Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 7:00 pm
Personally, I really loved the loose bazaar type feeling of Qexpo 2008. Hanging out on IRC for 4 weeks and meeting lots of people felt really cool.
I guess if you're going for a three-day-totally-organized style of event, it would be more about "showing off" than "hanging out".
For this, you'd need to be very sure that enough heavyweight projects are finished at exactly that point in time. You'd need to directly work with content creators *before* the expo so you can plan it out exactly.
If it's only three days, 70% of people will not make the deadline. You know how it is. So I guess that 10 days would be reasonable. But are there even enough projects to fill 10 days of releases with?
Also, news coverage would need to be there immediately from the get-go, immediately at 100%. That was not the case last time, where it picked up more slowly instead. There weren't many news posts during the first three days at all, so this would need to change radically.
Again, towards this goal there would need to be collaboration and communication between the various projects (umm, there are projects, right?) and the newsposters *before* the expo so the news guys know exactly what will be released and when.
Also, if the news posts should be in the style of "booth spotlights", there will need to be enough persons writing them. Like, at least 6.
Somehow I don't think this is how the community ticks, though. I think Qexpo 2008 was pretty representative of how things are going. I don't think that it's necessarily bad though, it's just how it is.
Limiting the expo to just a few days and basically "hoping" that people will release enough stuff on time, is asking for trouble.
Personally, I am in the camp that can live without an expo type event. If one is held, I'll support it though.
Finally, I believe there should be about six months between announcement and the actual event. Most people only code and map in their spare time. I would think that July or August would be too early. Summer might not be the best time anyway, people will be at the beach instead of at the computer.
I guess if you're going for a three-day-totally-organized style of event, it would be more about "showing off" than "hanging out".
For this, you'd need to be very sure that enough heavyweight projects are finished at exactly that point in time. You'd need to directly work with content creators *before* the expo so you can plan it out exactly.
If it's only three days, 70% of people will not make the deadline. You know how it is. So I guess that 10 days would be reasonable. But are there even enough projects to fill 10 days of releases with?
Also, news coverage would need to be there immediately from the get-go, immediately at 100%. That was not the case last time, where it picked up more slowly instead. There weren't many news posts during the first three days at all, so this would need to change radically.
Again, towards this goal there would need to be collaboration and communication between the various projects (umm, there are projects, right?) and the newsposters *before* the expo so the news guys know exactly what will be released and when.
Also, if the news posts should be in the style of "booth spotlights", there will need to be enough persons writing them. Like, at least 6.
Somehow I don't think this is how the community ticks, though. I think Qexpo 2008 was pretty representative of how things are going. I don't think that it's necessarily bad though, it's just how it is.
Limiting the expo to just a few days and basically "hoping" that people will release enough stuff on time, is asking for trouble.
Personally, I am in the camp that can live without an expo type event. If one is held, I'll support it though.
Finally, I believe there should be about six months between announcement and the actual event. Most people only code and map in their spare time. I would think that July or August would be too early. Summer might not be the best time anyway, people will be at the beach instead of at the computer.