day. But 
they've got to be good, not just a collection of mini-talks. For 
example, I'm trying to put together a formal debate on software 
engineering styles: point, counter point, with leads and seconds and all...

* EclipseCon is going to be smaller. Attendance was down last year and 
attendance at ESE is down this year - I believe we'll have between 600 
to 700 people at EclipseCon 2010, down from the all-time high of 1400 
people two years ago. That makes it a perfect size for some really great 
interaction. The talks can be more personal and less lecture style, etc.

* EclipseCon has moved from the convention center with its dozens of 
rooms and giant exhibit halls to the attached Hyatt (the building with 
the bar). The Hyatt has a limited number of rooms. Thus we have fewer 
parallel sessions. And the exhibits will be ESE-style on the mezzanine - 
right in the middle of everything.

So: smaller, higher quality, more integrated. We can make this the best 
EclipseCon ever, but to do so we'll need to overthrow some of our 
traditional thinking about "just have everything" and "let everyone talk 
for a long time". We'll need to be selective about the speakers we 
invite/accept and monitor them to be sure that they are putting together 
a really informative session.

- Bjorn
> It just happens to be crunch time where I am here, so I've
> not got much for the agenda this week. I'd like to get a
> final round of feedback from you all, specifically on the
> talk times.
>
>   
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