An update on GNUstep Meetup 2015: Emails, hotels, dates and more

ivucica

Hello,

Welcome to the first update in a while. Here’s some important news.

Confirmation of attendance

I would like everyone to be able to receive updates, even if they filter out discuss-gnustep@ and do not follow the blog. I will therefore be manually sending a small email to everyone who has expressed interest via Doodle to confirm the email address, in order to avoid any filters people may have set up for GNUstep mailing lists. I will contact even those who have later mentioned there is low chance of them actually managing to attend.

If you do not receive an email and plan on attending, please contact me as soon as possible from your current email address. Aside from having a way to reach out to you, this will allow for slight tweaks in planning.

Future updates

I have set up a mailing list for the announcements from the event, using Google Groups:

I would like everyone who expressed interest to sign up to this very-low-volume, announcements-only list. The group is also open for public registrations. I intentionally will not use the Google Groups invitation system.

This is not a requirement, of course. I plan on cross-posting announcements to discuss-gnustep@, and on the previously mentioned website:

  •   https://badc0de.net/gs/2015/meetup/

For open discussions, I have also created the following unmoderated group:

I do not plan on crossposting future announcements to either gnustep-dev@ or gnustep-meetup-2015-discuss@.

Hotels and dates

We have previously agreed upon the dates of October 24-25. I am personally still fine with that.

Today, I have went to ask about possible group booking discounts to two hotels. For first one, I was told to come tomorrow when appropriate staff is present, and in the second I have managed to obtain information that we will probably have some trouble finding cheap accommodation on that weekend. Maldron Hotel Cardiff Lane already has very small amount of rooms available due to UFC coming to 3Arena in Dublin, and the prices are a few hundred euros a night, which is horrible: 3Arena is sufficiently close to the location where we will meet that other hotels will probably have similar capacity issues.

While I have not asked at other hotels yet, and while I do plan on asking at more hotels over the coming days, I suspect the pricing will be similarly high. So even with discounts, we may have trouble finding acceptable pricing.

I would suggest some solutions:

  • Try to aggressively book multiple people in one room. (I would try to organize this anyway.)
  • Move the meeting to a week after, Oct 31-Nov 1. (I am told this weekend is rather empty, so we may get lower pricing by default, and possibly lower block pricing.)

In the aforementioned email I will send individually, I plan on asking if the interested person would find the Oct31-Nov1 weekend equally acceptable.

Booking trips and hotels

As participants go ahead and book your trips, for organizational purposes please notify me immediately once you book your trip. Furthermore, it would be highly preferable (but not required) if you would also notify me about the arrival date and time, departure date and time and hotel name.

If anyone has booked hotel and flights thus far, please notify me immediately. If this has happened, it is imperative that I immediately dismiss the option of moving the meeting to a cheaper week.

Schedule

Schedule is still not determined, and I have not really received any suggestions on what to fill it with.

  • If you have an idea for a talk, please send immediately the name of the topic + duration, so we can put together a specific schedule.
  • If you have an idea for a hacking topic, please send immediately what you would like to see worked on, so it can be put on the list of ideas. (Links to more detailed outline or discussion topics are welcome.)

Food tastes

For lunch, I propose ordering takeaway. It would be great if we would have at least one group dinner. For both, it would be great to know what tastes people have in food. If you have a particular desire to have or avoid food with certain properties, please let me know.

Closing notes

Let me close with a few random notes:

  • This is an event proposed here on the mailing list back in February 2015 and agreed upon between March and May, with dates finalized in June.
  • This is not an event organized by FSF.
  • This is the first time I am organizing an event like this, so it is, of course, a somewhat clumsy affair. One learns as one goes!

Thank you!

– Ivan