[LDAPCon 2015] Draft Call for Papers

[Stephen Quinney]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 05:44:23PM +0000, Andrew Findlay wrote:
> Here is the first draft of the call for papers.
> 
> Please read through and make suggestions.
> In particular, what do you think about the timetable for submissions?
> 

A few thoughts/comments from my experiences with organising previous
conferences.

* Setting a reasonably early deadline for submissions is a good
  idea. Once you have a few talks that you're happy to accept you can
  use them to publicise the event and get further speakers. This gets
  the ball rolling. For FLOSSUK we also always expect a few late
  submissions, it's best to be pragmatic and just accept that people
  are busy.

* If you have some regular attendees who are definitely going to give
  talks then get at least a title from them as soon as
  possible. Again, you can use this for publicity to get things going.

* Unless you know that someone is definitely coming, no matter what,
  don't accept more than a couple of talks from them. Their sudden
  absence due to illness or whatever would give you a big hole in the
  programme.

* Lightning talk sessions can be very good. They are a particularly
  good fit for the last session of the day when everyone is a bit
  weary. They are also a good way to encourage new people to get
  involved with giving talks when they might not like the idea of
  doing a longer talk if they're not accustomed to public speaking.

* It would be good to get all the basic information onto the website
  for the call of papers. Potential speakers will want to know the
  venue location, etc., I'm happy to help provide all the local
  information if you can give me write access to the website.


Stephen

-- 
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.