Hi everybody,
- some news: I tried to contact Mr. Gemkow of the University of Stuttgart several times (via telephone), but no luck so far - maybe he's on a conference, sick, or simply overworked.
Mr. Schmid, the head of the WRS, has asked me to forward the offer to you (see below).
Bye,
David
*** WINEConf Stuttgart Region - About and support of Stuttgart Region
The Stuttgart Region Economic Development Corporation (WRS) is
- founded to provide services to industry and communities in the field of economic development - a subsidiary of the administrative body of the larger Stuttgart Region - provides marketing for the Stuttgart Region - assists in cluster management of specific industries - advises and assists companies during the search for available sites and buildings
In the context of our initiative "Open Source Region Stuttgart" http://opensource.region-stuttgart.de the WRS supports conferences and meetings of Open Source projects of various aspects when held in the Stuttgart Region. For example the WRS is co-organizer of the KDE Community World Summit 2004 in Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart http://conference2004.kde.org/ . The Perlworkshop 6.0 , GUADEC6 (GNOME Conference) http://2005.guadec.org/papers.html , ApacheCon Europe and more than 40 other Open Source Events in the Stuttgart Region are organized or supported by the WRS as well.
WRS would like to help to organise a successful WINEConf 2005 in Stuttgart Region.
We did some resarch on possible conference venues. As there are:
QUADRIUM WERNAU, http://www.quadrium-wernau.de Wernau is easily reachable in 25 minutes from Stuttgarts main railway station. As the Stuttgart Region is located in the middle of Europe there is absolutely no doubt that the conference can be reached easily with direct flights from nearly every European country. Overseas guests can reach Stuttgart from the Frankfurt Airport in 1,5 hours or directly with Delta from Atlanta.
Conference venue in Wernau has been opened in April 2005 and is completed by a wellness-area http://www.wellness-wernau.de/ . The infrastructure of the venue fullfills "Wineconf Requirements List v0.2". The possible date is from 23th-25th of April 2005. WRS can pay the rent for the conference venue if we can become a co-organizer of WINEConf. The costs for the technical equipment ans personal staff has to be organised and paid by the WINE project. WRS will try to find local (technical) sponsors in the region. There is no hotel for more than 60 persons in Wernau. Conference guest have to sleep in two different hotels. Pricing of hotels is ok.
K3N, NUERTIMGEN, http://www.k3n.de Nuertingen is easily reachable in 25 minutes from Stuttgarts main railway station. The infrastructure of the venue fullfills "Wineconf Requirements List v0.2". The possible date is from 23th-25th of April 2005. There are enough hotels next to the conference venue. WRS can pay the rent for the conference venue if we can become a co-organizer of WINEConf. The costs for the technical equipment ans personal staff has to be organised and paid by the WINE project.
WRS suggests Nuertingen as conference venue.
WRS can help and organize
· Local/regional and German wide press work to jointly market the conference · Suggestions for social program & infrastructure for attendees (in part by our sister organization Regio Stuttgart Marketing) · Assistance in targeting potential local sponsors of the event · Help to recruit local helpers from the 10 Linux user groups in the region
CONTACT
Hans-Ulrich Schmid
Wirtschaftsförderung Region Stuttgart GmbH Stuttgart Region Economic Development Corporation FIR_st - Forum IT-Region Stuttgart
Friedrichstr. 10 70174 Stuttgart
www.first.region-stuttgart.de www.opensource.region-stuttgart.de www.competenzatlas.de www.region-stuttgart.de Tel ++49.711.22835 - 27 Tel mobil ++49.172.7310463 Fax ++49.711.22835 - 55 ***
Hmm. He may be avoiding you; I could swear I saw a post from him on a forum fairly recently (but now I can't find that to prove my point).
In any event, the offer from WRS is very generous. I do have to admit I am little nervous by the phrase "WRS can pay the rent for the conference venue if we can become a co-organizer of WINEConf" That seems like a very generous offer, and I'm not sure I understand what WRS wants in return. What does being a 'co-organizer' mean to WRS?
· Local/regional and German wide press work to jointly market the conference
I know I'm being a stick in the mud on this - but do we really want this? Don't we primarily want to advertise this on the Wine mailing lists and the Wine web pages?
Candidly, I think Wine is a very interesting topic; I suspect we could raise a few hundred people to come to a Wine conference if we wanted to. I was just operating under the assumption that we did not want a Wine *users* conference, but strictly a Wine developers conference.
Please correct me if I'm wrong; mine is only one voice.
· Suggestions for social program & infrastructure for attendees (in part by our sister organization Regio Stuttgart Marketing)
Great! To me this is the key <grin>. I suspect relatively smoke and noise free areas with good access to beer are going to serve us the best.
