NPW 2010 proposal

[Andrew Shitov]

Hello,

I would like to propose to host next year's Nordic Perl Workshop in
Riga, Latvia.

Let me explain why I am doing this. There are several reasons for
choosing Riga as a host city of NWP 2010.

If you have attended my lightning talk in Oslo this year, you might
remember the map I demonstrated to show the coverage of Perl events.
Today it looks like this:
Loading Image.... Maybe I've missed some
events in Spain and other countries in the West of the continent, but
I definitely sure that the white corridor which currently splits two
coloured parts really exists. Organizing my own events in five
different countries I was trying to cover as much of Russian-speaking
land as possible, conquering even the territory of Bulgaria, which is
not really Russian-speaking. I would also like to fill the gap, namely
Baltic states.

I have briefly examined the state of conference halls in Riga and see
that at least from financial point of view it is possible to host the
event there, because rent prices are quite reasonable.

Riga is also the hub of AirBaltic and that means there are lots of
planes to and from all the countries NPW is aware of.

Latvia is within the Schengen territory now which makes it easy
accessible by Europeans.

And just to add another plus, I might say that my bank account in
Latvia bank AB.LV was approved today. So I may collect money there now
:-)

Noone yet from Baltic states are now subscribed to this mailing list,
and I am trying to persuade Tallin.pm's leader to take the part in the
organizational processes. Anyway there are people here in Moscow who
will not refuse to help me with the stuff, I think.

Nordic Perl Workshop is the (only?) annual event which is moving every
year between neighbouring countries. This year's NPW in Oslo showed
that not only people from Nordic countries are interested in attending
that event. I propose to make that "moving waves" more strong and
touch Baltics.

P. S. I am writing this e-mail from the hotel in the capital of
Uzbekistan, where we have organized yet another Perl Workshop outside
our country of residence.

[Andrew Shitov]

But I disagree on the naming. At least to the locals, 'Nordic' refers
to a well-defined group of countries (see [1]). Something like 'Baltic
Perl Workshop' would be much better.

Well, my initial idea was exactly "Baltic PW", and I though of it as a
"copy" of NPW in that it drifts between three Baltic states.

But it would be more useful for everyone to ask people from Nordic
countries to come. And two events, which are geographically too close
to each other, are not the solution, I think.

So if you decide to accept my proposal, we could thought out the
proper name then.

[j***@gmail.com]

Hi Andrew,

I have "heard" of two other "proposals".

- Göteborg in Sweden
- Reykjavik in Iceland
- and I am thinking about organizing "something" in Copenhagen in 2010

Nothing is settled yet though.

I am actually more keen on the idea of a Baltic Perl Workshop,
traveling between the 3 countries. I am not saying that we will not
promote it and a lot of people will probably attend.

But in my opinion the Workshops serve a very special purpose and the
goal should be to attract a local audience.

1. Workshops are not YAPCs
2. Workshops should target local Perl users
3. Workshops should not necessarily be in English (see: German Perl
Workshop)

Long term:

1. We want more Perl users adopted into the community as:
- Local monger group members
- CPAN contributors
- YAPC/Workshop attendees
- CPAN testers
- Community Project contributors (Rakudo, Parrot etc.)

2. We want Perl on the world map and on peoples CVs

3. We want Perl world domination // Profit, beer, free stickers, cool
t-shirts // Nirvana based on the Perl virtues - what ever...

So when we evaluate the people attending our Workshops, we see the
following groups:

1. Local Perl Mongers
2. Local Perl Users, which come because it is local to where they work
3. Others, frequent flyers, crazy french, crazy americans, people with
too much time, friends of 1. etc.

- It is nice organizing something for group 1. which is a big larger
than your normal tech/social meet.

- We want to attract 2. so 1. gets bigger and more sustainable

- We simply cannot avoid group 3. and they are often delivering extra
ordinary content, making group 1, happy and group 2 interested.

From a historic perspective

NPW, started out as SPW (Scandinavian Perl Workshop), but the
Helsinki.pm wanted to join (but never did). Anyway, we think we are
too small a language group, so it was interesting for us to
collaborate with Sweden and later Norway. This was from the beginning
due to the proximity of our countries and relations through local
Linux User Group (SSLUG), which used to be the largest in the world
until the Brazillians discovered the Internet, Open Source and Orkut.

NPW was the first workshop to cross country borders, but we simply do
this our of necessity and to attract the audience.

We do as such not have a board evaluating proposals, so nothing can
stop anybody from organizing a NPW, so we might even have several in a
year, the annual things is also pure coincidence.

Anyway I hope you will organize something with the above points in
mind, since workshops are truly grass root and we JFDI. I just want
you to evaluate the following:

1. Primarily attract group 1
2. Get locals (group 1) involved in the organization
3. Attract group 2
4. Group 3 will come whether you want them too or not, but group 3
will never be larger than groups 2 and 3
5. NPW is slowly starting to show signs of becoming too strained
geographically.

About the last bullet. Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen have all hosted
several workshops and I expect they all want to do so again, but we
want to attract more people from group 1, so we are interested in
covering some of the grey areas in Denmark (Århus), Sweden, (Göteborg/
Malmö) - I do not know about Norway, but I guess other venues/cities
could be hosting in the future, I will have to talk to Oslo.pm.

We want to keep our sponsors in the loop and our audience on their
toes. We have seen a lot of people going from group 2 to group 1. And
later they become YAPC attendees. But this takes time and we have to
keep their interest sparked and to some traveling too far to attend a
workshop is comparable to going to a YAPC, so they don't go. So please
look into your target audience and make a decision based on this.

