I've attended all manner of conferences/meetings from big to small, invite-only to open doors, expensive to free, heavily organized to improvised. I think far and away the most productive conferences for groups of 20+ people are Unconference/Barcamp/"Gunner-style" conferences, which are totally open, have no fixed agenda, and have 1-4 moderators to run the intro sections of the day where the day's agenda is created. These kinds of events have also been the most fun conferences/meetings that I've attended.
What such an event does require is that people as a group have enough social skills to know when it is appropriate to talk, and also to know when it is appropriate to ask someone to stop talking until another time/place. Good moderators help a lot with that task. Then we can have focused, productive meetings without having to manage who can attend. It also takes much less pre-planning to run such an event, since the organizers do not need to work out topics, schedules, etc. Just space and overall timing (i.e. 5 rooms from 9am-6pm). I am willing to serve as a moderator, though I can't say I'm the best at it. I've helped organized and run DrupalCamp, MySQLCamp, iPhoneDevCamp, PdCon, and more. If there is a budget for this event, then Allen Gunn/Aspiration Tech could be hired to run the event. He's an excellent moderator, especially for groups of people that are unfamiliar with this format. .hc Bob (Robert) Cavanaugh: > Hi, > Just a thought: Have a "Star chamber" meeting for the technical group, > invitation only. After that have a 1/2 to 1 hour session open to all where > the technical people can present their progress and invite comment. This way > you have a focused working session with the key people, but maintain > community trust by allowing general input. > > Thanks, > > Bob Cavanaugh > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Gnupg-users [mailto:gnupg-users-boun...@gnupg.org] On Behalf Of >> fmv1...@gmail.com >> Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 5:24 AM >> To: gnupg-users@gnupg.org; n...@enigmail.net >> Subject: Re: How to deal with a 2nd OpenPGP Summit? >> >> >>> ------------------------------ >>> >>> Message: 3 >>> Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 07:44:24 +0200 >>> From: "n...@enigmail.net" <n...@enigmail.net> >>> To: GnuPG-Users <Gnupg-users@gnupg.org> >>> Subject: How to deal with a 2nd OpenPGP Summit? >>> Message-ID: <55cadd38.5030...@enigmail.net> >>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 >>> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> in April 2015 we had a first OpenPGP summit. >>> It was a meeting where the technical experts of projects and tools >>> dealing with OpenPGP with a focus on email encryption met to getting >>> to know each other personally and discuss several issues. >>> For details, see e.g. >>> - https://www.gnupg.org/blog/20150426-openpgp-summit.html >>> - https://www.mailpile.is/blog/2015-04-20_OpenPGP_Email_Summit.html >>> >>> The meting initially was organized by me to bring together a few >>> guys/projects working in that area, but it became pretty big (about 30 >>> people). This caused some problems, because we had a host with limited >>> space (so I finally even had to reject some people wanting to attend). >>> >>> We also discussed there how to continue. >>> On one hand we wanted to have the meeting open so that anybody >> wanting >>> to attend could do that and to give trust by transparency. >>> On the other hand we want to be able to continue to focus on technical >>> issues (having a well signal to noise ratio) in a not-too-large group >>> of "experts". >>> We didn't find an appropriate way yet to deal with both interests. >>> >>> Now, I am about to organize a second meeting at the end of this year. >>> And I want to take the "wisdom" of this crowd to discuss this issue. >>> >>> What I currently have in mind is a meeting open to the public but with >>> some limitations (one reason is to focus the work, another is simply >>> limited space although I don't know where we can meet this time). >>> For example: >>> - Some priority for those who did attend the first meeting >>> - Some priority for "other experts", which didn't join >>> the first meeting >>> (but how do we handle that?) >>> - Some limitations that a person plays a "significant role" >>> in the community >>> - Some limitation so that a tool/project should normally >>> send only 1 or 2 guys >>> >>> The obvious other option is to open the meeting to everybody willing >>> to come, which raises a couple of risks (simply too many people, too >>> many non-experts or people who want to change the focus, ...). >>> >>> So, my questions are: >>> ===================== >>> >>> Is it OK for the public/community, if we meet in a way that is limited >>> as describe above (just for practical reasons)? >>> >>> Is it OK even if we can't promise full transparency (e.g. by video >>> taping sessions)? >>> >>> Would it even be OK, if we meet and constraint what is spoken there to >>> the Chatham House Rule (see >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House_Rule). >>> Some people requested that because >>> if anything they say might become public, they might or even have to >>> be careful what they say. >>> >>> Any general thoughts or proposals about how to deal with this? >>> >>> Note that I don't want to have it too complicated. >>> I organize this meeting in my free time to bring the issues of this >>> community forward. >>> And just having too many people is already a problem. >>> I need an approach I can handle. >>> Or is it better to have no meeting at all instead of a meeting with >>> some limitations? >>> >>> Best >>> Nico >>> >> >> Dear Nico, >> >> I think you are trying to achieve a compromise that is not possible. If I >> understood correctly you are trying to reconcile developers interest with >> layman's enthusiasm. I myself belong to the second group. >> A good idea would be to organize one event for the developers and another >> open event so everyone can join. Then I think everybody would be happy. >> Note that some overlap between groups is expected and healthy for the >> community. >> >> Kind regards, >> >> -- >> Felipe Martins Vieira >> Public PGP key: http://pgp.surfnet.nl >> Key Fingerprint: 9640 F192 63DA D637 6750 AC08 7BCA 19BB 0E69 E45D > > > _______________________________________________ > Gnupg-users mailing list > Gnupg-users@gnupg.org > http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users > -- PGP fingerprint: 5E61 C878 0F86 295C E17D 8677 9F0F E587 374B BE81 https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0x9F0FE587374BBE81 _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
