Sprints/Promo/2011/Planning

The 2011 Promo Team sprint is from 6-8 May 2011 in Southampton. We are fortunate to be sponsored by the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton as hosting partner for this sprint.

This page tracks organisation, tasks to be done at the sprint and provides information for attendees.

Attendance

Confirmed Attendees

Your accommodation is booked for you. If you have not already done so, book your travel now.

Name	Travel costs		Arrive day/time	Depart day/time	Room booking				Special Food Reqs	Room is booked for you
	Estimated	Actual			Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
Stuart Jarvis	0	0	Always here	Always here	-	-	-	-	-	N/A
Justin Kirby	US$900		Friday 11:45am	Monday 8am	-	Y	Y	Y	None	YES
Pau Garcia i Quiles	200 - 250 EUR		Friday morning (Gatwick)	Sunday afternoon (Gatwick)	-	Y	Y	-		YES
Damien Tardy-Panis	~150€	250€	Friday ~12H30 in SOU	Sunday ~12H00 from SOU	-	Y	Y	-		YES
Agustín Benito Bethencourt	100 - 150 €	200.87 € + L37.90	Thursday May 5th 20:30 AGP-LGW	Monday May 9th 13:30 LGW-MAD	Y	Y	Y	Y	None	YES
Claudia Rauch	150 EUR	136 EUR + 67 GBP	THU 17:49 Southampton Central	SUN 12:25 from Southampton Central	Y	Y	Y	-	no fish	YES
Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen	50 EUR		Friday 19:18 (train)	Sunday 20:25 (train)	-	Y	Y	Y		YES
Lukas Dzikaras	200 Eur		Thurs (LGW 1425 - should be Soton by 1700)	Monday	Y	Y	Y	Y	None	YES

Remote Attendees

The following people are unable to attend in person, but may be able to participate via IRC, instant messaging, Skype etc.

We will use #kde-promo on freenode for online chat during the sprint

Note, this is a public page. If you're not comfortable putting contact info here, please mail Stuart Jarvis instead.

Name	Timezone (relative UTC)	IRC Nick	GChat Nick	Skype Name	Other IM
Oriol Mirosa	-	-	-	-	-
Aaron Seigo	-	aseigo	-	-	-
Carl Symons	-	-	-	-	-
Thomas Thym	-	-	-	-	-
Javier Llorente	UTC +2 (CEST)	javier	-	-	-
Vivek Prakash	UTC -4 (EDT)	vivek_	-	-	-
Marc Deop	-	-	-	-	-

Travel

Getting to UK

Airports:

• Southampton (IATA:SOU) with links to Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Paris-CDG and a few others
• London Heathrow (LHR) links to Southampton via the London Underground and then a 1:20 train journey
• London Gatwick (LGW) links to Southampton via trains (a few direct, most with one change)
• Bournemouth (BOH) airport has links to Spain, Portugal and Italy and is about 1 hour from Southampton by train.

Port:

• Portsmouth ferry port provides access to various ports in northern France and is then a short train journey from Southampton

International Trains:

• You could take the Eurostar through the channel tunnel to London and then the London Underground and train to Southampton. However, this is unlikely to be the cheapest option.

Travel in UK

There are a few options. Trains are normally your best bet.

Southampton from Heathrow Airport

Total journey time to Southampton station is about 2 hours, maybe a bit more if you have to wait for the train at Waterloo.

You can also check buses to see if there is one at a good time for you (direct and a bit cheaper).

Get to London

From Heathrow you can take either:

• 'Underground'/'Tube' (metro) to Piccadilly Circus (Piccadilly Line),

then Bakerloo line to Waterloo - you need a zones 1-6 single

• Heathrow Express to Paddington, then you need a zone 1 single on the

underground to Waterloo (take the Bakerloo line)

Tube map (PDF) to make some sense of that. Heathrow is in square 1E; Paddington 3C; Piccadilly Circus and Waterloo both in 5D

The tube is massively cheaper and recommended.

