[Wellington-pm] OSDC open for registrations

[Jacinta Richardson]

Matthew Hunt wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 03:47:16PM +1000, Jacinta Richardson wrote:
> 
>>The cost is $230 and the early bird date expires on the 15th of October.
> 
> Those are some real early birds you've got there.  A full four days to
> consider it.

I apologise for the really short notice.  We have been extremely busy in 
the last few months and simple but important things have been getting 
away from us.

As the programme chair my primary focus over the last while has been on 
chasing speakers for their papers and passing these to reviewers.  As a 
result I have not been as diligent as I ought to have been in making 
sure that notice of our registrations finally being open, got out to the 
PM groups.

>>OSDC is a grassroots-style conference [..]
> 
> By which, I take it that you mean utterly disorganised.  I've been
> following the web site occasionally for about six months now (since the
> time it was announced as the YAPC::AU conference) and haven't been able
> to find a scrap of extra information about what to expect from it.

I would like to apologise that our website coverage has been patchy, 
however it hasn't been (entirely) stagnant.  Our list of talks can be 
found at:

http://www.osdc.com.au/papers/index.html

Once we have sufficient registrations, we'll be able to better judge 
which streams will be popular and create the timetable with respect to that.

>>You can register online at http://www.osdc.com.au/
> 
> Why would you bother?  What is actually happening?  

These are very good questions, and I thank you sincerely for pointing 
out to me that they have not been adequetly covered.  I've been so 
deeply involved in organising the talks and papers that I didn't realise 
that not everyone knew all about them.

We're not just "covering Perl, Python and PHP" over 3 days.  We're 
booking 3 lecture rooms each day for the 3 days and every single slot is 
filled with a talk.  There are 60 different talks by 45 different 
speakers, not including the keynotes.  Roughly half of these are Perl 
related.

Talks topics range all over the place from dealing with hardware in 
Perl, to designing cochlear implants with Python to writing large-scale 
PHP.  We also have talks on the Firebird Database, Mozilla XUL, Lego 
Micromouse (and maze solving), MySQL, CVS, Make, DocBook and writing 
games with Javascript.

You can find the list of speakers and talk titles at 
http://www.osdc.com.au/papers/index.html  Speaker names listed as 
"unavailable" means that that speaker opted to have their paper 
refereed.  Their names will appear once the refereeing process is over.

There will also be a key-signing, several BOFs (yet to be organised), 
lots of opportunities to socialise, a semi-formal dinner, a partners' 
programme and other usual conference stuff.

Our catering choices should result in you being extraordinarily well fed 
throughout the days of the conference.

The talks are such that I believe I'm going to find it quite difficult 
to see everything I want to see.  In our initial timetable it was 
impossible to put all the talks that interested me in sequential 
timeslots, there are too many good talks to fit in the 5 hours of talk 
time we have per day (plus 1.5 hours for the keynote, 1 hour for lunch 
and 2 by 30 minute tea breaks).

If you have any other questions about what is happening, please don't 
hesitate to ask.

 > Or is it some great
> secret that needs to be concealed behind a few comic strips to save us
> from ruining the surprise?

:)  No big secret, just not an awareness that we haven't communicated 
this information.  Thankyou again for bringing it to our attention.

>>We look forward to seeing you in December!
> 
> I'm on holiday anyway, but I have to say that I was surprised that the
> conference was even going ahead given the lack of any apparent
> organisation or programme.
> 
> You can call me a cynic, but I think that more people would be inclined
> to part with the money if they knew anything about what they might get
> for it.

Sure, it's cynical.  Afterall, why wouldn't Perl Mongers want to come to 
the first YAPC in the southern hemisphere?  ;)  I agree entirely that 
people are much more likely to part with their money if they feel that 
the conference will be fun and useful to them.  Especially people in New 
Zealand who'll need an extra reason to part with the money to fly over 
to Melbourne.

I appreciate your email and if you are able to provide further feedback 
and pointers to material you feel is not being adequetly conveyed, we 
would really appreciate it.

All the best,

     Jacinta Richardson

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