Re: Proposal Libre Graphics Meeting 2025 in Nürnberg/Nuremberg, Germany

[Timothée Giet]

Hello Lasse,

Great to see you back on next year's organization topic!
I'll try to answer some of your questions below.

Le 23/05/2024 à 09:56, Lasse Fister a écrit :
> Hello everyone,
>
> it was great to be back an LGM in Rennes two weeks ago and to meet for
> real again! Many thanks to the organizers for the reboot!
>
> When I went to the organization meeting for next year, I thought I'd
> get information about what needs to happen from my side for a proper
> proposal from me for Nuremberg for 2026 or later. However, due to the
> lack of proposals for 2025, I agreed to try to get an edition for 2025
> going in Nuremberg. Because it is a complete cold start for me, I set
> the condition that I'd need to assemble a local organizer team etc. and
> see how it evolves.
> I had a busy time directly after the meeting, but now I want to renew
> my pledge to try to make this happen. This also marks the kickoff of my
> efforts, I'll start to contact local people and organizations in order
> to assemble a team, find a location and sponsoring.
>
> I went to LGM since Leipzig in 2014, with the exception of Rio de
> Janeiro, but I never took part in organizing. It would be very helpful
> if we could establish communication channels and create some knowledge
> transfer. I'm not sure if the mailing list is ideal for it though.
>
> I have some immediate questions as well:
>
> How is the division of labor between the local organization and the LGM
> network/board? Is there any general board/organization left at all, is
> it this list, or is there rather just ad-hoc/decentralized/spontaneous
> collaboration? (BTW, the website is down again, but archive.org
> works, https://web.se.org/web/20230604114444/https://libregraphicsmeeting.org/lgm/about/organization-team/
> is the best I could find.)

As far as I know, all the organization is done by the local team. Only 
for the talks selection we use to have a selection committee. You can 
make a call for interested people to join that committee on this list 
when launching the call for proposal, so people will have some time to 
react and join.


>
> What kind of work can I expect from the general LGM, e.g. review and
> selection of talk proposals, collecting sponsoring for travel
> reimbursement and handing it out. Is there a bank account somewhere?

There is no general LGM organization/association/legal entity. Usually 
all is handled by the local team.

So to answer your related question below: yes it's probably a good idea 
to create a local organization to handle the finances part, unless you 
have good contact with an existing local organization which you can 
trust and would agree to handle that.

>
> What are the minimal tasks of the local team, what would be nice to
> have? At least, we need a location. I also have the impression that the
> design and website is usually made locally. Video recording is
> mentioned at .

The tasks of the local team are:

- to find a venue, and propose some dates. Most of the time the venues 
have been provided free of cost by interested entities... The most 
common is to get in contact with the local university, see if they would 
be ok to host the event. Or a local artistic or developer organization 
with an appropriate venue which could be interested...

- to find some financial sponsoring. It is mostly needed to provide 
travel support for speakers, maybe rent some hardware if needed 
depending on what's available at the venue, then if there's more it can 
be used to organize a community event (like the dinner evening we did 
for example), print some t-shirts, or other related expenses. So, having 
financial sponsoring is not a hard requirement but highly recommended to 
ease all of these points.

Video recording is a nice thing to have, though not directly mandatory. 
For sponsoring, you might discuss with Dave Crossland who has been able 
to get some from Google for several years, with one of the requirements 
being to have the talks recorded and uploaded on youtube...

- to make the website and design, yes. You can reuse some content of 
previous years for the generic pages, and probably get some help from 
some people on this list if needed. The website can be simple, and the 
logo design can be the generic one (there's no requirement to make a 
yearly adaptation of it, though it's a nice thing to have). About the 
technical details to publish the website, that should be discussed 
further in a dedicated topic (currently, Ale manages the publishing 
rights, and AFAIK the domain is handled by Louis, but the host seems not 
very reliable, so we might consider migrating it...)

- launch the call for proposals, organize the selection committee, 
communicate with the speakers to organize things. For speakers travel 
support, usually it only covers the travel part, not the hosting or food 
(though with a very big budget it could include that, but it's usually 
not expected).

- and of course, run the event when the date comes...

>
> Handling of the finances. E.g. How would a sponsor for the location get
> funding to the "LGM" and how would "LGM" transfer that to the location.
> Maybe the location is a bad example, and usually done differently, but
> there must be some way to receive and spend a local budget. Do I need
> to find or create a local organization that can handle this kind of
> finances?
>
> I believe it's most important to find a location quickly, but a local
> team and budget are interdependent with that.
>
> I'd be thankful for further urgent topics that need consideration.
>
> Cheers, Lasse

I hope this answers your questions, I'll let the others complement if 
they see any important missing point. And don't hesitate if you have 
some more questions.

Cheers,

Timothée