[Monotone-devel] Summit brainstorming

[Nathaniel Smith]

http://venge.net/monotone/wiki/MtnSummit suggests significant interest
in doing this, so, no time like the present... let's see if we can
figure out any more details.

Length: this is perhaps the most important question.  How _long_
should this thing be?  Two options that come to mind:
  2-3 days: fits in a weekend, probably easier for peopple to find
    the time (get leave from work, etc.), probably easier to find a
    space (e.g., Bar Camps seem quite able to find businesses that are
    happy to host random hackers for a weekend; probably not so much
    during the week when they want to, you know, use their offices to
    get work done).  OTOH, it is sort of dumb to cross the Pacific for
    a 2 day event -- you spend more time in airplanes than actually
    in the event!
  6-7 days: Probably one would organize this as 2.5-3 days of sprint,
    then a day off to hang out/recuperate/let ideas gel, then another
    2.5-3 days of sprint.  Might still be too long to maintain focus
    (anyone who's actually done sprints have any intuition here?), and
    potentially harder for people to attend and harder to find a space
    to work in.  (If arranged in two pieces, people who are shorter on
    time could potentially attend only the first or second half.)
There are also intermediate options, like, for instance -- 4-5 days!
But that might to too long to go straight through, but not long enough
to take a break.  Or maybe I'm just crazy and this break idea is
silly.


Timing: _When_ should this thing be?  Playing around with
  farecompare.com, it looks like fares all go up in the summer (in
  fact, it can cost more right now to buy a ticket for July than for
  November, even though July has far more lead time).  November is
  probably too soon, though, and December has holidays... so I guess
  January/February is the time frame we should be looking at?  Is that
  possible for people?


Location: _Where_ should this thing be?  This is in some way the
  easiest question, because it doesn't matter too much... so long as
  we can find a space to work, ideally one with wifi and whiteboards.


Once we have some rough ideas for the above, we can start looking at
pinning down timing more precisely, figuring out what sort of budgets
we would need for different options, and seeing how those budgets
compare to reality...

One more note: it appears we have a huge cluster of people in Germany
(or relatively nearby), and especially people working on front-ends
and integration stuff.  Just because we're trying to plan a big event
with a few months lead time, doesn't mean you guys couldn't get on
trains and hang out for a weekend sooner ;-).

-- Nathaniel

-- 
"The problem...is that sets have a very limited range of
activities -- they can't carry pianos, for example, nor drink
beer."