...making good on my threat.
We are making plans to host Wineconf 2004, in St. Paul, MN, during January 2004.
This is the last chance for someone in Europe to volunteer to organize it in their neck of the woods...
Otherwise, we plan to provide: * A meeting space for 2 days * Arrangements for moderately price hotel rooms * Advice on transportation, which should be straightforward * A meal or two, and drinks for at least one evening * We'll have all CodeWeavers Wine hackers in town for the event * Free buttons for the St. Paul Winter Carnival: http://www.winter-carnival.com/ <grin>
What we will expect you to provide: * Your airfare (sorry, no IPO money for us) * Your hotel room * A laptop with wireless * Long underwear and Parkas
What I don't know yet: * We may need to charge some sort of modest fee, depending on how the budget and our bank account look. We're willing to shoulder some costs, but we may need extra help. We'll also plan on using the Wine party fund to help cover some costs. * Exact dates; my thinking is to do it in conjunction with a weekend (e.g. Fri/Sat or Sun/Mon), but I want to see what meeting space cost/availability looks like before I pick. Right now, Fri Jan 16th/ Sat Jan 17th are looking good (note that LinuxWorld NY is the following week for those that might be able to get their employer to sponsor the trip Stateside).
Thoughts? Comments?
If you think you would come, please email me privately; I'd like to get a rough count to help with planning.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy White wrote:
...making good on my threat.
We are making plans to host Wineconf 2004, in St. Paul, MN, during January 2004.
This is the last chance for someone in Europe to volunteer to organize it in their neck of the woods...
Please... somebody. I want to go this time. But I suppose nobody wants it in my living room either, so it can't be me organizing. ;-)
Jakob
On Friday 26 September 2003 23:40, Jeremy White wrote:
...making good on my threat.
We are making plans to host Wineconf 2004, in St. Paul, MN, during January 2004.
This is the last chance for someone in Europe to volunteer to organize it in their neck of the woods...
Otherwise, we plan to provide:
- A meeting space for 2 days
- Arrangements for moderately price hotel rooms
- Advice on transportation, which should be straightforward
- A meal or two, and drinks for at least one evening
- We'll have all CodeWeavers Wine hackers in town for the event
- Free buttons for the St. Paul Winter Carnival: http://www.winter-carnival.com/
<grin>
What we will expect you to provide:
- Your airfare (sorry, no IPO money for us)
- Your hotel room
- A laptop with wireless
- Long underwear and Parkas
Ok,
i will have a look if can organize this. What about a location in or close to Munich / Germany. MUC is one of the biggest two airports in Germany.
Here are some questions i like to get clarified before i start: * What are you willing to pay for the meeting space ? * What do we need inside the meeting space e.g. beamer, internet, .. ? * What is a hotel room with a moderate price for you ?
Bye Stefan
On Sun, Sep 28, 2003 at 11:52:29PM +0200, Stefan Leichter wrote:
i will have a look if can organize this. What about a location in or close to Munich / Germany. MUC is one of the biggest two airports in Germany.
Sweet. (I live in Sweden so no big deal. :-)
Here are some questions i like to get clarified before i start:
- What are you willing to pay for the meeting space ?
100 euro.
- What do we need inside the meeting space e.g. beamer, internet, .. ?
- What is a hotel room with a moderate price for you ?
100 euro? I don't know how much hotels are anymore...
Hi Stefan,
I'm torn; I'm glad my threat seems to be working, but I was starting to enjoy the idea of having Wineconf here...
Here are some questions i like to get clarified before i start:
- What are you willing to pay for the meeting space ?
I was quoted a rough cost estimate of $60-70 per person per day for a moderate conference facility; that's imagining a continental breakfast and lunch buffet. You vary the price a bit if you can promise the hotel 'heads in beds' - then you tend to get down to paying just for the catering.
CodeWeavers is willing to chip in some meaningful cash to help pay for Wineconf (in exchange for 'sponsorship' creds), and I would personally like to pay for a meal and drinks.
