[nycbug-talk] nyc technology conference?

[G. Rosamond]

apparently, my email about this was held up by the mailing list.  so i
apologize that i didn't notify all sooner.

as mentioned earlier, a few of us had an informal meeting with
linuxtag's klaus and niels on monday.  klaus is klaus knopple of
knoppix, the well-known bootable linux cd.

linuxtag in germany is probably the most important open source
conference in the continent.  there were some 20000 participants, even
though it was not held in a major city.

the discussion moved to the vision of having some type of technical,
open source related conference in nyc next year.

during linuxexpo, scattered representatives of various user groups and
technical organizations assembled and planned for a meeting that occured
today at noon in the east village.

the meeting was a bit chaotic, unrepresentative and unwieldy.

nevertheless, it was also a huge step forward.

the central focus of the meeting was the linuxtag guys describing how
they began their event and how it's developed since 1996.

operationally, not much was accomplished.  we did decide the following:

in general, we were looking to organize a replacement for the fleeing
idg shows, namely macworld and linuxexpo which will be held in boston
next year.

second, most participants today expressed frustration with the
increasing marginalization of the .org pavillion and its user group
participants.

third, that a new technology event in new york would continue to include
corporate sponsors and participants, but that the priority would be on
technology, not marketing spiels.

fourth, that in order to make the conference as inclusive and open as
possible, the costs would be kept to a minimum.

finally, and most importantly on the operational level, we would have
more organized planning meeting on february 8th.  the meeting would
include two delegates from each user group, technical organization, etc,
and there would be one vote per delegate.

what direction this moves in, we don't know.  it's quite possible that
personal differences could severely frustrate many involved in
organizing the event.  the high costs of conference space, hotels, etc,
could also harm the effort.

however, it's quite clear that there is a real opportunity for a more
technically inclined approach to a major annual conference.

there were a total of some 30 people in attendance.

from nycbug, george and michael were in attendance.  additionally, hans
from new york php and ike from the lower east side mac unix users group.

other organizations included lisp nyc, ny linux user groups, lxny, gnome
foundation, gnubies, deluge.

thoughts?

g