[CREATE] Proposals for LGM 2010 - Deadline approaching

[Louis Desjardins]

2009/6/5 Femke Snelting <snelting at collectifs.net>

> Hello all


Good evening!

>
>
> > If the dates are not yet sure, what about announcing first the host city
> > and the local organisation and take a few more days to determine the
> > dates, once we also determined what institution/building will be the
> > host of the LGM.
>
> We're aiming for the 2nd weekend of May; it seemed to have worked for
> the last few LGM's. Do you think there is a reason to change it?


In fact, no! The most convevient dates are chosen according to what rooms
are available, what other large conference may interfere with LGM schedule,
etc.

>
>
> > Short Press releases keeping up with the latest news will help us gather
> > momentum around the event.
>
> Will I write this, based on last year's template?


We can all help on this. The principle is "Communicate early, communicate
often."

Once we are there, we use the wiki to fine tune the PR and then they are
available in the order they were issued.

>
>
> >     The local organisation responsible for LGM would be Constant
> >     http://www.constantvzw.org, association for art and media.
>
> > This looks promising but we have to deal with a few basic questions
> > nonetheless.
> >
> > We would need to set a distinct accounting to set apart the LGM money
> > from the Constant money. We have to sort this out quick and early in the
> > process. There could be other views on this issue, of course. But in any
> > event, the main reason for raising money is to ease the developers
> > expanses by reimbursing the travel fees. This is the biggest part of the
> > budget, by far.
>
> ok, I understand and agree. How was this handled before?


This year, all sponsored money was sent to and administrated by the GNOME
Foundation. On the local part, we dealt with cash from t-shirt and coffe
cups sales and for the LGM supper. This is easier to manage than to wait for
a money tranfer that can take days or even weeks.

So, if Constant can help you by putting the money up front until you get the
cash to reimburse, it will be helpful. On my part this year I had to take
all this on my personnal credit card and this is not really convevient, to
say the least. But it worked expect for a small deficit of a few hundred
bucks. Nothing dramatic. :-)

>
>
> > Would there be dedicated staff for accounting?
>
> One of our members is responsable for accounting, but not only for this,
> meaning we don't have an administrator or secretary.


As long as the big money is handled by the GNOME Foudation, you will have no
problem here, I think.

>
>
> > Do you suggest to handle all the money in one single place? On my part,
> > I was suggesting we ask the GNOME Foundation to continue handling the
> > international money but would this include the EU input, if there is to
> > be any?
>
> I think it is important to have a transparent situation. I am assuming
> there is no LGM account yet? For the local/EU applications... If any
> funding would come in, the applicant remains responsable and
> accountable; unless LGM becomes a foundation itself and applications are
> made in LGM's name.


There is no LGM account.

>
>
> >     We're interested in making connections with local printing industry,
> >     though as you know, these are hard times.
>  >
> > You might consider split the load on the local printer by asking a paper
> > mill to offer the paper (ecofriendly paper...). We could have a LGM
> > publication printed among other things.
>
> Thanks, we'll start working on this


Just get me right: the LGM publication is an idea already cooking! Once we
get there, we can put all ideas together. For now, the main "ideator" of
this is Alexandre Prokoudine.

>
>
> >     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.
> >
> > This gives me the opportunity to say again what I think works best here.
> > LGM is a team of people and altogether we do have a network. The
> > corporate sponsoring can be handled by the larger LGM team, not only by
> > the local team. There is no need to but that much pressure only on the
> > local team! Remember we can do lots of things remotely.
>
> That is good to know. In the mean time, the Dutch Piet Zwart Institute
> has agreed to become an official partner.


Ok!

>
>
> > Internet acces too, bandwidth and power!
>
> Yes, lots of it!
>
> > Are we going to be able to gather the teams in as few hotels as possible?
>
> For sure. Also, the hotel should have a good informal meeting space in
> case work needs to happen off-venue. And wireless, of course. How many
> rooms were booked in 2008 in the end?


Not too sure but a little less than 50 rooms. These numbers tend to vary a
lot though, from one year to another.

One more word on the choice of rooms/buildings/institution hosting the LGM
and on the budget. In Montreal, and I am pretty sure this was also the case
in Lyon and in Wroclaw, LGM organisation had nothing to pay for the rooms,
for maintenance and cleaning, for Internet access... for just anything. The
university would cover all the internal costs. This must be negociated right
from the start when you are discussing at the early stages.

That’s it for now!

Cheers!

Louis

>
>
> best,
>
>
> Femke
>
>
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