Open Source Design Summit 2018 - Location

[elioqoshi]

After some talks at 34c3 and FOSDEM I think it's time to kick off the discussions to start planning the Open Source Design Summit this year. While the last one was quite productive, we might want to adapt the format to our needs. In the meantime, a great first step would be to settle for a location for the 2018 summit. Let's add proposals and votes in the following

[elioqoshi]

Proposal: Tirana, Albania

I'm definitely biased, but the more time passes, the more I'm convinced that we need to start growing communities which aren't part of the international spotlight. While cities like Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam might be very accessible, it is sad to see that always everything revolves around these scenes. With the whole Ura team of 7 being now in Tirana, it would be also a reasonable thing to do logistically.

Price Wise, Connections to Tirana might be difficult and no train connections are available. However, the ease of venues, social activities and prices for food and accommodation makes totally up for it.

Hostels start from 10 EUR/person per night
Hotels start from 25 EUR/room
A nice hotel would probably be around 40-60/room
a Taxi from the airport to anywhere in the city is around 12 EUR
a nice lunch/dinner would cost around 4-10 EUR / person
junk food: 1-4 EUR / person
beer: 1-3 EUR
coffee: 0.5-1 EUR (the coffee is really good btw)

There are also some vegan places which are good and catering for the event is also in place as we have organized a ton of events in the past and have figured out all logistics by now.

There are direct flights from Frankfurt, Vienna, Rome, Ljubljana, Budapest, Amsterdam, Paris and London.

Venue	Cost
Open Labs Hackerspace	100 EUR/day or maybe free
Talent Garden Coworking Space	~100 EUR/day

While we would need anyone's help with organizing sessions and similar, we can take care of all logistics here.

What do you think? Any other suggestions?

[jancborchardt]

Is there any organization (maybe local, maybe open source) which could sponsor? In Berlin we had/have Wikimedia, who sponsored stickers and such, as well as potentially 5 hotel rooms (either none or only one was used though cause it was late). Mozilla maybe?

[elioqoshi]

Pretty sure that we will be able to find sponsors for the equivalent of what Wikimedia sponsored. Ura should be able to take on some costs as well eventually.

[elioqoshi]

No other comments here? I remember there was a lot of enthusiasm last year, did that fade away? :)
I'd love to do another summit, even if it's just 10 of us. I think we can pull off a great one this year as well.

[ei8fdb]

We spoke at 34c3 about the next summit. I remember Elio suggesting Tirana.

I suggested to him to put together a number of proposals - a large , a medium , a small venue proposal with venues, their agreement in principal, important things like that.

Right now flights (with 1 connection) are ~ £200 in September.

I also said I'd support his suggestion of Tirana. I can't guarantee yet that I'd be able to go.

The main thing is the ~ €100 p/day for venue. What concrete options are there to have that covered/supported?

Like I said, I'd support it, but it would be very helpful to see some more details covering - sponsorship, venues, accommodation.

[elioqoshi]

@ei8fdb I don't really know what other details might be needed. But yeah, worst case scenario, I can ask nicely at the hackerspace to host the summit for free (as in free beer). It should be able to host 20 people (or 25 even). For bigger venues, we would need to go to 3rd parties, which is no problem as well, but not in my direct control. In any case, we can take care of the venue and make sure no OSD budget goes into that.

@ei8fdb flights from London Luton start at 100GBP in September via WizzAir without any connection. That might be a good option.

Regarding Sponsorship, the local Ura team can take care of it. The plan is to leave the logistics to us (we have co-organized OSCAL 5x here) so attendees can focus on the meeting itself. Venue, Catering and Printing should not be OSD burden, I am sure we have good enough connections to get that going. Ura would be happy to cover some of the costs as well.

If we are lucky, we should be able to cover some accommodation as well, but that's more tricky.

So if people can cover their own flight/accommodation, everything else is easy for the local hosting team.

[ei8fdb]

I don't really know what other details might be needed. But yeah, worst case scenario, I can ask nicely at the hackerspace to host the summit for free (as in free beer).

That's exactly what I am saying you might need to think about. ;)
Would the Hackerspace agree to host it for free, if needed?

[elioqoshi]

Would the Hackerspace agree to host it for free, if needed?

Definitely. @marianaballa who does Communications for Ura is in fact the Chair woman of the hackerspace, she can file a request.

[victoria-bondarchuk]

I support this idea. Difficult to say in advance, but I hope to attend if nothing goes wrong. Thank you @elioqoshi for volunteering with this idea and Ura for organizing it! Let me know if there anything I could help with.

[jancborchardt]

What do the others think: @Incabell @jdittrich @simonv3 @belenbarrospena @dmichl @evalica? :)

[simonv3]

Round trip flights are not as awfully priced as I thought they would be for me. How expensive are train rides across Europe these days?

[elioqoshi]

Just a note: It's impossible to get to Albania via train, as there are simply are none :)
If you want to have an adventure, you can get a train to Bari or Brindisi, Italy and take a ferry from there to Durres, which is a 40min drive from Tirana. It's not convenient and probably not really cheaper than a flight, but might be fun if you are into that.

[dmichl]

Thanks @elioqoshi for kicking off and suggesting a new location! I love and support the idea but I'm most likely not going to be able to make it out to Albania this year unfortunately. It's not just Albania, I think if it were London or Berlin I might be able to make a trip (i'm traveling a lot already this year, and I don't believe I'll have the time/budget for another europe trip) - but too hard to tell right now... Which sucks overall because I would so very much love to see you all together.

[elioqoshi]

Completely understand! As I said, the generally higher flight prices completely balance out the cheaper accommodation and food prices. Maybe we can figure out supporting individuals in the future in some way if the main blocker is budget related.

[dmichl]

think we could do webex??

[elioqoshi]

We can try setting up some remote sessions I suppose

[elioqoshi]

Hey folks, Doodle is up for dates selection:
https://doodle.com/poll/p4c77mncdt2x534t

If you can make it, please choose the dates which work best for you.
If you are still unsure because of budget reasons, but would like to come, please fill it out as well.

As I said, the other folks at Ura and me will cover the logistics at least and if things go well, we might be even able to find travel sponsorship for some people. No promises yet.

@AnXh3L0 will also be able to work on the website as well. It could be in a similar fashion like last year, but with more details.

[elioqoshi]

Seems 2-4 November are the most popular dates. I will wait a little bit more before going ahead with that, depending on the interest from others.

[ghost]

Are there archives of how the previous event was organized?

[elioqoshi]

@dachary there are some issues in this repo. It has been pretty self-organized in an empirical way and we didn't really follow an agenda. We hope to have it more structured beforehand this time

I think we came to a decision of 2-4th November 2018.
This collides with OpenFest Bulgaria so please take that into account https://www.openfest.org/2017/en/2018/02/03/save-the-date-openfest-2018/
With so many events it would be impossible to find the perfect weekend in any case :)

Next step would be agreeing on the agenda