We've had a private offer to help subsidize travel, and I suspect we could wrangle an arm or two to help sponsor the event. We also have about $1000 in the Wine party fund (thanks to the many that have donated).
I was thinking that if we asked $100/attendee, and got some sponsorship cash, we'd have cash left over to subsidize some travel costs and pay for some nice meals. (I had been hoping that, in St. Paul, I could afford to just cover it, and not charge anyone anything; making people come here in January seemed cruel enough <grin>).
- What do we need inside the meeting space e.g. beamer, internet, .. ?
Ideally, you need a conference facility that isn't uptight about the internet access. You want to pay a (probably high) fee for access to a DSL line, and then bring in your own wireless hubs. Unfortunately, most conference facilities see this as an excuse to gouge people (you'll see charges into the thousands of dollars for internet access many places).
Personally, I really think we just need a few rooms (I was thinking 2), with net access (wireless preferred), and access to food and beverages. Ideally, it would be somewhere we could camp in for fairly long days. I guess whiteboard/chalkboard is a must as well.
My other thought, by the way, was to ask some friends at a community college to lend us some classroom space; I think that's an angle worth pursuing, because a school could be the perfect host facility (save money, better facilities).
Final thought - there are 'meeting planners' who can arrange this sort of thing for a fee. I think their fees are modest (in the scheme of things), and might be a worthwhile expense. They're generally in local phone listings.
- What is a hotel room with a moderate price for you ?
The place I was looking at goes for $68/night that time of year. Candidly, I think hotel cost is usually a secondary concern, though - the plane ticket cost usually overshadows it.
Also, St. Paul, particularly in January, is very reasonably priced. I suspect that for a 'big city' - say New York - you should expect to at least double those figures.
Cheers,
Jeremy
p.s. My comments about St. Paul are all self deprecating humor; the twin cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul are a fantastic place. It's the best place in the world to live, and a great place to visit. It's very low key and easy to get around, has good night life + culture (okay, we have the Mall of America, but we have *other* redeeming features <g>), and is an altogether pleasant place to have a meeting. Of course, it is as cold as Siberia - that's not an exaggeration. But that can be fun in its own way...
Jeremy White wrote:
We've had a private offer to help subsidize travel,
If the Conf is held in Minneapolis/St. Paul, I will offer to rent a minivan for the event. So "some" ground transportation I can cover, do pick up's at airport, return trip's to the airport.. Taxi to the clubs at night as well <g>.
I plan to arrive a day early and stay over a extra day as well. Anyone care to visit there little Mall? :P
http://www.bordneraerials.com/mall_of_america.htm
Tom
On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 21:02:29 -0500 Jeremy White jwhite@codeweavers.com wrote:
Ideally, you need a conference facility that isn't uptight about the internet access. You want to pay a (probably high) fee for access to a DSL line, and then bring in your own wireless hubs. Unfortunately, most conference facilities see this as an excuse to gouge people (you'll see charges into the thousands of dollars for internet access many places).
Experience with the UKUUG Linux conference shows that if you pick a college/university you have a reasonable chance of getting sympathetic people high in the IT organisation who will provide such facilities free. However I suspect that few colleges will be willing to offer them over the new year break (as opposed to summer).
Worth trying though, especially if you have good contacts with suitable local institutions.
Stefan Leichter wrote:
Ok,
i will have a look if can organize this. What about a location in or close to Munich / Germany. MUC is one of the biggest two airports in Germany.
Here are some questions i like to get clarified before i start:
- What are you willing to pay for the meeting space ?
- What do we need inside the meeting space e.g. beamer, internet, .. ?
- What is a hotel room with a moderate price for you ?
Bye Stefan
I'll go with jeremey - I'll probably save so much money on not flying to the US, that I'll be willing to compromise on hotel and convention costs a little.
Anyone interested in hearing a lecture about BiDi - in wine and outside?
Shachar
We are making plans to host Wineconf 2004, in St. Paul, MN, during January 2004.
