[CREATE] Proposals for LGM 2010 - Deadline approaching

[snelting at collectifs.net]

Dear all!

As we wrote earlier, we are *serious* about organising LGM in Brussels,
and though to announce the exact venue a year in advance is difficult for
us to organise, we would like to propose 5-8 May 2010 as dates and of
course Brussels as host city :-)

The local organisation responsible for LGM would be Constant
http://www.constantvzw.org, association for art and media. Constant works
since 1997 on projects that involve Free Software, Open Content Licenses
and other free culture activism and currently consists of 5 part time
members (I'm one of them ;-)). The advantage of Constant as organiser is
that the association has a formal non-profit status, is funded on a
long-term basis by the Flemish Community and in general eligible for
government funding.

The Constant team is super motivated to help host LGM2010 in Brussels
because we hope that in this way they/we contribute to the development of
our favourite tools.

Trying to avoid any user-developer divide whenever possible, and even if
some of our members are developers, we're a cultural organisation so we
need your help in making sure the event is what it needs to be. LGM 2010
will no doubt be yet again a bit different than before, but hopefully you
are looking as much forward to it as we are.

AUDIENCE

Constant is closely networked with many (digital) arts- and design
organisations in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and The Netherlands so we
can expect quite some visitors from across Europe. Locally, we work with
various art- and design schools and the Brussels Linux User Group --
several members of BXLUG have already expressed enthusiasm for
participating in LGM2010.

We would like to promote the event at a.o.: The Open Video Conference
(June 2009), RMLL (July 2009), FOSDEM (February 2010)

FUNDING

We have good hopes for successful applications at Belgium and possibly
Dutch cultural/educational funders. We will look into EU funding too, but
no guarantees because the administrative load might be out of balance.
We're interested in making connections with local printing industry,
though as you know, these are hard times.
Being a cultural organisation, we know well how to do funding
applications, but have not much experience with commercial sponsoring.
BXLUG has offered help on this but we will also need your help as well.

VENUE

We are working on a few options right now. It will not be too difficult to
find a location for LGM, it is about choosing the right one. Among our
favourite options:

- The Royal Albertina Library (high class venue, beautiful lecture hall,
close to station etc. but possibly a bit hard to access in weekends)
- De Pianofabriek (large venue, recently renovated, multiple spaces for
workshops, network etc. all ok; spaces for meetings / BOF etc., located in
nice St. Gilles neighbourhood close to the city centre. But it's convivial
atmosphere could be a bit too informal for LGM?)

LODGING

Constant organised many medium-sized festivals and events in the past few
years. We have worked with several hotels and hostels; Brussels has many
options available at reasonable prices.

VISUAL IDENTITY

As you can imagine ... this has already caused quite some discussion
amongst OSP's ;-) Later, I'll try to respond to the relevant messages
earlier on the list.

CATERING

Expect great food and drinks. And we really mean it!