PGDAY.EU 2009 / 20090617 Meeting

Location : IRC (#pgday on freenode)

Date : 2009-06-17 (9pm - 11pm)

People attending the meeting

on IRC

Guillaume Lelarge (gleu)

Jean-Paul Argudo (jpa)

Damien Clochard (daamien)

Magnus Hagander (magnush)

Guillaume Smet (gsmet)

Gabriele Bartolini (gbartolini)

Dave Page (pgSnake)

Andreas Scherbaum (ads)

Cédric Villemain (joined late)

Stéphane Schildknecht (joined late)

People missing

Jean-Christophe Arnu

Agenda of the meeting

Contracts with Paristech Telecom… is it done? (gleu)

Choosing the caterers (gleu)

Hotels (gleu)

Committees - more members needed

Budget

Minutes of the meeting

Contracts with Paristech Telecom

Nobody at the meeting knows what happens about the contract with Paristech Telecom. We don't need to worry on this issue, but we need to get in touch with Jean-Christophe Arnu to know more about it. Guillaume Lelarge is in charge of this.

Choosing the caterers

Guillaume Lelarge send an email to answer Dave Page's concerns. Unfortunality, that wasn't quite what he had in mind. People are quite interesting by Sidonie's offer, but it wouldn't hurt if we could get a statement from one of their previous *customers* saying how they liked working with them, and what they thought about the service Other than that, we see no reason *not* to choose these guys. So, someone need to call one of their customer and ask them this sort of questions. Guillaume Lelarge don't feel comfortable with this, so Jean-Paul Argudo kindly accepts to do it. He'll present the results to the list.

Hotels

Guillaume Lelarge gave a call to something like 10 hotels. They are nearly completely booked because of another event (batimat, http://www.batimat.com/, 2009-11-02 - 2009-11-07). It's probaly not the only one in november. That's not really good news.

Gabriele told us how he did in Prato. He had to book a maximum of X rooms per hotel. He had a deadline, and after that deadline, those rooms became free. He also had a special rate with 4 hotels.

We have three solutions:

Look in the north of Paris, but on the same metro line to make it simpler. Magnus tells once more time that we *don't* want to pre-reserve anything. What we'd like is to negotiate a rate, so we get some % discount. And then tell people to book it themselves.

Of course, we could let people choose the hotel themselves. But as a visitor from the outside, the real value is that we cluster people together at a couple of places. A “PG hotel” like the one in Brussels would be better.

Last solution would be to book an hotel very far from ParisTech, outside of Paris, something like 25 minutes in transport. But this has its own issues: people don't wake up at the same time. what will we do if someone is late to take the bus?

Anyway, we shouldn't expect too much discount in november in Paris because they all know they'll book all their rooms. If we don't find anything, the discount part can probably be ignored. It's not the price that is the important thing, it's the clustering of people - if we get a better rate, it's a good thing, but it's not a requirement.

The real issue is that people will have to book their rooms very early. We're in june and it's already late as you can see from Guillaume's attempts. So we need to publish the hotel list at next meeting. Damien Clochard want us to communicate about this problem. We have to tell them to hurry to book their hotel, maybe just a simple mail on pgeu-general and a message on the website.

So, Guillaume Lelarge will try to find two or three hotels to handle 40 people, near a metro line. It would be good to have some more hotels, because many people book really late.

Committees

We currently have only *two* people on the french committee and three on the english. Magnus Hagander thinks we need to be 4 on each. So, we need one more person for the english group and two for the french. Guillaume Smet remembers that Magnus Hagander said all members of the committee would review english and french tracks. So, Magnus Hagander agrees that we just need more people for the french one. Because those on the english one don't really have the required skills to review french submissions.

Jean-Paul Argudo is for asking on the mailing lists, but Magnus Hagander and a few others (Guillaume Smet, Guillaume Lelarge, and Andreas Scherbaum) don't think this is a good idea. If we ask this in public, it will be weeks, if not month+, before there is any kind of agreement. Cooptation will be quicker.

The next question is how we find more volunteers, and where. We already have some ideas, so Guillaume Lelarge will ask each of them: Marc Cousin, Guillaume de Rorthais, Vincent Picavet, Dimitri Fontaine.

Budget wiki page

There's a new page on the wiki for the budget. Next important thing is: what else do we need to add. Magnus Hagander is mainly worried about costs that aren't listed on that page yet. Insurance is missing for example. But we need to know our expenses fairly well. Only then can we figure out if we will have money for travel sponsorship for example.

On the insurance side, Jean-Paul Argudo wants to have contacts at Paristech to figure this out with them, directly. We need this done ASAP, because we cannot make a budget without knowing it.

Bottles of water should be added and goodies budget should be raised. 3 euros per t shirt is really low and it would be great to have some nice TShirt we can really wear. Jean-Paul Argudo suggests that we should innovate with something sexyier, like polo shirt. Guillaume Smet adds it would be nice to have some distinctive polos for the pgday staff. Everyone agrees on it. We have material to decorate the rooms, but probably not enough. This is an item to work on. PGFR has one banner and 2 rollups (one of them being pgday specific), PGEU has 2 rollups.

We also need to set the entry fee. But we don't have enough information to decide yet. We first need to know the caterers because the entry fee is primarly based on that. It'll be a *lot* easier to handle if we don't separate one or two days. We don't want to check wheter some paid for 1 or 2 days. But there needs to be some room for discounts (remember that the event has to be free for ParisTech students) and early bird (something like 40). Food tickets is probably a not-so-bad solution. Moreover, sponsors have a delimited number of free places: silver gets 1, gold 2, platinum 3 (that's not for sure right now). 50 € seems the minimum to cover caterer's expenses if we finally choose Sidonie. If we choose another one, it will really double the fee. This is only a general idea. It is not set in stone because we first need to choose the caterers, and second we still need to discuss Damien's concerns. As Magnus said, “let me remind people that we want to actually *make money* on this, and not just break even. It's supposed to finance things like sponsorship for future conferences and stuff…”.

Andreas Scherbaum wants to see a booth given to a company to sell books. Eyrolles, ENI, and Safari Books Online were mentioned. About merchandising, we'll leave that to the pgeu merchandise committee.

Guillaume Smet would like us to start actively looking for sponsors. Magnus Hagander is OK with this. Jean-Paul Argudo mentions that Camp-To-Camp would be an easy target, but not for much money. Anyway, sponsors are not only useful for money but also for communication. Guillaume Smet contacted Cityvox (no news right now) and Alter way (ACK but nothing more).

Work to do ASAP

Damien Clochard

write the french template letter (with Jean-Paul)

translate the french template letter and send the translated one to Dave Page

Jean-Paul Argudo

get the name and phone of a previous customer of Sidonie, and call him to know what he thinks of the service

finalize the english contract soon

write the french template letter (with Damien)

check out this “insurance” thing with his friend

call hostesses' schools in Paris

Dave Page

reword the translated template letter

Guillaume Lelarge

get in touch with Jean-Christophe Arnu to know more about the state of the contract with Paristech Telecom (mail sent on 2009-06-20)

send emails to a bunch of french guys to ask them to be part of the committee

find two or three hotels to handle 40 people, near a metro line

Upcoming meetings

2009-07-01