asterisk users - Jun 2008 - Astricon question: four or five tracks?

We're busily churning away at creating the Astricon 
(http://www.astricon.net/) talk track this year, and it's been 
delayed by a problem that we've never had in years past: too many 
high-quality talk submissions.   Not a bad problem to have, but still 
a problem.

We have four tracks on the schedule:

  1) Business Track - this relates to things like creating business 
models around Asterisk, technologies that embed aspects of Asterisk 
into their platforms, discussions of open source in the marketplace, 
and new technologies that can be added to Asterisk for specific 
application delivery reasons, among other topics.

  2) Technology Track - Intro/Intermediate - Topics here range from 
basic introductions to Asterisk  as far as feature sets and 
capabilities, and even into the moderately challenging topics of 
introductions to embedded systems and case studies.

  3) Technology Track - Advanced - This includes more advanced 
implementation studies, protocol topics, new Asterisk features (LUA, 
for example), and inner workings of various Asterisk and third-party 
components.

  4) Technology Track - Call Center/Large Scale - More case studies 
here but focused on large-scale systems.  Carrier issues such as call 
recording, conferencing, clustering, and call center topics.


We have had an overwhelming number of top-notch technical submissions 
for talks this year, which has been GREAT.  Last year, we heard that 
there was a desire for even more technical tracks, so this year will 
fulfill that need.  But we're stuck - we have way more topics than we 
have slots in the 4-track schedule, and so we've hit an impasse. 
We've had to start looking at cutting some really interesting topics 
because we simply don't have the space in the schedule.  This is a 
terrible position, and so we're looking for what we can do to fix the 
problem.

The obvious choice is "Well, why don't you add a fifth track?"  So
that is why I'm putting this message out.  It's possible for us to 
add a fifth advanced technical track, but that would mean that there 
would be at any one time FIVE talks happening, four of which would be 
technical, and three of which would be classified as "advanced".  It 
will certainly be the case that there are overlapping areas of 
interest.  Even with a fifth track, we are STILL going to have to 
turn down a few of the requests in the queue because of lack of 
slots, and at this point extending the conference another day is a 
very difficult option due to the hotel scheduling which is done far 
in advance.  We also had some feedback from years past that a two-day 
conference seemed to suit everyone's schedules better, so this may be 
some unintended consequences from the compression.

Our question to the community is:

      Is it too much to have 5 talk tracks at Astricon?

Our initial instinct is "Go ahead and do it" but this does sound like 
a question that should be posed to the people who will attend.  Your 
opinion would be valued if you could take the time to reply, but 
please try to summarize at the top of any replies with a "Yes" or 
"No" (even if you have more things to say) so I can keep a bit closer 
eye on the reply volumes.  Feel free to reply on or off list.

JT

-- 
--
John Todd              jtodd at digium.com
Asterisk Open Source Community Director

Hello,

I would recommend that if you do add another tech track that you spend
a great deal of effort trying to make sure that sessions that would
appeal to similar audiances are not done at the same time. This has
happened a few times in past Astricons and it's always a tough choice
for attendees that are interested in both talks to choose between
them.

To this end, I might suggest even video-recording the presentations to
be replayed at night during the conference(or possibly on the web) so
attendees can see what they missed if they were unable to sit in on a
presentation.

One other suggestion I might make is that after 6PM I think there
might be a benefit from loosly structured BOF or discussion sessions.
There is only so much Red Bull and Alcohol you can drink in the code
zone. I quickly organized two after-hours discussion sessions during
last year's Astricon and actually had a few dozen people involved in
each one, it would be great if this could be done on a larger scale
and officially organized.

