[FreeGeek] Raising Money/Publicity Through A FreeGeek Conference

[Joe Bowser]

On Tue, 2007-01-09 at 10:22 -0800, Mike Cantelon wrote:
> '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 was thinking about something similar today actually, when I was trying
to figure out how make money.

> 
> 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.
> 

I think this is a brilliant idea, since there are a lot of groups that I
know of that use various different Open Source Technologies:

* Various Non-Profits use Drupal Hosting
* Campus/Community Radio has some specialized applications that run on
Open Source, and would be interested. (CiTR, CJSF, Co-Op Radio)
* Community WiFi is a very interesting aspect as well

I fully support this idea, since I can see it raising FreeGeek
Vancouver's profile immensely, and get us in contact with affinity
groups, such as community groups, environmental groups, as well as tech
groups who aren't all about profit and nothing else.  I think a
Sustainable Computing Conference would be the first of its kind anywhere
and is something that is far overdue.  Also, I think Sustainable
Computing De-mystifys us a bit and brings us where we want to be, and
that's accessible.

But first of all, what is Sustainable Computing?  I know that I have a
nasty gadget fetish (like many geeks) and thus sadly I don't practice
it, so I know what it's not, but what is it exactly?  That's what the
big draw to this idea is for me, because I don't think anyone on the
planet knows what this is, and it sounds really neat!

-- 
Joe Bowser <bowserj at uselessdegree.net>