Emails are going out to people and the gears are slowly starting to turn.
Last year several of use got together and held a FOSS4G “mini event” in Knoxville TN. It turned out pretty well with about 50 people coming from as far as 5 hours away to join in the fun. I think we had about 10 or 11 presentations – too many to be honest but I didn’t want to turn anyone down. We ran the event for free and if I remember (I’m not looking up the costs) the entire event ran something like 600 dollars. We had 4 sponsors (including myself in that one) and overall it rocked.
Two things:
- I’ve had a large number of people ask “Are you doing this again?” and I had a blast doing it. Sooooooo – the answer has turned into “YES”. Granted I don’t run meetings like this for a living but everyone enjoyed themselves and the true spirit of Free and Open Source software for GIS was there. Yes it’s happening.
- The big question is where and when. I’ve had offers of moving this to Chattanooga. I’ve had offers of Knoxville again. I’ve had other offers outside of my normal area. So I’ve got to decide and go “IT’S HERE” and we crank this up again. FOSS4GNA got in the way for spring so we’re gonna have to push this off a bit.
- OK this is a third thing. I will probably charge just a wee bit for this one. Why? So we had something like 50 register. 5 dropped. 5 walked up out of nowhere. I bought food for 65 people so some left with an extra sandwich shoved in their pocket. If I run this for $10 bucks a piece people are likely to show up and it gives me a bit more money to play with to do things like deal with parking or snacks or fly someone in for the event. Yeah I said it. Fly someone in.
- Fourth thing – workshops? I’ve debated some educational opportunities for this event – except that drags it into multi-iday. I’m OK with multi-day if it remains fun.
That was four things – you might wonder how I write blog posts and the answer is pretty much unedited most of the time.
So anyway – I have no clue what to call this gathering. Don’t really want to give it a name. Are un-conferences a thing still? Where conferences? Anyway – more news will be coming and if you want to help track me down and we’ll make this a thing for 2018.
