PGDAY.EU 2009 / 20090812 Meeting

Location : IRC (#pgday on freenode)

Date : 2009-08-12 (9pm - 11pm)

People attending the meeting

on IRC

Guillaume Lelarge (gleu)

Magnus Hagander (magnush)

Dave Page (pgSnake)

Damien Clochard (daamien)

Guillaume Smet (gsmet)

Marc Cousin (marco44, joined late)

People missing

Jean-Paul Argudo (jpa)

Andreas Scherbaum (ads)

Agenda of the meeting

Paristech Telecom : contract and insurance (gleu)

Sponsorship campaign

Conference bags (pgSnake)

Track roadmap

Should we extend the CFP? (pgSnake)

Tshirts and goodies

Minutes of the meeting

Paristech Telecom : contract and insurance

Jean-Paul has the contract signed, so this item is checked.

Sponsorship campaign

We're in fairly good shape. I think we're pending payment from EDB and Continuent, and a contract from Sirius (new silver sponsor). We have no news so far from sqlmanager.net, but they seem to be interested and will tell us their decision.

Silver's staff is also trying to arrange an interview with some of the IT news sites they have contacts at, like ComputerWeek, ZDnet.

Magnus and Dave tried to get to the sponnsorship matrix thing on the wiki (http://wiki.postgresql.fr/en:pgday2009:recherche_sponsors), but they can't seem to access it. Probably on issue with the change to stricter permissions on some pages. Damien has been working to fix this.

Conference bags

Regardless of whether we get a sponsor, we should be ready with a supplier and design. Dave Page's view is that cloth tote bags are a waste. We'd be better off with printed plastic bags. At the very least, we need to think about it. O'Reilly have used good quality plastic bags in the past, they have the advantage that they can be printed on nicely in color. Anyways, if we want to do a *good* bag, we're probably going to have to spend some money on it.

Damien will work on the design and will also search a provider. Vistaprint (http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/tote-bags.aspx?xnav=LeftItem&xnid=PromotionEvents&dng=1141733, http://www.vistaprint.fr/sacs-toile.aspx?xnav=TsrItem&xnid=aToteBagsPromotion+%26+Events&dng=Promotion+%26+Events#here) and spreadshirts are among the few to check. Probably http://www.carrierbagshop.co.uk/BagPrinting/ could be interesting too.

Track roadmap

Dave Page is currently waiting for submissions from Heikki, Simon Riggs, Mark C-A and another guy.

On the french track, Jean-Paul Argudo will probably do the conference he did at Solutions Linux 2009. Guillaume Smet and Guillaume Lelarge will work on an introductory talk. But the problem is we shouldn't transform pgday into (dalibo+OpenWide)day. Guillaume Smet is still afraid we won't have enough material for the french track, but he and Guillaume Lelarge are working on that: trying to find people to do talks. We just need more time to work on this.

So, let's extend by a month (15th September seems to be a good deadline), and make an effort to bug people we know.

One other question is: should we pre-announce some speakers, in order to increase interest for *visitors* to the conference? Meaning if they know a couple of “big names”, they may decide they are going before the whole programme is posted. Problem is that might scare people who want to propose a talk, and we are not sure it'll make any difference to the attendees' number.

But it boils down to one thing - do we want to open registration before sep 15th or not. If we don't, we can wait longer. Lots think that opening before won't give us more attendes, and won't give us less. So, we won't open it before the end of the call for papers.

So, to summarise:

extend the cfp (till sep 15th)

don't open registration until the cfp closes

and don't pre-announce any speakers.

Tshirts and goodies

We also need a designer for polos and tshirts. Staff will have a polo, visitors will get a tshirt. Different colors would be good as it makes it easy to spot the staff if you need to ask a question. The current idea is black polos and blue t-shirts. Damien will work on their design.

For bags and tshirts, design depens on how many corporate logos we put on them. Only platinum and gold go on the t-shirts, which brings it down to three logos. Staff polos don't have logos.

Dave Page thinks we just need someone to do a logo for the event, and we can place that on the shirts and bags to create each overall design. Arranging the logo + text & sponsor logos should be something we can do ourselves

The sponsors will provide flyers to fill the bags. Andreas Scherbaum and Dave Page are working on some new PostgreSQL flyers. And we will probably have some linux magazines to give away.

pgeu and/or pgfr can sell whatever goodies they want, but that's not part of the organization really. Each one pays for himself.

Social event on the thursday night

Having a public place where we can gather with cheese and wine would be great. The cost question is still open: is it paid by the pgday or should anyone attending pay his own bill?

If PGDay pays for it, some want to re-open the discussion about attendee fees because they would be too low.

Caterer's comeback

We need to give around 50% to Sidonie before beginning of september. That's around 6000 euros for 300 people. So, we definitely need a contract before we're paying anything like that. And 300 is much more than what we'll have. We'll need to have a cost per attendee.

We can pay 6250 up front either way. But we need a contract. We should obviously give them a final number a couple of weeks before - we can estimate more accurately then though. The date for that final decision needs to be in the contract.

Guillaume Lelarge will write a contract with Sidonie and submit it to the organization staff.

Work to do ASAP

Damien Clochard

mass mailing the members of APRIL?

Polos' and TShirts' design

Bags' design

Jean-Paul Argudo

validate with Cédric Villemain if he still wants to contact people

call hostesses' schools in Paris (in september)

Guillaume Lelarge

Caterer's contract (mail sent)

Upcoming meetings

2009-08-26