[TYPO3-t3dd] T3DD Sold out

[Patrick Lobacher]

Hi there,

to be honest - in the beginning I was very convinced from the concept 
Thomas & Gina explained - but as time go by I'm a bit unhappy with a few 
parts of it and this is for the following reasons:

We planned with 6 tracks (and we wanted to have a open track there too) 
- but now it seems, that we can fill up 7 tracks (have asked the 
location manager for another track and if we get em I could publish the 
schedule) - but just with real workshops (and 3 talks so far) - no open 
track space anymore. And - this is important - I've done no kind of 
advertisement, no marketing at all. If I've done that - I think I would 
have received much more proposals.

As Steffen wrote - I had to cut the 2 slots workshops to 1 slot and the 
3 slot to 2 - because we have no space in the schedule

Obviously  we have that much people who are happy to do a workshop 
(which is great I think) :-)

On the other side I talked to a lot of people in the last months - 
beginner, intermediate, silent people and core people - every kind of 
people who are interested to be part of the community. And not one of 
them really understood why we had to restrict the T3DD in general. I 
defended the arguments of the event commitee (which is basically a good 
one) but I saw that the community has another way of thinking - and 
because it is a community event (and not a "invitation-only-event" like 
a code sprint) we should respect them.

So I suggest, that people are happier to better have not enough 
attention in a slightly crowded workshop than not to be part of it at all.

We (the TYPO3 community) are getting bigger and bigger from month to 
month - and if there are enthusiastic developer - we have to take care 
of them I think.

The T3DD are the most important event for developer in my opinion - no 
BarCamp and of course not the Con (this is another topic we should take 
care about if I think of the feedback I had while talking to the people 
the last time) can take care about the developer - so we should be happy 
to have that much motivated people who want to work at and with TYPO3.

**** IMPORTANT: This is my personal opinion *****
T3DD: The place developer should be and new ones found (about 300-400 
people)
T3CON: Much more business than developer topics (up to 1000 people for 
Europe, up to 300 people for North America)
T3CAMP: BarCamp-Style event (up to 200 people)
Code-Sprints: Closed developer event with invitation only (up to 50 people)
****

So my personal suggestion in the moment is to have 50 additional 
attendees this year (and 7 tracks) - what do you think Gina/Thomas - 
should we try it? ;-)
The waiting list http://wiki.typo3.org/T3DD12 consists of 38 people and 
I know from a few other people who want to go there...


Have a great day and best whishes,
Patrick


P.S.: Shuttle busses are organized of course ;-) (the big ones)
P.S.S.: I fully aggree to you Thomas ("...forget to buy tickets..." *g*)


Thomas Hempel schrieb:
> Hi Steffen,
> 
> first off all I want to make clear that the event committee is not 
> organizing the events. The decisions about the size of an event, the 
> location etc. etc. is made by the Organization Team. In the case of 
> T3DD12 it's Sebastian Böttger and Patrick Lobacher.
> The Event Committee can steer, make suggestions and as we are an 
> "official" gremium, we can of course veto certain things. But that's it, 
> we don't want to take over the responsibility for the event organization.
> 
> Anyways. Gina already explained, that the size of the Developer Days 
> does not scale easily. I'm not gonna go through all the arguments again, 
> but because you asked.
> 
> The major difference between Workshops and Talks is that in a workshop 
> we have tutors and in talks we have speakers. There is a reason why 
> school classes are not bigger than 30 people. The tutor is supposed to 
> work *with* the people. In comparison, a speaker "only" tells his 
> presentation. The number of people in the audience is not relevant as 
> long as anybody can hear you.
> 
> There might be enough material for 300 people. I'm pretty sure we could 
> bring up enough material for 600 people as well. But that is not the point.
> 
> Do you want to have 10 or even 20 parallel tracks just to get more 
> people in there? You have to have the rooms, you have to organize the 
> catering, you have to provide hotel rooms etc. etc.
> 
> For example, we could have done it bigger in Elmshorn but we just did 
> not enough hotel rooms for the people. This might not be the case in 
> Munich but this time the hotels are pretty far away. So there probably 
> is a shuttle service in place (ATTENTION! This is only *my* guess. I'm 
> not in the orga team. I don't know!).
> 
> What sort of shuttle service do you want to have for 600 people? Please 
> remember that the DD is mostly financed by sponsors and that it is not 
> an event that is not supposed to gain money for the Association. So, 
> more people simply means that the event needs more money to pay for all 
> the "small things" nobody thinks about.
> 
> Gina explained it very nicely. It's not about the size of the event. 
> Actually it's the other way around. We want to keep up a certain spirit. 
> And if that is sustained by limiting the number of participants, I'm 
> fine with it. That does not mean that we don't want the event to grow. 
> We just don't see a good way to do make it work in a bigger scale.
> 
> We're open to any suggestions though. We already tried certain things 
> like having a talk track *and* workshops. Wasn't received very well. We 
> tried to get more people in there. AFAIK there will be a barcamp style 
> open track this year.
> We even discussed some more radical changes like canceling events or 
> merging them.
> 
> So if you have any concrete suggestions about this, I'm would love to 
> discuss them with you. :-)
> 
> 
> Thanks for your input and best wishes,
> Thomas
> 
> 
> 
> P.S.: On a personal note. I really wonder why we go through this every 
> single year. ;-) I mean everybody knows the tickets are limited. 
> Everybody is so eager to go to the event and asks over and over when 
> registration starts. But than, when the sale starts, people seems to 
> forget that they actually have to buy the tickets.
> I admit, that this year was extremely fast sold out but nevertheless the 
> registration ran 11 days until all tickets where gone.
>