[OSDC Israel] Monthly OSDC meetings?

[Gabor Szabo]

Hi,

this list has been dormant for some time now but I'd like to start
using it again
for organizing OSDCs where the C stands for Club.

I am not yet talking about a Conference as that seems to be too much work but
monthly meetings of the Open Source Developers' Club.


The Linux, the Perl, Python, Ruby and PHP communities all used to have
regular monthly
meetings but in the last 6 month most of the language communities have
hardly had a
meeting. I know Shlomi Fish is organizing meetings in TAU but the
attendance is quite low.


I think part of the reason is that we don't have spare time in the
evenings to go to these meetings.
So I was wondering if it would be possible to have monthly meetings in
the morning hours?

Something like  9:30-1:00 would give time to 2-4 lectures with a break
in the middle.
People could still go to work after that so they won't "loose" a workday.

This would of course work only if these meeting are really seen as
contributing to your work
as opposed to just contributing without management acknowledging it.

So would you be able to convince your manager that not only does it
worth your time
(and maybe even you co-workers time) to attend such meetings but it
actually is important
to attend these talks?

For this naturally you would need to know what is the content but you
can actually suggest that
yourself. I am just giving ideas here:


  Content
 =========
As content I'd expect to have talks on the 4 main dynamic languages
(Perl, Python, Ruby and PHP), test automation, databases, XML processing,
Web applications etc. With the minimum requirement of being *open source*.


  Price
  =========
I can imagine this to be free of charge - using something like
LinkedIn for registration -
or at a relatively low fee. (100-200 NIS / event / person ?) using
PayPal for charging money.


  Location
  =========
We will need to have a venue where we can host the meeting - a
conference room for
40-60 people with projector and Internet connection. This should be at
some place
accessible for many people.

 Time
 ===========
As written earlier it would be monthly between 9:30-1:00

  Sponsors
 ===========
We might want to have a sponsor to cover the expenses of the event in
case we need to rent the place and in order to provide refreshment.


 Organizers/Speakers/Volunteers
 =========================
 Besides the speakers we will need people to help with the organization.


So what do you say ?

1) Would you be interested in this?
2) Would it be possible for you to come?
3) Paying 100-200 NIS ?

4) Do you know any company that might want to host such events ?
5) Any company that would want to sponsor such events ?

6) Would you be interested in giving a talk or otherwise helping with
the organization?

regards
  Gabor


-- 
Gabor Szabo                     http://szabgab.com/blog.html
Perl Training in Israel         http://www.pti.co.il/
Test Automation Tips        http://szabgab.com/test_automation_tips.html