Delayed Friday Thought: Scotch on the Rocks '08
So with CFUNITED this week it started me thinking about ideas to put forward for SOTR '08.
So Ideas I have come up with (Some with help of others)
- Two tracks for Intermediate and Advanced users
- A Session that runs for the whole conference where as a group we build an application, along the way discuss frameworks/database/design patterns etc and have it as a great big pair programming session
- Would people pay more to help fly over some big names from other the world?
- After the first day, a drinking session or a trip to a tourist spot like Edinburgh castle?
- Would discounts for group bookings make it more viable for some
- Student discounts to help increase the user base?
Thats just a few ideas, what is everyone elses thoughts? As Andy has always said, it by developers for developers what do you want too see? What have other conferences had that was missing at scotch '07? Andy already has the feedback results and I think Andy, Stephen and I would agree with all the negative points, and we all learned a lot from it.
I will say this Scotch '08 will be bigger and better then '05 & '07 put together. Just post your thoughts in my comments and I promise to put each and everyone to the team and if more info is needed or more ideas added to it then you'll have the credit of some kind at scotch '08 ;)
So what makes some of the other conferences stand out? What could the Scotch team do?
I look forward to your thoughts and comments!!!!
Great ideas all. Some detailed thoughts:
1. I'd REALLY like this. It is what distinguished CF.objective and to a lesser extend Frameworks from all of the other conferences. It does require sufficient advanced developers though, which may be a little tough to pull together. As long as it is planned around this being maybe 10-20 people so there is no surprise that we don't have 50 or 100 gurus in a room it'd be really cool.
2. This would be amazing. I think you could pull together a set of presenters to take one piece at a time. It'd take some co-ordination but would really allow people to take something tangible away from the con.
3. I think people should pay a little more in general. As to whether to use it to fly some names over, I'd start by just trying to cover their hotel and treat it as a "cheap vacation" - and a chance to get to meet a whole other set of developers. Start selling this to presenters early and you should be able to get some of the bigger names.
4. A little bit of R&R is always good, so I think this would work well. Much of the value is always i the networking anyway.
5/6 I think a higher base price would allow for more discounts. If you tell everyone it is 80 quid with no discounts, some people would have preferred to hear it was 150 with 25 off for groups of 3 or more from the same organization.
Good to see all this thinking. My big suggestion would be to lock this stuff down as early as you can so you can start to set the stage for next year in terms of speakers and the like ASAP.
Looking forwards to it!