[Scale-planning] SCALE 2008 postmortem?

[Russell Miller]

Matt Jones wrote:
> I was looking around at the scale site for a place to add comments about 
> the event. I found none, so I decided to post on the scale list.
> 
> Anyway, I think it would be great, if there was a way for people to add 
> their constructive criticism about the 2008 event. Since I may be 
> kicking off the start of a potentially interesting post, I might as well 
> add my recommendations.

Last year I pretty much ripped the SCALE guys a new one regarding how it 
  could be improved - SCALE 5x was kind of a waste of time, and I told 
them exactly how I thought it was and how it could be improved.  AFter a 
little understandable umbrage, they listened, and I am pleased to say 
that this year they knocked it out of the park.  As I've told a few 
people "privately", while there was definitely room for improvement on a 
few things, they fixed every single one of my complaints.  The seminars 
were highly technical but not too much so and I did not feel like I was 
trying to be sold anything, the registration line was short, the rooms 
were not crowded.  This time it was not a waste of time and I don't feel 
like I wasted the registration fee.

The few suggestions for improvement that I had were not structural.  One 
of my suggestions is a "linux in business" track, which consists of some 
training for techies to be better at business, and vice versa.  I also 
think that having some way for businesspeople to be more involved 
*without* trying to market to us or sell us stuff might be cool.  Like a 
talk "So you have a small business, what can linux do for you?", or 
"care and feeding of techies", or something like that.  Drawing 
decisionmakers would be good for the seminar and for the expo floor - as 
long as we can do it in such a way that attracts them while still making 
it clear that they're on *our* turf this time - ie, bridge building goes 
both ways.

But that's really here nor there.  Kudos for listening, and kudos for 
successfully fixing it.  Keep it up and maybe I'll go next year. And 
maybe not, but it's certainly not anything you guys did.

--Russell