YAPC::Europe 2013 “Future Perl”

Week minus 22. Call for venue 2014

13/03/13 13:51 by Andrey Shitov (‎ash‎)

Dear YAPC::Europe attendees and Perl lovers,

A brief statistics update first. At the moment there are 155 registered people coming from 22 countries and 36 monger groups. You may explore and see who is coming online.

Also, don't forget that the Early Bird ticket price is expiring in a couple of weeks. Buy now.

Talks submission is also still open. We encourage the speakers to submit talks as early as possible, as it will help us to compile and unveil the schedule earlier. Which, in turn, will attract new attendees and let us make the better conference.

Anyway, last week the YAPC::Europe Venue Committee has announced a Call for Venue. In other words, local groups of European Perl users are expected to apply for hosting the YAPC::Europe in 2014.

Let us take another small look at the backstage behind the conference organisation. The call for venue from the Committee means that it's time to think about the place where the next year's YAPC::Europe will take place. It can be one of the city where there was one of the previous conference, or a completely new one. For those willing to host a YAPC in their town it is a very exciting time. Believe us, we had experienced that four times :-)

The process of choosing the next venue is long enough, although it is almost not visible to the regular attendees. The groups of local Perl mongers submit a proposal, which includes a lot of details about the place they propose. Airports, hotels, public transport, visas, beer prices, restaurants, city infrastructure, Perl activities in the area, catering, additional activities, sponsors, financial things, — all that must be described in detail in the proposal. After receiving a proposal the Venue Committee prepares a big list of questions to the potential organisers, and then finally votes. The YAPC::Europe Foundation Board then approves the choice.

The next venue will be announced during the opening of this year's YAPC::Europe. In the closing session, the future organisers will tell you about their city and their ideas about the next conference (would you add this talk to your personal schedule on the site, the next organisers will be able to see your interest in their conference).

So, you see, in practice the organisers spend more than a year to prepare the three day conference. This year we are demonstrating the process of the preparation in our weekly-live-show newsletters. There's a full archive of them online.

Just a curious fact. Assuming about 300 attendees at the conference and a year of preparations, there will be more that one full day of organisers' attention for each attendee :-)

We are very excited to see you all in Kiev in August.