On 27/11/12 19:42, Andreas Tille wrote: > > What I want to say is: There is neither any objective nor most probably > any subjective measure to declare a DebConf a success or failure. The > only thing we can really measure is the surplus / dept a DebConf > created. I also would not fully agree that this number is correlated >
Andreas, I think this is an excellent topic and it is not just applicable to the DebConf13 discussion For the question of `success' or `failure', we would first need to define outright objectives. I believe these already exist and I saw them on a slide presented at DebConf12. If a DebConf meets those objectives, it would be considered a success. http://penta.debconf.org/dc12_schedule/events/905.en.html (40 seconds into the video) "Primary goals: - enable face-to-face interactions - provide talks and video - provide time to work on Debian Secondary goals: - motivate contributors - motivate the local community" I agree it is hard to quantify the success with a `score', but if those goals were used, the score could be calculated based on each of them: A: enable face-to-face interactions: how many people attended? B: provide talks and video: how many hours of video created? C: provide time to work on Debian: how many people * how many hours? score = A + B + C ??? and then if money is relevant to the discussion, the score could be divided by the cost of the event. Rather than talking about it in absolute `scores', it may be meaningful to ask questions like: a) how did the (cost adjusted) score compare to the previous DebConf in the same region? b) how did the (cost adjusted) score compare to a mini-DebConf or other low cost/less effort gathering? c) in qualitative terms, how did it compare to other open source events in the same region? If we find that the score of a mini-DebConf is massively bigger, then it would suggest it is better to run more of them than one big DebConf - or we need new objectives. _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
