OctConf 2018 Notes: Difference between revisions

: We discussed the place, date, feee, and objective of OctConf 2019.

: For '''place''', CERN offered to host it again next year.  However, it was also suggested that we should try other places to meet new people and make it easier for people from far away, namely west coast  USA.  However, this also means more work since it's new logistics and other places have different costs. Seems like most contributions are European and flying them all to USA would be more expensive than flying the American developers to Europe.  CERN is also quite cheap.  Flying to Geneva from Europe is cheap, the rooms are free, and the CERN hotels are very affordable. It was also suggested to change place every two years or to come to CERN every two years with a new place each other year.  We decided to have a call for an organizer, with a deadline of 1st of May.  If no suitable option appears, then the place will be CERN. Rik will send out the call for organizer.

: The '''date''' for the conference in 2019 must happen during the second half of March or the first half of April, according to the organizers availability. If it happens at CERN, it must be after 17th of March to avoid the motor exposition.

: ----

: Because of free '''registration''', many registered people do not show. This makes organization difficult, we don't know how much coffee to order, how many people for the restaurants, or the size of the room. We will introduce a registration fee of ~ 20€ which then can be used to cover some costs of the social event. Other possibilities is a much higher fee which would include the accommodation since if attendees are coming, they would have to pay anyway.  However, it was decided against since they will only see the high cost and decide against coming.

: ----

: This years conference was pretty much a '''developers''' conference.  There was a total of 3 talks with all other time spent on discussing developer topics and coding.  It was discussed the issue of Octave visibility and that a user space could exist during OctConf, which would be one day for users to present their work to each other and have some workshops.  This could even happen at the same time as developers would meet on other rooms.  It was decided against, as there was not enough interest among the developers.  This makes organization simpler since we also only need a smaller room with a whiteboard.  There will be john's yearly talk about the state of Octave and Rik will make a more outreach talk, more sales pitch, showing what can be done with Octave and where it is being used.