Thanks,

MATT---

On 6/12/08, John Todd <jtodd at digium.com> wrote:
>
>  We're busily churning away at creating the Astricon
>  (http://www.astricon.net/) talk track this year, and it's been
>  delayed by a problem that we've never had in years past: too many
>  high-quality talk submissions.   Not a bad problem to have, but still
>  a problem.
>
>  We have four tracks on the schedule:
>
>   1) Business Track - this relates to things like creating business
>  models around Asterisk, technologies that embed aspects of Asterisk
>  into their platforms, discussions of open source in the marketplace,
>  and new technologies that can be added to Asterisk for specific
>  application delivery reasons, among other topics.
>
>   2) Technology Track - Intro/Intermediate - Topics here range from
>  basic introductions to Asterisk  as far as feature sets and
>  capabilities, and even into the moderately challenging topics of
>  introductions to embedded systems and case studies.
>
>   3) Technology Track - Advanced - This includes more advanced
>  implementation studies, protocol topics, new Asterisk features (LUA,
>  for example), and inner workings of various Asterisk and third-party
>  components.
>
>   4) Technology Track - Call Center/Large Scale - More case studies
>  here but focused on large-scale systems.  Carrier issues such as call
>  recording, conferencing, clustering, and call center topics.
>
>
>  We have had an overwhelming number of top-notch technical submissions
>  for talks this year, which has been GREAT.  Last year, we heard that
>  there was a desire for even more technical tracks, so this year will
>  fulfill that need.  But we're stuck - we have way more topics than we
>  have slots in the 4-track schedule, and so we've hit an impasse.
>  We've had to start looking at cutting some really interesting topics
>  because we simply don't have the space in the schedule.  This is a
>  terrible position, and so we're looking for what we can do to fix the
>  problem.
>
>  The obvious choice is "Well, why don't you add a fifth
track?"  So
>  that is why I'm putting this message out.  It's possible for us to
>  add a fifth advanced technical track, but that would mean that there
>  would be at any one time FIVE talks happening, four of which would be
>  technical, and three of which would be classified as "advanced".
It
>  will certainly be the case that there are overlapping areas of
>  interest.  Even with a fifth track, we are STILL going to have to
>  turn down a few of the requests in the queue because of lack of
>  slots, and at this point extending the conference another day is a
>  very difficult option due to the hotel scheduling which is done far
>  in advance.  We also had some feedback from years past that a two-day
>  conference seemed to suit everyone's schedules better, so this may be
>  some unintended consequences from the compression.
>
>  Our question to the community is:
>
>       Is it too much to have 5 talk tracks at Astricon?
>
>  Our initial instinct is "Go ahead and do it" but this does sound
like
>  a question that should be posed to the people who will attend.  Your
>  opinion would be valued if you could take the time to reply, but
>  please try to summarize at the top of any replies with a "Yes"
or
>  "No" (even if you have more things to say) so I can keep a bit
closer
>  eye on the reply volumes.  Feel free to reply on or off list.
>
>  JT
>
>  --
>  --
>  John Todd              jtodd at digium.com
>  Asterisk Open Source Community Director
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com --
>
>  asterisk-users mailing list
>  To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
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>

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 7:57 PM, Matt Florell <astmattf at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello,
snip
>
> To this end, I might suggest even video-recording the presentations to
> be replayed at night during the conference(or possibly on the web) so
> attendees can see what they missed if they were unable to sit in on a
> presentation.
snip

I was very surprised that presentations were not video taped or at the
least recorded at the last Astricon.

I agree with Matt, choosing between even different topics or tracks
can be difficult let alone similar topics.

Recording almost seems like a no brainer, this is Asterisk after all.
All attendees could probably cough up a little extra for the DVD if
need be.  It could also be sold I guess, but I would rather see the
videos on YouTube or AsteriskTV or whatever free outlet.

Thanks,
Steve
> Thanks,
>
> MATT---
>

John Todd wrote:
> Is it too much to have 5 talk tracks at Astricon?
Do the extra tracks.  With a recording to review at night or online that 
nullifies the problem of picking.  Really, with most presentations 
having slides all you need is fair video but excellent audio.  How quick 
could this be turned around?

In addition can you extend the hours of the vendor area.  Last year it 
closed almost right after the talks.  You had to pick between the talks 
and seeing what was new.