Back to back QExpos kind of exaggerates the problem of eerie silence between them. If there is a QExpo every year, it is easier to just decide to save everything for QExpo and thus we don't get any of the smaller releases.
setting it up should not be taken lightly. Not that it has ever been or that I have the feeling that's how you guys do it, though.
Hah, you should have seen the qexpo development channel last summer, "Wheres SantaClaws?!?!!?!" for a long while, then ultimately Sajt going, in his proper British accent because he is British you know, "Bugger all I'll do the php myself!" QExpo2006 was honestly the wonderful work of Sajt and Randy coming together at the last moment. I will say what happened was about 1/5th of what I had planned (I can get quite grandiose, trust me). However I did arrive at the position of running the last expo with the intention of doing something different for this expo. Ultimately only one of those things happened (Romero interview) - well another happened with a delay, I wanted to get the maps GPLed in time for it but we had to wait for approval from id. But other things just didnt come together (Worch and Peterson never responded for inquiries about an interview, server listings, several more articles) due to personal time and other things (I was working full time actually, and a lot of the QExpo news posts were made from my work machine in between tasks).
Wow, tangent. Anyways, I dont know about the other QExpos, but the last one was not particularly organized.
I do however wildly encourage (*wiggles arms and screams*) sharing of new ideas to innovate and give a fresh aspect to the next expo.
You should know at least the month it will take place in within 8 months of that time occurring. Then you really need to knuckle down and figure out exactly what will be included and what needs to be coded. Or enjoy the breakneck pace we endured in 06.
So ideas for the QExpo08 page?
A wiki style view of changes made to the booths from the previous version, with notes as to whether the changes are public or not yet. Makes news posting a whole lot easier.
Use relative linking for every single thing.
In the same vein, upload everything for your booth to the expo site (exceptions perhaps for huge files). RenegadeC's TAoV booth now has broken images since he used circa1984 to host the images, which is now down.
Get at a least a server or two, NQ and QW, for the new content - and court community leaders for both protocols. I tried to pimp QExpo a lot with QuakeOne.com but saw little reaction from them honestly (no offense meant, just saying) and gave it some word at the QW forums.
Promote a server or two regularly that are just playing Quake period.
Random quote thing up top for fun tidbits about Quake, things like "The long elevator in e2m6 was inspired by Disneyland's The Haunted Mansion ride." but also "Play Quake deathmatch now at dm.quakeone.com" and provide related links in the same bit.
Server listing, sorted by location (US-East US-West Europe-East Europe-West Australia/NZ) and then gametype and link to downloads of any custom maps or mods they are running. It is nice to talk about Quake on forums and read about it in news posts, and even download new maps and mods - but there is the simple fact that we need to play more. For a while I was actively playing at ra.clanhdz.com with LordHavoc and Sajt, and a lot of players were surprised to see us there. We have not been keeping up our presence as players in anyway.
Reach out to the still going TeamFortress community, they are oddly autonomous but still around (and it is still one of the best mods IMO no matter how much Valve tries to take the name), avirox and skid may be good to contact about that.
Promotion via Facebook and (sigh) MySpace. People use them. I have a Facebook Quake group (named just that) which has over 100 members now. I can help with this.
Categorize booths (mods, maps, engines, tools, fun generically). Booths can have multiple flags (I'd say work by people like LordHavoc, FrikaC, Preach, aguirre, and RenegadeC for example would justify multiple tags).
More interviews - I am willing to help with this definitely.
More articles - I am willing to help with this.
CocoT release something. Yes that would be a QExpo feature.
Thats just some stuff off the top of my head, now others, contribute, ideas, go!