[ox] feedback to "ox2"
- From: Sven Guckes <guckes math.fu-berlin.de>
- Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002 05:27:05 +0100
oekonux conference
www.oekonux-konferenz.de
November 1st-3rd 2002
University of Technology
Berlin, Germany
some feedback for all of you...
i attended about half of the conference -
and spent the other half of the time with
some of the people at the cafes nearby.
thanks to all of you - it has been fun! :-)
i took a few notes on the final meeting on sunday.
there were lots more things mentioned, but i had
started out taking notes somewhere in the middle,
so i have missed quite a few. sorry.
i just want to send an initial feeback to the lists
to encourage you all to share your thoughts with us.
feel feel to add your views, correct others
and to basically disagree with all of it. ;-)
but hopefully this will save you some typing.
anyway - here are my notes:
+ general thanks - to the organizers, the referenten,
the helpers, and everyone who was involved.
the organization was well done. it was nice.
we had a good time and lots of fun. etc
special thanks to the people who helped
cleaning the coffe cups and dishes.
+ atmosphere: vivid - and yet less
stressy than the first conference.
+ conference paper:
complete program, including an abstract to each talk,
and a description to every speaker.
3D map of the university.
- conference paper:
the order of the names were alphabetical -
but then the names were sorted in by
Lastname and sometimes byf Firstname.
this slowed down the lookup of persons.
anti-spam email addresses which mentions
this fact in words for each address.
- connectivity:
no computers or terminals. these would have been
nice for many things: checking or sending email,
taking notes, giving feedback.
adding oneself to the list of participants.
- discussions: there too was also much talk
about how to talk and lead discussions.
some of the discussions required a knowledge of
the talk on the mailing lists in recent months.
+ food: soft drinks, coffee, apples and brownies.
- food: no more milk for the coffee at the end..
- maillist: archive not available in mailbox format.
this forces to read the archive via a web browser.
papers: a paper with hints about conferencing itself
would have been nice. where to get info (boards with
current program), food, whom to ask for accomodation,
where to get tickets for the ubahn etc
people: the gap between organizers and
participants was not very big - but it
would be nice if it was even less so.
- publicity: there could probably have been more
publicity in the newspapers and other media.
- rooms: spread too far apart: on ground
floor, and on sixth and eighth floor.
well, at least you get to see some more
of the mathematics building that way. ;-)
+ social event: took place at a cafe run by students nearby.
food was rice and tofu. music from "durch dick und duenn"
(through thick and thin) - see www.ddd-musik.com
- not enough seats for everyone to sit.
- speakers: some people with totally different views
were missing. maybe invite someone who will oppose
the cool ideas and will give a speech eg on why
free software or open source are bad things.
+ talks: good mix of theoretical and pratical stuff.
the printouts were quite informative. very nice.
- english and german separated the talks such that you
would think they are two conferences taking place.
- time: not enough time for workshops,
and not enough pauses in between talks.
(then again, adding more pauses,
and giving more time to workshops
would result in less talks and
workshops overall..)
- website: no pictures of the organizers or speakers.
seeing these beforehand would have made it easier to
recognize them in the audience and elsewhere much earlier.
- workshops: their descriptions were not enough
for making a decision on participating, and they
were too unstructured.
- wrapping it up. tell people where to go
after the conference. arrange for some
place to meet and for further feedback.
further ideas:
put the recordings of the talks online.
maybe someone can put them into text?
add links to each talk to the site of the speaker
so you can get more on feedback from his site.
ask all participants by email for their permissions
to send more info on the results of this conference.
send updates to additions like more papers, photos, and
recordings. add some info about the WOS conference, too.
request feedback to the organizers - either by
direct personal email or on the mailing lists.
... add your own suggestions, please!
too bad i have missed the talks of
jussi silvonen and michel bauwens.
the might before at the "black cafe"
was quite long... but fun also. :-)
chris from sheffield took quite a few
photos on his digicam - hopefully he'll
be posting the address to those soon.
and it would be nice to hear of all the
participants who got new ideas from the
conference and of the projects they would
like to get started by all of this.
hopefully we will see some of the results
of new projects at the next conference.
thanks everyone for a nice conference!
Sven Guckes
ps: written between 4am and 5am on Monday
morning - please forgive me for the typos
and the ill-versed comments.
________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.de/
Organisation: projekt oekonux.de