Re: Organizer meeting in late May?

[Amin Bandali]

Hi Corwin, all,

Thanks so much indeed for getting the ball rolling again, Corwin; and
my apologies for my late reply.  I only saw this email and the related
IRC chatter in #emacsconf-org earlier this morning.

Having read through the IRC discussion from yesterday, a number of key
points were raised which I'll summarize below (Sacha, Leo, and others,
please feel free to add anything else I might have missed):

- We should maybe try and not do too much innovation with new stuff
  this year, and continue using the tools/approaches that have worked
  well for us for last year's conference and/or the years before.

- Drop office hours this year.  We experimented with having scheduled
  office hours last year, and while we did have some attendance and
  fun chats as a result, it didn't seem like it was majorly useful for
  a large number of people.  Perhaps we didn't publicize them well
  enough, but I don't know for sure, and would be happy to hear from
  other folks what they think about this.

- Start and wrap up the CfP earlier this year, to give organizers and
  volunteers more review and prep time before the conference.  Perhaps
  open the CfP in mid- to late-June, and wrap it up by early- to
  mid-September, so about two months.  Other thoughts/suggestions?

  Also, move other dates earlier as well, to make more time for time-
  or energy-intensive tasks like re-encoding the prerecorded videos.
  Going by what happened last year, this will probably be necessary
  again, given that many of the video recordings we received weren't
  in our preferred formats we'd specified.  We may need volunteers to
  help review the re-encoded videos to make sure there are no problems
  with them.

- In the proposal submission form, move 'speaker availability' closer
  to the top of the form to make it easier for quick checking.

- Ask for additional speaker info (pronouns, pronunciation, emergency
  contact info) well in advance, in the proposal submission form.

- Drop the anonymization of talk submissions before review by
  organizers.  The anonymization effectively excludes one of the
  organizers from doing reviews (me, for the past few years), and
  given that we're already a small team we may want to avoid that.
  Especially considering that we've essentially been able to accept
  all the proposals we've received for each EmacsConf so far.

- Potentially recruit volunteers for one additional parallel track.
  I'd be happy to stream again for EmacsConf 2022 in addition to Leo,
  but we may need at least one or two other volunteers to help with
  the logistics and other aspects as well.  To be further discussed.

- Not have the conference during the thanksgiving weekend, so as to
  not make people choose between being with their family / loved ones
  and attending the conference. :)

  So, hold EmacsConf 2022 either on November 19-20 or December 3-4.
  What do people think?  Any preferences or conflicts with these?
  Or perhaps suggestions for another weekend?

Note that the above are not set in stone as of now, but there seems to
be consensus/agreement about them among organizers, myself included.
But they are up for discussion and (re)consideration, as always.

best,
amin

-- 
https://kelar.org/~bandali