For me, I do not care that much .... Except that, like last year, it's falling during my first week of snowboarding :-) (yeah, damn French people and their whatmany weeks of vacation per year :-) ).
Lionel
Just a crazy taught: What about a twin Wineconf, one in north-America one in Europe taking place at the same time with live tele-conference. (Europe cameras on me) I am sure it will be good for publicity, Journalists like that stuff. But seriously how many are European (proximity) and how many are north American. Do we have any kind of counts.
+1 for Europe - Me ...
Jeremy White wrote:
...making good on my threat.
We are making plans to host Wineconf 2004, in St. Paul, MN, during January 2004.
This is the last chance for someone in Europe to volunteer to organize it in their neck of the woods...
Otherwise, we plan to provide:
- A meeting space for 2 days
- Arrangements for moderately price hotel rooms
- Advice on transportation, which should be straightforward
- A meal or two, and drinks for at least one evening
- We'll have all CodeWeavers Wine hackers in town for the event
- Free buttons for the St. Paul Winter Carnival: http://www.winter-carnival.com/
<grin>
What we will expect you to provide:
- Your airfare (sorry, no IPO money for us)
- Your hotel room
- A laptop with wireless
- Long underwear and Parkas
What I don't know yet:
- We may need to charge some sort of modest fee, depending on how the budget and our bank account look. We're willing to shoulder some costs, but we may need extra help. We'll also plan on using the Wine party fund to help cover some costs.
- Exact dates; my thinking is to do it in conjunction with a weekend (e.g. Fri/Sat or Sun/Mon), but I want to see what meeting space cost/availability looks like before I pick. Right now, Fri Jan 16th/ Sat Jan 17th are looking good (note that LinuxWorld NY is the following week for those that might be able to get their employer to sponsor the trip Stateside).
Thoughts? Comments?
If you think you would come, please email me privately; I'd like to get a rough count to help with planning.
Cheers,
Jeremy
On Mon, Sep 29, 2003 at 11:33:00AM +0300, Boaz Harrosh wrote:
Just a crazy taught: What about a twin Wineconf, one in north-America one in Europe taking place at the same time with live tele-conference. (Europe cameras on me) I am sure it will be good for publicity, Journalists like that stuff. But seriously how many are European (proximity) and how many are north American. Do we have any kind of counts.
+1 for Europe - Me
+0.5 for Europe - (The low score since I am hardly a seasoned contributor.)
Boaz Harrosh wrote:
Just a crazy taught: What about a twin Wineconf, one in north-America one in Europe taking place at the same time with live tele-conference. (Europe cameras on me) I am sure it will be good for publicity, Journalists like that stuff. But seriously how many are European (proximity) and how many are north American. Do we have any kind of counts.
+1 for Europe - Me
Hmm. I don't know; hoisting a beer through a virtual screen is not nearly as satisfactory as doing it in person, in my opinion. OTOH, it would be pretty easy for us to host a smaller meeting and connect it to the larger one; we could probably do it out of our office.
Perhaps folks should rsvp to Stefan privately, as they have been to me. He and I can do a quick tally, although I'm pretty well dead certain that Germany is more accessible to most folks.
Of course, now that I know Lionel is going to host this on the ski slopes, I'm beginning to be willing to go over there...<grin>
Jer
On Mon, Sep 29, 2003 at 11:33:00AM +0300, Boaz Harrosh wrote:
Just a crazy taught: What about a twin Wineconf, one in north-America one in Europe taking place at the same time with live tele-conference. (Europe cameras on me) I am sure it will be good for publicity, Journalists like that stuff. But seriously how many are European (proximity) and how many are north American. Do we have any kind of counts.
I don't think this is a fruitful idea.
I witnessed teleconferencing in my study times and it does not have the feeling and usefulness of a real conference.
Ciao, Marcus
-
Boaz Harrosh -
Jakob Eriksson -
Jeremy White -
Keith Matthews -
Lionel Ulmer -
Marcus Meissner -
Shachar Shemesh -
Stefan Leichter -
Tom