[Freed] Minutes of Freed 2007 necropsy

[Raj Mathur]

Couple of side discussions that slipped past Gora's net, inline...

On Monday 15 October 2007 14:31, Gora Mohanty wrote:
> Hi,
>   We had a meeting last Thu., 11/10, to analyse Freed
> 2007. Sorry for the delay in sending these minutes,
> especially as some important decisions were taken, but
> here they are:
> 1. The structure of the Freed organising committee will
>    be majorly revamped:
>    o Besides a core group, a much more active second
>      layer of organisers will be set up, using the
>      freed mailing list. Most organisational work will
>      actually happen here, and the core group will only
>      make sensitive decisions, such as those relating
>      to sponsorship, and finances.

The following people will automagically be part of the conference 
organisation team:

  - ILUGD President
  - ILUGD Treasurer
  - ILUGD General Secretary

Not because they're special in any way (except maybe for being able to 
rig elections <g,d&r>) but because they handle the money and not having 
them in the decision-making loop would cause all sorts of logistics 
issues.

>    o Direct employees of sponsoring organisations will
>      no longer be part of the core group so as to avoid
>      conflicts of interest.
>        I hasten to add here that this has nothing to do
>      with the organising of Freed 2007, and I will go on
>      record as saying that without the involvement of
>      Ms. Valsa Williams, the event would not have been
>      nearly the success that it was. We do hope that she
>      will continue to be part of the larger organising
>      group.
>    o Any member of ILUG-D can nominate themselves to be
>      part of the core Freed organising group, but a
>      decision will be taken by voting within the ILUG-D
>      office bearers.
>
> 2. Freed 2008 is fixed for Fri./Sat., 22nd/23rd Feb.,
>    and will again be held at JNU. Please mark your
>    calendars. Some ideas about the event:

This is subject to Prof Lynn's go-ahead, pending.  Consider the dates 
tentative for now.

>    o Use independent sub-committees to handle different
>      tasks. These will report to the main organising
>      committee, but not everyone needs to be involved
>      in everything.

The sub-committees, while working independently, would be obliged to 
communicate on a regular basis with the whole set of organisers 
including other sub-committees.  The objective of having multiple 
sub-committees is to focus, not to partition.

>    o We were successful, as usual, at getting students
>      to attend the event. However we need more outreach
>      efforts aimed at NGOs, government bodies, and other
>      non-profit organisations that are part of our target
>      group.
>    o Have fewer tracks, and more focussed, higher-quality
>      talks. Tentative areas of interest for the Feb. 2008
>      event:
>        - Multimedia
>        - Games
>        - Content development?
>        - Education?
>
> 3. Kapil Dua is writing a new conference management application,
>    with a first version due the first week of Nov.
>    o Raj Mathur: Specifications for application
>    o Niyam Bhushan: Interface design
>
> 4. We will actively approach various people from outside Delhi
>    to be remote organisers, participating in things like talk
>    selection, outreach, etc. If you would like to nominate
>    yourself for this, please send mail to the freed mailing
>    list (copied on this message).

Would you consider delaying this until the organising committee has been 
formed?  Otherwise nominees won't get any feedback on their nomination 
for a while, which makes them soggy and hard to light.

I'd also suggest that once we have discussed this proposal in our normal 
friendly and polite manner on the freed mailing list, we should make 
out a formal changes (from freed.in 2007) document and distribute it 
widely, to get feedback from other places in India (and abroad if 
desired).

Please keep all discussion on this topic on the freed.in mailing list:

  mailto:freed at lists.linux-delhi.org

Regards,

-- Raju
-- 
Raj Mathur                raju at kandalaya.org      http://kandalaya.org/
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