[FreeGeek] Raising Money/Publicity Through A FreeGeek Conference

[agent humble]

Hi Mike,

This is a fantastic idea and I would love to help out with it. 

It would be great to have enough in place that we could promote it at the 
upcoming PNAC Summit in February (http://www.2007summit.ca).

Also, do you mind if I voice the idea at the upcoming VCN board meeting and 
see about getting VCN involved?

cheers,

Scott

On Tuesday 09 January 2007 10:22 am, 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 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
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