Hey guys, just a few breadcrumbs of information to pass along about the release event and our plan of action. First, the official announcement is scheduled for October 1st, which means that we would be past our so-called point-of-no-return. This is good, since it will force the organization team to do some of the actual work, like setting the talks schedule.
So folks, on October the 1st, we will be emailing pretty much every KDE developer we can find (in North America) with an official invitation, plus quite a few to go out to KDE developers abroad. The official invitation includes sponsored accommodations and food for those getting the email, however we have 200 sponsored spots available, and less than 200 people on our list. After 15 days have passed (to ensure that those getting invitations have had a chance to RSVP), we will open up the remaining sponsored spots to anyone who can find a way to get there.
Once you have received your official invitation, we recommend booking flights ASAP to get better prices :) This event will be happening on January 17-19th even in the event of KDE 4.0 being pushed back past January, so your tickets will not be wasted.
The KDE e.V. will be providing us with a small travel budget, however funds for travel are tight, and flying dozens of people over from Europe will not likely be possible unless they get partial funding elsewhere. As our goal is to have this event focus on the KDE community in the Americas, I will hypothesize that funding for travel will likely be given to those that are less likely to be able to attend Akademy in Belgium this summer.
But that's okay, as this event here is our chance to build up our presence on this side of the pond. The Philly Akademy team (which was not selected for July 2008) has contacted me about turning our January event into an annual event by reusing the infrastructure that they put in place for their previous Akademy proposal. This may be the birth of a second annual "Akademy" conference, although it's likely to find a different name to avoid confusion :)
In addition, from a marketing perspective, I pass along a few insights into our brains: we want to market KDE 4.0 as an 'early release of KDE 4', and to make sure that the atmosphere around this event is one that celebrates all the great progress we've made so far, but is focused on the future of KDE 4.x, rather than just 4.0 itself. Yes, we are calling it the KDE 4.0 Release Event, but the actual release announcement/keynote only occupies an hour of the total event schedule.
We plan to cram as much as we can into three days by filling the schedule with BoF's, talks, planning sessions, press seminars/interviews, and of course some partying too :) We want to make it worth the trip and the two days off work/school for a KDE event that can help further refine our post-4.0 strategy and strengthen our community links...
After all, marketing KDE is a weird thing. The thing we're "selling" to companies when we market KDE is not a product, but rather the community that exists around the product. We don't necessarily want entities to just use KDE, we want them to become an active part of our community.
So when the press or corporate types comes to our release event, we don't necessarily want them to think they are coming to see some software. When you download KDE, rather than feeling like that software now belongs to you, you should feel that you now belong to the KDE community. By inviting press and distro partners (and so forth) to this event, we want them to feel the KDE love and feel pride in being part of the KDE process. The fact that we're showing off KDE 4.0 will be a sort of side-effect that gives the press something to write about :)
(And now, thanks to the above paragraph, I can be accused of being communist pinko scum by the yankees! whee!)
Anyway, if you have something KDE that you'd like to talk about at this event, please email myself or Wade via the release-event@kde.org email address and we'll make sure to set aside a reservation for you when they go out on October 1st. I'll put this tactfully: if you're short on travel funds, but are making a presentation, the e.V. would be more inclined to sponsor some travel expenses. (Note: this does not represent a published opinion of the e.V., just a working theory on who they would most likely sponsor :P)
Cheers folks, more details on Monday.
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