· Assistance in targeting potential local sponsors of the event
Sure! Although do you really think we'd get any?
· Help to recruit local helpers from the 10 Linux user groups in the region
Great; I think the volunteer help would be deeply appreciated. There are a variety of misc tasks that will need to get done. Someone to set up networking and to make sure it works. Someone to put out name tags. Someone to make sure that food orders will arrive on time. Someone to run to the store to get duct tape for the frobnozzle. At last Wineconf, we had 3 or 4 CodeWeavers employees running about doing that; if we hire out the venue, though, we could probably just have 1 or 2 gaffers helping us out, though.
Finally, as far as location, I'd like to rely on the native Germans on this list to comment on the suitability of the choices David has suggested.
Cheers,
Jeremy
As it was written in the Book of Jeremy White jwhite@codeweavers.com:
In any event, the offer from WRS is very generous. I do have to admit I am little nervous by the phrase "WRS can pay the rent for the conference venue if we can become a co-organizer of WINEConf"
Hm... yes, what does co-organizer mean?
? Local/regional and German wide press work to jointly market the conference
I know I'm being a stick in the mud on this - but do we really want this? Don't we primarily want to advertise this on the Wine mailing lists and the Wine web pages?
Candidly, I think Wine is a very interesting topic; I suspect we could raise a few hundred people to come to a Wine conference if we wanted to. I was just operating under the assumption that we did not want a Wine *users* conference, but strictly a Wine developers conference.
Please correct me if I'm wrong; mine is only one voice.
I agree - we don't want end users there. This should be developers only. However, if we have an opportunity to draw some developers in who aren't familiar with Wine, I think that's ok. Case in point - maybe someone from KDE or Samba would have some killer idea for integration.
? Suggestions for social program & infrastructure for attendees (in part by our sister organization Regio Stuttgart Marketing)
Great! To me this is the key <grin>. I suspect relatively smoke and noise free areas with good access to beer are going to serve us the best.
That would be nice.
The one thing I'm deathly afraid of is arranging all this via email, then arriving and finding out there's no one onsite to coordinate anything. Securing a conference facility is great, but I'm not sure we can leave everything up to the staff of the facility. The dates of Apr 23-25 would allow me to arrive early, so at least we'd have that going for us.
Having said that, I really like the options proposed so far. Any of them sound good to me and I think someone familiar with the area should voice an opinion. I think we should set some dates and secure one of those places by then - I'd say by January 3rd we should make that decision. By Jan 10th we should actually have reservations. I realize Christmas is in between, but I think we're all still reading email. Between Jan 3rd and Jan 10th we should put out a plan on wine-devel to make sure we're not overlooking something.
I don't think the University is going to come through. I wish it would happen because that sounds like the perfect setting, however I think one last chance at contacting them is all we should try.
Are we sure those other two venues have Internet access that can handle all of us?
Why does WRS suggest Nuertingen over Wernau?
-Brian
Brian Vincent wrote:
I don't think the University is going to come through. I wish it would happen because that sounds like the perfect setting, however I think one last chance at contacting them is all we should try.
I successfully contacted Mr. Gemkow last week (wednesday or thursday), even phoned with Jeremy but forgot to send an update to the list, mea culpa. I hopefully was able to dispel his concerns (commercial status of the conference, ammount of work involved for them, etc.). He is checking with the administration of the university and will call me back.
Are we sure those other two venues have Internet access that can handle all of us?
Why does WRS suggest Nuertingen over Wernau?
Nuertingen is a bigger city, well at least in comparision to Wernau. To be honest, it's the first time i've heard of Wernau ...
bye michael
[I am CC:ing Mr. Schmid from WRS, as he is the person who knows best about the region, the hotels, etc. pp. I'd suggest he be added to the Wineconf list as well or at least be CC:ed, so questions regarting hotels, infrastructure etc. are going directly to him from now on?]
On Montag 20 Dezember 2004 10:21, Michael Stefaniuc wrote:
Brian Vincent wrote:
I don't think the University is going to come through. I wish it would
happen because that sounds like the perfect setting, however I think one last chance at contacting them is all we should try.
I successfully contacted Mr. Gemkow last week (wednesday or thursday), even phoned with Jeremy but forgot to send an update to the list, mea culpa. I hopefully was able to dispel his concerns (commercial status of the conference, ammount of work involved for them, etc.). He is checking with the administration of the university and will call me back.
That's great news, I think!
Are we sure those other two venues have Internet access that can handle all of us?
Why does WRS suggest Nuertingen over Wernau?
Nuertingen is a bigger city, well at least in comparision to Wernau. To be honest, it's the first time i've heard of Wernau ...
