Dear Joachim et al, a few thoughts on your criteria for a Smalltalk industry conference, FWIW, mostly arising from my ESUG 2011 preparatory research. Joachim Tuchel wrote:
* Speakers have to provide relevant (from the point of view of a Smalltalk legacy project) content. It doesn't necessarily have to be new / exciting content, but relevant to today's Smalltalk projects. In big corporations, these often need to catch up with technologies that were considered bleeding edge 10 years ago. But still they are relevant for these projects. This is not to say that newer topics should be kept out of an industry conference, but they should be introduced in a way that put them in perspective of such a project.
This is the most important point to me. If your aim is a compelling case for sizable numbers of legacy project attenders, the "why should you attend" question is best answered by a mix of experience reports from commercial projects and topic talks that have relevance to introducing some no-longer-bleeding-edge technology to an existing project, e.g. to its evolving requirements. Like you, I think some bleeding edge topics add value, but only if the above are met.
* It should be during normal working season, not in the summer or winter holidays
When preparing ESUG 2011, I did an analysis of attendance at prior conferences, both totals and specifically looking at attendees from the non-academic world. _Within_ _that_ _range_ (mid-August up to mid-September, the latter being outside the holiday season by most definitions), there was not the correlation your point would suggest; au contraire, the best numbers seemed to cluster round the traditional dates. However the effect was not strong (and of course, interacted with many other factors) and it could be that comparison with something well away from the holiday season would show a different effect. I also did anecdotal research which comments on both this and your next point. ...
* It must take place on a weekday between tuesday and thursday. Only Geeks stay until like to travel home on friday evening or even stay until saturday morning.
... This is only one example of personal and country/culture effects. Some people indeed want Tuesday to Thursday. Others want the convenience of starting or ending on a weekend. Some want holiday season so they can piggy-back holiday before or after the conference - just on a weekend or a whole other week. Camp Smalltalkers, of course, want their weekend. Others of course, very much don't want that. The when of holiday season also varies: America has less annual holiday than the UK or Europe, and that affects when they think 'holiday season' starts and ends. To sum up that para: it is not only Greek Smalltalkers who do not conform to your rule. :-) There is no one right answer for the Smalltalk comunity and whatever you choose you will lose as well as gain. Such data as I know suggests that the kind of conference that ESUG is seems to suit its typical date, commercial as well as academically, at least as against small variations of them. IIRC, the ST vendor conferences choose much different dates (e.g. late May or early December). As I expect you know, avoiding dates that are close to some other event important to some segment of the audience can also be quite a task. Mere length is an issue. the data suggests ESUG's week-long conference (plus weekend for Camp Smalltalkers) derives more gain than loss from its in/near-holiday-season dates; the calculation for a shorter one could differ. Smalltalk solutions usually puts its three days at the start of a weekend, as it is doing this year, sometimes at the end of a weekend. Offhand, I do not recall an StS in the middle of a week. The start or end week dates have certainly suited me in the past, and I assume it suits at least some others or STIC would have been pressed to change things. And, of course, mere length increases cost (both financial cost and opportunity cost). There are Smalltalkers who do not find it easy to leave work alone for a day, and told me they'd attend some ESUG 2011 morning or afternoon sessions if and only if the venue were close enough that they could also be in the office that day. That is an extreme case, but informative. Length and location interact in various ways. One feature of start-week dates is the cheaper transatlantic air fares you can get by travelling out on Saturday - often more than enough to counterbalance the cost of accommodation for that night. Some commercial attenders are cash-rich and time-poor and for them that is not a consideration. Others have cost-related levels of approval where it does matter. Weekend also affects perceived length: if a transatlantic conference starts Tuesday, the employer loses the Monday travelling time, whereas if it starts on Monday, the employee loses it. That can affect whether the employer wants to send them (always negatively) and whether the employee wants to go (negatively or positively: I have several times arranged journeys to visit friends I seldom see over the weekend and so break up travel, making reaching a distant conference less arduous). To a degree, the same thing applies to nearer conferences.
* It must take place in a country where many businesses use Smalltalk.
The ESUG data certainly suggests that having a sizable Smalltalk group near at hand is a driver.
There may be people from other countries, but few of them.
Not true of ESUG but I assume you're thinking it will be true of the kind of conference you have in mind.
If we want to meet people from several countries, we need a little road show that travels to two or three countries in Europe.
That reduces the cost to attendees by raising it to organisers - good if the conference can afford it. There is one downside to attenders - you meet fewer people outside the range you meet anyway at your national STUG and similar: the smaller individual meetings may have less buzz. That ends my comments. Here are my personal preferences, provided simply as a data point.: - I prefer start or end of week dates, for financial, flexibility, holiday-piggybacking and see-more-of-fellow-attenders reasons. In-holiday-season is neither a special plus nor a minus.. - All my time in Smalltalk, I've been on the time-rich, cash-poor side of the equation: as an employee, my task has always been to get persmission to spend the money, never to get permission for the time away; when a contractor, of course, I made my own time decisions and paid my own bills. HTH Niall Ross ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com ______________________________________________________________________