It's that time of year again: time for proposing and voting on our annual conference.

We've had an annual conference every year for Plone. It's an important time for the community to gather, share success stories, learn, plan, and hold our annual Foundation membership meeting. If you haven't been to a Plone conference, make 2008 the year you do!

The Foundation is inviting interested organizations/groups/companies to submit a proposal to host the annual conference.

It's no small task — you'll need to find space for ~250-450 attendees, organize tracks and sessions, and help plan social events and logistics for the conference.

It has huge rewards — your company/group gets to help Plone in a substantial way, helps shine attention onto your role in the community, and (in every year but one) has been profitable or break-even to the organizers.

It can be anywhere in the world (the conferences so far have been in Europe or the US), but it should be near a transportation hub.

We're especially interested in a conference that will engage all our audiences (new-to-Plone, designers, integrators, programmers, core Plone users). We really want to make the conference friendly for people interested in Plone, and have programs/breakouts/etc that help this audience. While, of course, still providing premier technical content for the experts.

The organizers will pick the final date, but the conference should be in the September-December, 2008 range.

Organizer's Roles

• Find location, contract with location, plan use of space
• Organize suggested hotels and social events (traditionally, there hasn't been a "conference hotel", but many people might love it if there was one)
• Choose conference costs, offer registration, collect money
• Organize tracks and sessions, work with speakers
• Handle check-in and all on-site conference logistics
• Handle feedback to the foundation about what could be better next time

Foundation's Role

• Select winning proposal for conference
• Allow use of Plone trademarks at conference
• Provide advertising space on plone.org, #plone, plone.net, etc
• Provides support/guidance, especially with regard to marketing and speakers and tracks
• Organize the required Foundation Membership meeting

** For the first time, the Foundation will require compensation of 10% of attendance income for the conference. This gift to the Foundation helps sustain Plone and the Plone Foundation, and allows us to continue our support. Income brought in through other means (sponsorships, etc) are not subject to this 10%.

Process

March 10, 2008: Proposals due

March 11, 2008: General Foundation membership votes on proposals. Top three proposals go to Board for final selection.

The final selection will be made public on or before March 24, 2008.

Proposals

1. Email the board at board@lists.plone.org to tell us you're interested in submitting a proposal.
2. We'll make a private section for you at plone.org where you can upload your proposal. When you tell us, we'll make that public.
3. Proposals should include:
• a description of the location
• information about the organizers
• your vision for the goals and outcomes of the conference (like: how will you attract attention to it, how will we get new people to come, etc.)
• a rough budget

You can include any other information you'd like. Good guidelines for proposals are at http://plone.org/events/conferences/guidelines/.

You can examine the 2007 proposals at http://plone.org/events/conferences/2007-naples/copy_of_choosing-a-host-location.

You can let us know if there are parts of the proposal that should be kept private for the board only. Otherwise, the entire proposal will be made public and voted on by the Foundation membership.

If you have questions about this process, please send them to board@lists.plone.org.