Get from London to Southampton

Train from London Waterloo to Southampton Airport Parkway (or Southampton Central, both are on the same bus route, but Airport Parkway probably makes more sense if you come to/from the university directly). The trains go about every 30 minutes, normally the destination is 'Weymouth' on the departure boards in the station, but they also list the stops.

Tickets

Heathrow express is £32 return, you can book online. You can also buy on the day from a machine at the airport station. The Underground part for that will cost you £4 each way.

Or if you go the whole way on the tube, it will cost £5 each way and take about 10 minutes longer. Take the tube.

Tube tickets you just buy from machines or office at the stations. Tube and Heathrow Express will be signposted in the airport (or ask).

For the train to Southampton, I normally use thetrainline.com - normally you can select to pick up the tickets from a machine in the station (it should be cheaper to buy in advance). When you enter your journey times on thetrainline.com you want 'Offpeak return' if available. Outward ticket is valid all day after 10am on the day you specify and the return is valid on any train during the following month, after 10am. If you travel is before 10am either way you'll need an 'anytime return' which will be about double the cost.

From a quick check, offpeak is £37.20 return; peak £68.80

Southampton from Gatwick

This is easy. Just visit thetrainline.com and get a ticket from Gatwick to Southampton Central.

When you enter your journey times on thetrainline.com you want 'Offpeak return' if available. Outward ticket is valid all day after 10am on the day you specify and the return is valid on any train during the following month, after 10am. If you travel is before 10am either way you'll need an 'anytime return' which will be about double the cost. Off peak seems to be around £44.80 at present. Singles are also available and may be cheaper, but these are tied to specific trains, so if your flight gets delayed you are basically screwed.

Typically, you will need to change trains once, occasionally two times, on the journey. Occasionally there are direct trains.

Travel in Southampton

The university operates a decent bus service, uni-link. The bus you want depends on your entry point:

• Southampton Central Station: Take the U1A to both the hotel and the university
• Southampton Airport Parkway: Take the U1C to both the hotel and the university

The stops you need are:

• University: Highfield Interchange
• Hotel: Bannister Road/Archers Road on the Avenue

Bus network map (PDF) shows the routes. The best one is the U1. Buses (and bus stops) are labelled U1C for buses on this route going in the direction of the city centre and U1A for buses going in the direction of the airport.

Accommodation from the bus stops

Here is a map showing the accommodation (Bannister Guest House) location relative to buses.

Venue location on University Campus

We are hosted by ECS. The University of Southampton Campus Map shows the ECS building (number 53) to the top left and also the uni-link interchange where you should get off the bus.

Venue

The University of Southampton department of Engineering and Computer Science can offer us rooms, WiFi access and free lunches. They would also to hold a joint event including a presentation to students about KDE, probably on the Friday at some point.

More info on Southampton as a city is on Wikipedia.

Accommodation

Bannister Guest House. If you are in the 'confirmed' group above then your accommodation has been booked for you for the nights indicated.

Banister Guest House 11 Brighton Road on Banister Road Southampton SO15 2JJ

Accommodation is in single ensuite rooms and breakfast is included.

Free WiFi is provided.

We need to make arrangements for people arriving after 2100, which may be for those of us arriving earlier to pick up your keys.

Those arriving on Friday should probably come straight to the university, then we can all head as a group to the accommodation.

Topics

Please feel free to add here. Sticking your name after the suggestion makes it easier in case we need to clarify what is meant :-)

• Short summary of contents from Press Training for communities at LCS (Claudia)
• Prepare for Desktop Summit (this would be insanely valuable on its own as

very little has happened on the KDE side so far)

