Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Setting up a Biennial Conference in North America

>  1.  If a conference is created, I'd like to push for something in a more centralized
location.

I would agree with that.  I think we can be totally flexible if we can get
this going. But in general, I think the first conference should be in City
which would bring in the most amount of folks to help jump start this into
a regular event. And of course take into account cost factors.

>  "Growing the community" is a good thing, but this is still a rather vague
target and we should take the time to identify what that target means.
 Factors do influence how we determine the target.

My initial thought is we should concentrate on "increasing contributors to
LibreOffice", getting more developers from North America involved at a
hackfest/conference, documentation writers, marketers, distributors,
graphics and art,  and anyone else who wants to contribute. We need to
create more excitement in North America. I  believe this is the foundation
needed for stronger growth for LO adoption in North America.

>  A LibreOffice users conference

Since LO enterprise is ready for implementation, this is perhaps another
area to explore. Im not sure if the timing is right for this now thou.

I have proposed in the past for OOo to exhibit at the annual American
Library Association conference: http://www.alaannual.org/ This is something
we can explore again oneday.

> Targeting FOSS events like LFNW and SCaLE, etc. are nice but since most
are Linux users

Yes,  preach to the congregation not the choir.

> So, a conference that targets Windows users and corporate software decision
makers and trainers could create the most bang for the buck in
> a conference the first year.

Lets discuss this more. I dont know enough about the user base in the USA
using LO, especially the corporate base to make an opinion.  As previously
mentioned my first thought is to develop the "contributor community" which
I think would be needed for support if we are then to attack the Window
User base and corporate software decision makers on a larger scale .

Best regards

Russell



On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 6:37 PM, Bryen M Yunashko <suserocks@bryen.com>wrote:

> On Wed, 2012-02-22 at 14:39 -0500, WorldLabel.com wrote:
> > Hi Everyone
> >
> > It would be good for the community to try set up a Biennial Conference in
> > North America for LibreOffice.org. Either in Montreal, Boston or San
> > Fransisco. I think it is in our best interest to start developing the
> North
> > American community.

Absolutely. I think it would be great to have one in Kansas

> Some investigation so far, and this is in the city of Boston: depending on
> > the number of people attending, we can use the offices at the FSF.
> Another
> > alternative is having the Libreoffice.org Conference as a component of
> > LibrePlanet2012: http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet2012 Or a
> > conference hall at the Univ. Of Mass. can be rented at a very low cost.
> >
> > Generally we would want the conference to be at least 6 months apart from
> > the main conferences which, based on past history will always be in the
> EU.
> > (the exception being 2008 in China for OOo)
> >
> > A quick note back saying you would be interested in attending if there
> was
> > such a conference would be appreciated.
> >
> > If anyone is interested in helping investigate this and driving this
> > further, please let me know.
> >
> > Sincerely
> >
> > Russell
>
> Several thoughts from an essentially
> still-a-lurker-for-the-most-part.  :-)
>
> 1.  If a conference is created, I'd like to push for something in a more
> centralized location.  SF, Montreal and Boston are usual suspects for
> FOSS events and thus huge swaths of the Midwest get ignored.  For both
> LibreOffice and FOSS in general, its time we started making headways in
> new regions of this large continent of ours.
>
> 2.  "Growing the community" is a good thing, but this is still a rather
> vague target and we should take the time to identify what that target
> means.  Factors do influence how we determine the target.  When we say
> "community" do we mean to increase the number of users who adopt it?  Do
> we say we want to increase the number of advocates that sell
> LibreOffice?  Do we focus on increasing contributors to LibreOffice?  Is
> there enough contributors in the region to get together to make
> significant investment in a conference?
>
> Any one of these target questions will define how the conference is laid
> out.  A LibreOffice users conference is different than a LibreOffice
> hackfest conference.
>
> And whatever the determined target, it should be the one with the lowest
> hanging fruit to start with and then we can evolve into bigger and more
> complex targets with each subsequent conference.
>
> For example, a big users-targeted conference will increase the mindshare
> around LibreOffice and that will subsequently increase the number of
> potential people interested in contributing to LibreOffice in various
> aspects.  Targeting FOSS events like LFNW and SCaLE, etc. are nice but
> since most are Linux users, and most distros come with LibreOffice
> installed, our gain isn't that big in terms of adoption.
>
> So, a conference that targets Windows users and corporate software
> decision makers and trainers could create the most bang for the buck in
> a conference the first year.  Of course, I don't know how much funds TDF
> has for seeding such an initial conference.
>
> But in any case, with my own conference organizing experience, I'd love
> to join in and help organize such a conference.  I think the question
> here shouldn't be "should we do this?" but rather "how or how soon can
> we do this?"
>
> Bryen M Yunashko
>
>
>
>
>
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