Yep ;)
I asked Mr. Schmid of WRS to answer the question regarding "co-organizer". Here's what he said:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In any event, the offer from WRS is very generous. I do
have to admit
I am little nervous by the phrase "WRS can pay the rent for the conference venue if we can become a co-organizer of WINEConf" That seems like a very generous offer, and I'm not sure I understand what WRS wants in return.
WRS intends to present Stuttgart Region as a region with perfect conditions for Open Source companies and developers. That?s why we host several conferences of open source projects like KDE, GNOME, Apache and may be the WINECon.
That seems like a very generous offer, and I'm not sure I understand what WRS wants in return.
In return, WRS would like to be mentioned in WINECon press releases as co-organizer. Maybe we can have a short keynote (five minutes) at the beginning of the conference to welcome the guests in Stuttgart Region and to show the facilities for developers in Germanys southwest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Vincent:
I agree - we don't want end users there. This should be developers only. However, if we have an opportunity to draw some developers in who aren't familiar with Wine, I think that's ok.
Full ACK from my side here.
The one thing I'm deathly afraid of is arranging all this via email, then arriving and finding out there's no one onsite to coordinate anything. Securing a conference facility is great, but I'm not sure we can leave everything up to the staff of the facility. The dates of Apr 23-25 would allow me to arrive early, so at least we'd have that going for us.
I'd be happy to be wherever Wineconf will take place and help out personally, so that would make two "on the ground". I am pretty flexible in that respect, so the date won't be a constraint as far as I am concerned.
Having said that, I really like the options proposed so far. Any of them sound good to me and I think someone familiar with the area should voice an opinion. I think we should set some dates and secure one of those places by then - I'd say by January 3rd we should make that decision. By Jan 10th we should actually have reservations. I realize Christmas is in between, but I think we're all still reading email. Between Jan 3rd and Jan 10th we should put out a plan on wine-devel to make sure we're not overlooking something.
While I totally agree that we should push things a little, I regret to say that I will be not very responsive to mail from tonight on until Jan 3, simply because I am not in office :-) Is anyone uncomfortable with putting the dates proposed, say, a week behind, or at least about three days? (I will keep up with my mails from time to time, but certainly not every day).
Cheers,
David
On Montag 20 Dezember 2004 10:48, David Gümbel wrote:
While I totally agree that we should push things a little, I regret to say that I will be not very responsive to mail from tonight on until Jan 3, simply because I am not in office :-) Is anyone uncomfortable with putting the dates proposed, say, a week behind, or at least about three days? (I will keep up with my mails from time to time, but certainly not every day).
As I just checked back and learned that Mr Schmid is not going to be available from after dec. 23 until jan 10, I really think we'll need to move this decision making process accordingly.
Bye,
David
On Sonntag 19 Dezember 2004 20:37, Brian Vincent wrote:
Are we sure those other two venues have Internet access that can handle all of us?
I just checked back with Nürtingen: Networking capacity will be set up according to our needs, which should be communicated well in advance (~4-6 weeks before the conference at latest), but it won't be a problem to supply fast internet (and intranet) connectivity to an (almost ;) arbitrary number of people there.
Bye,
David
Hi everybody,
On Sonntag 19 Dezember 2004 20:37, Brian Vincent wrote:
I think we should set some dates and secure one of those places by then - I'd say by January 3rd we should make that decision. By Jan 10th we should actually have reservations. I realize Christmas is in between, but I think we're all still reading email. Between Jan 3rd and Jan 10th we should put out a plan on wine-devel to make sure we're not overlooking something.
OK, so now knowing that Mr Schmid is going to be back in office at the 10th of January, and that WRS has opted for reservations to be made on 15th of January as the latest date, I propose the following schedule:
* Until Jan 10: Complete requirements list to the fullest extent possible Really set a date for Wineconf 05 "Put out a plan on wine-devel to make sure we're not over- looking something." (thanks, Brian ;)
* Jan 10 to 14: Period for final coordination of voluntary helpers, WRS, and (hopefully) Stuttgart University[1].
* Jan 15: Make reservations
Please feel free to totally change the schedule, but please keep in mind the two dates that are hard to change - Jan 10 (Mr Schmid is back) and Jan 15 (reservations are to be made). I'd really appreciate seeing some people who have more experience with these organizational things step up and speak their mind, as I have probably forgotten some important parts :-)
For now, could please someone (Michael?) tell me about the current status of the University's commitment, and maybe put me in touch with Mr. Gemkow?
Bye,
David
[1] Mr. Schmid is back in office at the 10th[2], so he can anwer many organisational questions concerning locations and hotels I won't be able to respond to. [2] For very urgent cases, he gave me his private phone number, but I'd very much hate bothering him and his family with Wineconf during his hard- earned holidays.
-
Brian Vincent -
David Gümbel -
Jeremy White -
Michael Stefaniuc