Org mailing list

[comotion AT delta9.pl]

Hi all,

From the event in 2017 we learned that the conference is doable even when 
half the organizers fail and drop out, however it requires extraordinary 
effort from the remainder, and that attendance will suffer because to ensure 
growing attendence it is not enough to mail out to mailing lists and plaster 
up 100 posters.

Meanwhile, the lack of event in 2018 should have taught us that the 
organization is not sufficiently strong that we can hope to succeed without a 
strong process and good communication.

At this juncture I think it's important to call attention to how poor our 
progress towards organizing this years' conference has been these past 6 
months.

In particular, we have failed to invite enough speakers, market the 
conference and keep critical things like wiki and frab running.

There is nobody to blame, and if anything I blame myself for thinking that a 
single communication channel ,shoring up meeting discipline and insisting on 
clear decisions would be enough for us to carry through on our decisions 
between meetings.

We have a common set of goals and ideals as well as a broad contact base, but 
a woefully inadequate organization culture. If we are to change this we need 
to be willing to self-reflect on the negatives.

We lack clear direction and division of labours, methods to keep each other 
accountable, marketing competence and IT admins that care about the uptime of 
organization-critical infrastructure. 

The most important work required for a successful event falls between chairs 
and becomes noone's responsibility, and it is rooted in a kind of 
anti-leadership and a lack of institutional memory.

We have 3.4 months left of the 12 months we set out to organize this 
conference on. We have 5 speakers booked, an unclear program comittee with no 
discernable decision structure, no wiki, no promotion of the event, and no 
frab to enrol speakers in.

It is certainly possible to shore this situation up and land FSCONS in 
November. Indeed, most of the program in 2017 was booked August and finalized 
in September. I do not doubt our ability to have enough great volunteers for 
the actual event to run a smooth conference.

However, most of the organizational work involved fell in 2017 on two people 
and despite a smoothly organized conference with in my opinion quality 
speakers, attendence wasn't stellar. 

In the end, aren't we organizing this conference because we hope it will be 
relevant as a counterbalance in these times which have a dark outlook for 
democracy and freedom of expression?

That relevance depends on attendence.

As much as it pains me to suggest this, wouldn't it be better for us to 
postpone the event to a different year?
This would allow us to reorganize ourselves and have a chance at success 
another time.


-Kacper