[Ubuntu-US-CA] Ubuntu California meeting on Sunday, January 22nd, at 7pm PST

[Nathan Haines]

On 01/21/2017 01:18 PM, George Mulak wrote:
> Hi!
> I would like to talk about SCaLE 15X and coordinating it.

Hi George!

All good questions.

I submitted a community funds donation request a couple of days ago, and 
I will get a list of other booth supplies needed to Michael Hall in the 
next day or two so he can coordinate getting Ubuntu computers from 
certain sponsors to SCALE for the Ubuntu booth.  This should look more 
or less like the booth did last year.

Incidentally, this kind of logistical assistance from Canonical is 
almost completely invisible because it overlaps what we've done for 
ourselves in the past.  But the burden this lifts from my shoulders and 
Richard Gaskin's shoulders is immeasurable.  It's not exactly difficult 
work, but it frees us up to look at big picture stuff and talk out 
little details while not having to be the ones to implement them.

Plus, they have a lot of institutional knowledge because they've been to 
many conferences and organized more booths than we have.  So while 
UbuCon Summit at SCALE is very different in a lot of ways from what 
UbuCon Europe was in Essen, Germany this last year (and I was so jealous 
of what they accomplished!) we have a team of people who are helping to 
make both events 1) awesome and 2) uniquely special.

For instance, while Richard was instrumental in talking to business 
owners on the ground and finding who was interested in serving as social 
event venues, Canonical took care of sponsorship and payment and that 
sort of coordination.

> I would also like to talk about Ubucon.  Who is going to be there, etc.

EVERYONE is going to be there!  ;)  We had a pretty big turnout last 
time.  I don't remember the exact numbers.  I'll have to see if I can 
dig them up.  As far as speakers, we have a keynote speaker and 
Canonical will be coordinating with that sponsor to make the 
announcement on our social media and their social media at the same 
time.  When it's announced, you'll know.  We're also looking for more 
community speakers via the SCALE CFP form.

https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/15x/cfp

> I would like to know what has already been done, etc.

Richard and I are working together with Ilan from SCALE and Michael Hall 
and Alan Pope from the Canonical Ubuntu Community Team to reach out to 
keynote speakers and sponsors, aside from the call for papers we 
currently have active.  The hope is to have the ubucon.org site up and 
ready by February 1st.  Anything I don't manage to do, Michael Hall will 
probably do.

The booth is pretty much on auto-pilot.  This will be our tenth year at 
SCALE and the booth has always been a success.  I'll be handling all of 
the logistics of getting supplies, but I have a big box full of stuff in 
the closet that's been built over the last couple of years, and 
Canonical will wrangle the display systems (other than the one you can 
provide, George).  What we need most are volunteers to man the booth, 
and that's something I don't worry about because year after year we have 
volunteers from California and neighboring LoCos who volunteer their 
time and are just awesome.  Plus, any employees that Canonical sends 
like to come and hang out, too, aside from their domain expertise, we 
have really good gap coverage for our volunteer team.

To my extreme gratitude, I've never had to worry about booth volunteers. 
  The Ubuntu community in California has never failed me over the last 
decade.

-- 
Nathan Haines
Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com/