[FreeGeek] Raising Money/Publicity Through A FreeGeek Conference

[Mike Cantelon]

'Allo folks!

One way to raise some money and grow the FreeGeek community would be
to put on a sustainable computing conference. If folks support the
idea, I'd be willing to bottomline it and work with anyone interested
to organize it. It's not my intention to divert energy from existing
commitments such as finding a space, etc., so I'd envision looking for
volunteers outside of FreeGeek to help out.


I think hosting a conference would help FreeGeek on a lot of levels:


*it would raise some short-term money needed for location

*it could attract long-term donors

*It would raise publicity for Van FreeGeek and FreeGeek in general

*It could bring folks from various FreeGeek locations together to plot
and scheme ;)


Based on what I've seen at other local conferences I think it would be
easy to get *at least* 100 registrants, and likely closer to 200. I'd
like to see registration be affordable and sliding scale, with the
bulk of raised funds coming from sponsorship by local companies.

I can see having a number of tracks such as an open-ended sustainable
computing track, a "bringing Linux to the community" track, community
web applications and technologies, etc. A lot of open source
organization in Vancouver centers around specific technologies
(Drupal, Ruby on Rails, Linux, etc.). It would be cool to see an event
that brings these folks out of the woodwork.

Let me know what you think! If this is something folks support, I'd
want to start soon.

Cheers,
Mike