Plone Conference 2011 Evaluation of Proposals
Two proposals have been received and are available for consideration.
The 2011 Plone Conference will be held in San Francisco, CA. For more information, please see the announcement.
The complete proposals are available for historical review:
San Francisco Proposal (PDF, 1.2MB) São Paulo Proposal (PDF, 250KB)
Following on this page is the original call for proposals.
Schedule
The schedule and process for selecting the venue for Plone Conference 2011 will be very similar to our successful 2010 process. Here's the schedule:
- November 2, 2010: Call for proposals released
January 7, 2011: Proposals due!
- January 8-17, 2011: Plone Foundation review of proposals & due diligence with bid teams
- January 17-24, 2011: Plone community voting on qualified proposals
- End of January, 2011: Plone Conference 2011 location announced!
- Sometime in September-October, 2011: Plone Conference!
Introduction
This document is the call for proposals to host Plone Conference 2011. This document contains some more specific guidance on the elements of a conference proposal, conference requirements, locations, and the schedule for the Plone Conference 2011 selection process.
Past Plone conferences have been held in Europe or North America, but we welcome and encourage bids from anywhere in the world.
For a detailed report from past Plone Conference organizers with lots of detail on logistics and organizing tips, see Jon Stahl's "lessons learned" document from Plone Conference 2006 and Astra Fowden's "An Organiser's View" document from Plone Conference 2010.
Conference Vision and Goals
Plone conferences are the annual gathering of the worldwide Plone community. They are an opportunity for the vast and diverse Plone community to forge new relationships, catch up with old friends, learn from each other, and recharge the wellsprings of creativity and innovation that power the Plone community process.
A great Plone conference will offer useful and engaging presentations for a wide variety of attendees. As you develop your conference proposal, please pay special attention to:
- How you will attract new-to-Plone site builders and integrators.
- How you will reach out to both our "traditional" user segments (nonprofits/NGOs, educational, government, intranets), as well as to emerging customers (e.g., enterprise, corporate, publishing sites).
- How you will encourage presentations and plan events that are helpful for both programmers and non-programmers.
- How you can strive to keep the conference costs low enough for students and self-employed consultants/designers to attend.
Required elements of a Plone Conference hosting proposal
- Information about your proposed venue: capacity, rooms, multimedia facilities/support, etc.
- Plan for providing reliable wireless internet access for conference attendees.
- Information about logistics, accomodations, etc in your proposed location.
- How you plan to structure the conference and design the agenda, and how you will engage the Plone community in the process of creating the conference.
- Conference marketing plan.
A complete conference budget, including all costs and revenue.
- Be sure to consider and explain how you will manage cashflow; you will almost certainly need to put down money before sponsorship & registration dollars come in.
About your team
- Key people who will lead your effort and staff the conference. Do you have enough people to do the grunt-work before and during the conference?
- Your team's history with and connection to the Plone community, including past Plone events you attended and have helped organize.
- Other past event organizing experience.
- Estimated cost per person for the conference - keep in mind that affordability is a key issue for many Plone community members. A good target is US$350-450/person.
Plone conference requirements
Held between mid-September and mid-November
- Avoid scheduling conference events during major religious or national holidays. For example, Yom Kippur, the Jewish High Holy days, sometimes falls in October. (Dates vary each year; check a calendar of religious holidays.)
- Also see http://plone.org/events/potential-conference-conflicts for community-contributed dates that may conflict with the conference.
- Venue must be able to accommodate 350-600 people.
- Venue must have plenary room capable of accommodating all attendees, plus breakout rooms for 2-3 tracks and informal gathering space.
- Reliable wireless access capable of accommodating all conference attendees simultaneously.
- Appropriate audio-visual support (e.g. sound, projectors, etc.)
- Venue located one hour or less from an international airport.
- Easy and affordable transportation between airport, conference venue and accommodations / food / nightlife. Conference attendees should not have to rent cars to get around.
- Snacks, coffee and lunch. (Breakfast is not a bad idea)
Suggested conference design
The Plone Foundation strongly encourages prospective conference organizers to include the following elements in their conference design
- 3 days of conference time
1-2 days before the conference for training classes (past conferences have had 3-4 classes of 15-75 people)
- Rationale: Surveys of conference attendees has shown that inexpensive pre-conference training classes are a major selling point for the conference, especially among newer Plonistas. In past years,or the past few years, starting with the Seattle conference, Joel Burton has offered to organize pre-conference trainings, financially independent of the conference, but with some logistical & marketing support from conference organizers. The Plone Foundation strongly encourages prospective conference organizers to continue offering pre-conference training classes that are designed to appeal to a broad range of prospective conference attendees.
- 2-3 days of sprint time after the conference; a separate, inexpensive, nearby venue is fine. Past post-conference sprints have had 50-150 people. Plan to recruit an experienced Plone community member as a sprint leader/organizer.
- A plan for videotaping as many conference sessions as possible (see http://ploneconference2010.blip.tv/ for last years conference presentations). Fast turnaround of the videos is preferable to longer, higher-quality post production. Live streaming would win many fans!
- Conferences consume a great deal of energy and generate a lot of waste; we encourage you to consider and explain how you can "green" your conference by: providing recycling; avoiding disposables; using recycled materials; minimizing or eliminating paper handouts; avoiding low-quality mass-produced "swag"; serving locally-produced, organic food, etc.
How to submit a proposal
If you are considering submitting a proposal, please email the Plone Foundation board of directors at board@plone.org. We'd like to hear from you early in the process so that we can offer advice and answer any questions you may have. We'll ask you to submit your final proposal via email in PDF or ODF format, to board@plone.org
Decision Process
The Plone Foundation Board of Directors bears ultimate responsibility for awarding the conference to a bid team. In the past, we have weighed Plone community input very heavily in making that decision, and we plan to continue that tradition. This year, the board will pre-qualify proposals to make sure they are complete and of high quality, and will present all qualified proposals to the community for voting.
Foundation Contribution
Starting with the 2008 conference, the Plone Foundation will collect 15% of registration costs from the conference to fund ongoing Foundation and community work. This will be collected after the conference. Please make sure to incorporate this into your budget.
Please note that this is the per-person registration costs only, we do not collect any percentage of other income areas (such as sponsorship, etc.).
Questions?
Please feel free to email the Plone Foundation board of directors with any questions. board@plone.org!