[Party] State of the map

[Jochen Topf]

On Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 08:23:58PM +0000, Nick Black wrote:
> First, we'll need some way to decide which papers go into which track,
> and perhaps which papers we dont accept at all - it could be that we
> have 100s of submissions.  The community should certainly decide, and
> I would propose that this is done through IRC meetings - once we have
> abstracts we should meet and decide which ones go where etc.  Someone
> is going to have be responsible for collecting abstracts - I'll
> volunteer for this task. (Unless we just get people to post them to
> the wiki?)

I suggest using some kind of software for handling that. I have been
involved in organizing several conferences (including Linux-Kongress,
LinuxTag, FOSTEL, ...) and without any kind of software, managing the
submissions gets very confusing and more work than really necessary.

Have a look at Pentabarf (http://pentabarf.org/Main_Page), the software
the Chaos Communications Club developed for its conferences. I have
never used it, but it seems to be the only working Open Source software
of that kind. (I have used several other homegrown systems and also
developed on them, but they are all very incomplete and hard to use.)

Also I am note sure it is a good idea to let the community as a whole
decide on the presentations. Putting together a good program is a lot of
work, you'll have to read all abstracts and discuss what combination
would be best etc. All the conferences I know of have a programm
committee, which decides things. But we could certainly put everybody
who volunteers into that committee. :-) Did you use the community
approach for FOSS4G? How did it work out?

> Secondly, do we think that the wiki will suffice as the main website
> for the conference or do we need a static site that allows people to
> sign up, pay, register their T-shirt size, dietery requiremens, and
> submit abstracts from.  Are there any volunteers for making the site?

If the conference is free, the Wiki is enough. But if people have to pay
and you have to keep track of that you'll need some kind of software.
Last time I looked Pentabarf was good at that paper submission stuff,
but didn't do registration. I am not sure about the status there, so
have a look at it.

Jochen
-- 
Jochen Topf  jochen at remote.org  http://www.remote.org/jochen/  +49-721-388298