So, what we talked about at RoCoCo (French-Canadian Recent Changes Camp) was
having it somewhere in Boston that is near a lot of hotels/places to stay
and a bunch of restaurants (particularly vegetarian ones or a food court) in
case there is no budget for three days of food (which has nearly happened in
the past). I was thinking that downtown Boston might be better for that
(Northeastern, Emerson, Suffolk, BU and Simmons). My reservation about Tufts
is that there needs to be nearby lodging options at a bunch of different
price points and I don't know if that's available. Also it's kind of out of
the way from the Davis Sq. t-stop.There are some (like Jack Herrick) who
think it'd be best to have it at the Berkman Center or at least involve them
in some way since they are "kindred spirits".
I thought of Stata Center, but one of the issues is that we need a big open
space where everyone can sit for opening and closing circle. When the Boston
Skillshare was there, everyone had to go into separate classrooms (like at
Libre Planet '09 at Harvard's Cabot Center) and while it could work, it's
not optimal.
And the venue itself doesn't have to be a university. Past Recent Changes
Camps have also been at corporate offices, a university space that doubles
as a gallery, a conference center at a university-run hotel and a socialist
center. I was even thinking that the Paulist Center near Park St. T stop
could work if Wifi could be set up. Secular events are held there all the
time.
We could also have it at a corporate office like that Google or Microsoft.
The upside (and yes, there is one) is that we may be able to get free space
(which isn't mandatory, but would be nice since we could use the venue money
for other things, particularly if it is going to continue to be hard to get
sponsorship). The downside is that it may not be a neutral space and people
in the free software community might not attend for that reason.
Please let me know if I am leaving out any venues that have been used for
tech conferences in the past.
Right now getting a venue is the main priority. After that, I'm told, the
rest of the conference will magically fall into place. For more info on what
was discussed re: RCC 2011 at RoCoCo see
http://eiximenis.wikimedia.org/RCC2011.
Recent Changes Camp will be three days long. As part of it, there been talk
of having an open house with some wiki 101 type courses that we can market
to the local Boston community (as in "If can only attend one thing, make it
_____.") There might be some affinity group meetings added into the mix as
well.
As for facilitation, that is run by a separate group of people, but you can
make recommendations on the planning list (rcc-planning(a)googlegroups.com). I
think Anne Goldenberg (bilingual facilitator and organizer for RoCoCo) is
heading this committee but I'm not entirely sure. Also, there has been a
trend in recent years toward having members of the wiki community
facilitate. Ted Ernst facilitated RCC '09 and Anne facilitated this past
RoCoCo. BlueOxen was going to pay the travel costs for an English-language
facilitator who couldn't make it, and John Abbe was going to take his place
but never made it to the conference.
As for local outreach, I think we definitely need to include the Berkman
Center. Other than that, I will contact the library school over at Simmons
as well as the Social Media groups I'm involved in (Boston Media Makers,
Social Media Club Boston). Also, local wiki companies (Povo, Edit Me) and
anyone who works on wikis or collaborative software projects. Krystle Chung,
who works as the Community Support person for wikiHow, has agreed to head up
the marketing effort and I've already told her that I will send her a long
list of local press and websites that need to be contacted. We have a lot of
talented people who have agreed to work on all six of the teams which are
local (venue/food), marketing, sponsorship, budget, facilitation.
To anyone who is interested in planning, we are having conference calls on
the first Saturday of every month. There is also the planning list
rcc-planning(a)googlegroups.com and #wiki on freenode where a lot of the
planning for Montreal got done.
Last (but not least) there will be a one-day Recent Changes Camp on August
11 at the University of Canberra. If you know any Australian wiki folk,
please spread the word.
Thanks!
On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Bhushan Deshpande <bhushan.rd(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
There are a number of colleges in the area that might
have space. In
particular, there is always Harvard or MIT, but there is also space at
Northeastern University (I have been to a hall here for another event that
would definitely work for us if we could get it), Emerson College, Boston
University and Tufts University (probably the others as well, but these are
the ones I thought would be most convenient to people in Boston) for this
type of thing.
Bhushan Deshpande
On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 11:40, Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Nicole and other RecentChangesCamp folks have
been discussing holding
an RCC in Boston next Spring. That sounds like fun, and it's been a
long time since we had such an event here (not counting the small
semantic wiki event a couple months back)... but as Nicole points out,
we need a venue suitable for a 2-day ~150 people unconference.
Nicole - are there specific people we should draw in from the Boston
area? We should look into local facilitators. All - do you have a
space in mind that you think would make sense?
On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 2:07 PM, Nicole Willson
<artisticaltruist(a)gmail.com> wrote:
< Recent Changes 2011:
basically everyone wants to have it in Boston so
I agreed to find a
venue.
I'm trying to get a team together and have
been talking to some wikiHow
and
library school people. I find it interesting that
Marc wants us to find
a
venue in two weeks when it took so long to get a
venue in Montreal (a
socialist center and the only place where I've ever seen a needle
disposal
unit in a public bathroom, but good nonetheless).
I think it'd be good
to
talk about this at some point, so that all the
Boston local organizers
are
on the same page. I can meet on Thursday or
Friday evening this week and
my
> schedule is pretty open next week. I can also be reached by phone at
> 857-272-0394 (temporary number) or 617-325-2222 (home number).
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