• • Write press release/dot story for conference program announcement (Claudia)
  • Come up with a PR timeline with concrete dates and ideas for press releases (Claudia)
  • find people who will blog (Claudia)
  • Update the KDE Press Pack
  • IRC meetup with William from GNOME to discuss PR ideas and plan (Claudia)
• Identify top KDE strengths/features, that could be used in promotion (Lukas)
• Get some stats, that could help to showing the scale of KDE (larger projects gets more attention in the press) (Lukas)
• Join the Game (Supporting Membership program) needs a big push
• How can we promote more active and productive contributions? (Lukas)
  • Write more text for redesigned website (looks empty, doesn't explain enough) (Claudia)
  • Come up with concrete ideas how to promote it (interviews, member meetups etc?) (Claudia)
• Making the most of the Promo Booklet - we have it, now how can we best use it?
• Create some wiki pages for important repeatable promo tasks
  • Create content explaining to other people in KDE how to access the skills and services of the Promo team
  • Ensure we have an up to date page with boilerplate slides for use at conferences, LUG meetings, etc to introduce people to KDE so people don't have to reinvent the wheel every time
  • A page for all things related to conferences that people might need, like having all source files for flyers, stickers, install media, etc in one spot
  • Organize pages for major initiatives like ISMP ("Join the game") and the upcoming corporate sponsorship campaign
  • General cleanup
  • Clear messages to KDE presenters/users about live CD/DVD options
  • Youtube ads, new stories, etc. linked and useful as a resource
  • Shop/Wiki: KDE gear for sale, SVG images for printing, booklet for printing
  • Potential improvements to live CD/DVDs, as suggested by Thomas Thym [1]
  • Survey - discussed on the promo list previously, also on Etherpad: survey users about perceptions, usage, survey developers about where to add promo value? (sprint a good time to get survey(s) ready)
  • Make it easy for would be grass roots promoters to get the resources they need (Stuart Jarvis)
• (pgquiles) Get better exposure and more involvement for Windows/Mac efforts. For both users and developers. Non-Linux platforms badly need more developers, and Windows and Mac could bring many new developers in.
• (pgquiles) "Sell" (advertise, not $$$) kdesupport, kdelibs, kdepimlibs and calligralibs (former kofficelibs) to third-parties as just one more module to Qt. Important: commercial support. See my mail to the kde-promo list for more info.
• Team building....in other words: meet each other in person, drink beers

(or whatever you prefer), hang out

• Pushing KDE EDU (esp. at schools)
• Discuss the functioning of the promo/marketing teams and how we can improve in the future (tasks, responsibilities, communication, decisionmaking)
• KDE.News - editor meeting and discussion of staffing
• Commercial contents in KDE website: the idea is to make a proposal to KDE about why, how and when we should include contents related with companies and vendors that ship, collaborate in the development, support, etc KDE
  • Strategy disscussion
  • Action Plan
  • Roadmap

Initial organisation chart

This is no longer relevant - relevant info migrated above.

Name	Travel costs		Arrive day/time	Depart day/time	Hotel nights required					Share room?	Special Food Reqs	Confirm room booking?
	Estimated	Actual			Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun	Mon
Stuart Jarvis	0	0	Always here	Always here	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Oriol Mirosa	US$900	Not attending			-	Y	Y	Y	-	OK		N
Justin Kirby	US$900		Friday morning/afternoon	Monday morning	-	Y	Y	Y	-	-		Y
Pau Garcia i Quiles	200 - 250 EUR		Friday morning (Gatwick)	Sunday afternoon (Gatwick)	-	Y	Y	-	-	OK		Y
Aaron Seigo	~300 EUR	Not attending			-	Y	Y	Y	-	OK		N
Carl Symons	US$1000	Not attending	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	N
Marc Deop(Damnshock)	150€				-	Y	Y	-	-	OK
Damien Tardy-Panis	~150€		Friday morning/afternoon	Sunday afternoon	-	Y	Y	-	-	OK		Y
Thomas Thym	~300 EUR	Not attending			-	-	-	-	-	-		N
Javier Llorente	~200 EUR	Not attending			-	-	-	-	-	-		N
Agustín Benito Bethencourt	100 - 150 €	200.87 € + L37.90	Thursday May 5th 20:30 AGP-LGW	Monday May 9th 13:30 LGW-MAD	Y	Y	Y	Y	-	OK		Y
Claudia Rauch	150 EUR				Y	Y	Y	-	-	-		Y
Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen	50 EUR				-	Y	Y	Y	-	OK		Y