Well folks, Camp KDE is all wrapped up. Hopefully Jeff finds time to upload some videos real-soon-now (TM) for those of you that could not make it to the talks.
Anyway, just wanted to mention a few things that I thought were great and things that could have been better. It's sort of important for me to pay attention to this, since I kept telling people I'd try to host Camp KDE next year in Toronto.
So, the awesome things: Jeff did a great job, considering he almost singlehandedly put this thing together. Jeff is my hero. The training was the highlight of the week for me, and I'm so happy that he arranged that for us. The group that was there brought a positive attitude to the whole event (should I expect anything less from the KDE community, honestly?), even though the weather sucked. I got to pick a few people's brains and feel a little more comfortable with C++ as a result of the week. Whee!
Things that I'd like to improve for future years: keeping the event closer to the accommodations, or vice versa. Some of the best feedback about Jamaica the previous year was that the event had people sleeping at the event location. Granted that we ended up on the beach and had a good time there, storms and floods and poweroutages notwithstanding, I still think it was fun.
Secondly, and Jeff will certainly agree with this, we need to find a better way of predicting the total registration before the event. This was a problem that happened at the Release Event as well. It affects a lot of things, like beds at the hostel/hotel, rides required to get people around, and number of rooms needed. Several of the people that signed up didn't arrive, or canceled at the last minute, so even though we had nearly 100 registered for the event, the total throughput would probably be somewhat lower.
That said, for the people that were there, the event was a lot of fun, and we were not at all upset about the turnout - the complaint is only from an organizational standpoint.
Next: even though it's cold in Toronto in January, it seems that there was pretty good support for putting the event there, at least from those that I polled. There were a few that were scared of the cold, but I just laughed at them until they agreed to come anyway (I'm from Winnipeg, whee!). I mean, if Helio will come, they have no real excuse.
Finally, it turns out that a lot of people were hitting on me there. Most of them men. KDE is really strange sometimes, but I miss them all already :)
So, plans for the next few months are to nail down a suitable location in Toronto to host this event next year, then pitch it to the rest of the KDE folks from the Americas (and those that'll swim the Atlantic).
That reminds me - now that our North and South American teams are growing stronger, is there anything KDE can do to help bring Asia together? Any Asian contributors to KDE ever thought about this? Maybe tied to another event in the region or something. Hosting events is not easy, but it's a great way to build community. And the community is important, since we are KDE.
Cheers folks
- Log in to post comments