Sorry this mail got so long, it was just my 2 cents,

jonasbn

Post by Andrew Shitov
Hello,
I would like to propose to host next year's Nordic Perl Workshop in
Riga, Latvia.
Let me explain why I am doing this. There are several reasons for
choosing Riga as a host city of NWP 2010.
If you have attended my lightning talk in Oslo this year, you might
remember the map I demonstrated to show the coverage of Perl events.
http://blog.shitov.ru/i/9000km-of-perl/06.gif. Maybe I've missed some
events in Spain and other countries in the West of the continent, but
I definitely sure that the white corridor which currently splits two
coloured parts really exists. Organizing my own events in five
different countries I was trying to cover as much of Russian-speaking
land as possible, conquering even the territory of Bulgaria, which is
not really Russian-speaking. I would also like to fill the gap, namely
Baltic states.
I have briefly examined the state of conference halls in Riga and see
that at least from financial point of view it is possible to host the
event there, because rent prices are quite reasonable.
Riga is also the hub of AirBaltic and that means there are lots of
planes to and from all the countries NPW is aware of.
Latvia is within the Schengen territory now which makes it easy
accessible by Europeans.
And just to add another plus, I might say that my bank account in
Latvia bank AB.LV was approved today. So I may collect money there now
:-)
Noone yet from Baltic states are now subscribed to this mailing list,
and I am trying to persuade Tallin.pm's leader to take the part in the
organizational processes. Anyway there are people here in Moscow who
will not refuse to help me with the stuff, I think.
Nordic Perl Workshop is the (only?) annual event which is moving every
year between neighbouring countries. This year's NPW in Oslo showed
that not only people from Nordic countries are interested in attending
that event. I propose to make that "moving waves" more strong and
touch Baltics.
P. S. I am writing this e-mail from the hotel in the capital of
Uzbekistan, where we have organized yet another Perl Workshop outside
our country of residence.
--
Andrew Shitov
______________________________________________________________________

[Claes Jakobsson]

Hi,

Post by j***@gmail.com
Hi Andrew,
I have "heard" of two other "proposals".
- Göteborg in Sweden
- Reykjavik in Iceland
- and I am thinking about organizing "something" in Copenhagen in 2010

Actually Salve and I tried to persuade Panu Ervamaa (pnu) of
Helsinki.pm to arrange it there next year.

As far as I know Reykjavik has not actually said anything. I belive it
was brian d foy who wished it would be hosted there.

Post by j***@gmail.com
Nothing is settled yet though.
I am actually more keen on the idea of a Baltic Perl Workshop,
traveling between the 3 countries. I am not saying that we will not
promote it and a lot of people will probably attend.

I'll second that. Nordic Perl Workshop is as the name suggest
primarily targeted at the Nordic countries and their locals as we have
very much in common between us.

My primary objection to hosting it in Riga is that of the Baltic
states are not part (yet) of the Nordic countries nor share our common
ancestry or language (sorry for being slightly nationalistic). However
given the poor state of the economy and government of Lithuania I
wouldn't be surprised if they hand over their country to swedish banks
real soon and when that happens I guess it's ok to go =)

Post by j***@gmail.com
From a historic perspective
NPW, started out as SPW (Scandinavian Perl Workshop), but the
Helsinki.pm wanted to join (but never did). Anyway, we think we are
too small a language group, so it was interesting for us to
collaborate with Sweden and later Norway. This was from the
beginning due to the proximity of our countries and relations
through local Linux User Group (SSLUG), which used to be the largest
in the world until the Brazillians discovered the Internet, Open
Source and Orkut.
NPW was the first workshop to cross country borders, but we simply
do this our of necessity and to attract the audience.
We do as such not have a board evaluating proposals, so nothing can
stop anybody from organizing a NPW, so we might even have several in
a year, the annual things is also pure coincidence.

The closets thing of a board we do have is the blessing of previous
organizer group leaders - that being Jonas, Salve and me.

/claes

[Erwan Lemonnier]

Hi Andrew and all the others,

Post by j***@gmail.com
I am actually more keen on the idea of a Baltic Perl Workshop,
traveling between the 3 countries. I am not saying that we will not
promote it and a lot of people will probably attend.

I second that too.
The Nordic Perl Workshop has evolved into somewhat of a strong "brandname", with a rather clear geographical target and we are just stable enough to hope keeping it like this.

On the other hand, starting workshops in the baltic states would be awesome and I would definitely do all I could to personally attend workshops there. But as the others I think it should be stamped with a different name than 'Nordic' since it targets such a different group. The python community is strong in the baltic and has hosted its annual european conference (yap(ython)c?) in Vilnius in Lithuania a couple of time (including in july soon) so I believe there is interest in dynamic languages in those countries. Riga sounds like a good choice too, or Tallinn as well for that matter, since it's easier to travel to those towns than to Vilnius. As for the name, 'Baltic Perl Workshop' sounds fine to me. But have you found local mongers motivated to help organizing?

And, Andrew, first of all I think your suggestion is great and I really hope you'll manage to get a show going on. In the end, place and name don't matter so much (as long as it's not nordic ;), I just wand to hack perl with fellow nerds.
Good luck!

/Erwan, co-organizer of the Stockholm nordic workshops

[Andrew Shitov]

Post by Erwan Lemonnier
But have you found local mongers motivated to help organizing?

That is the most serious obstacle. No people yet except some I have to
persuade. My experience after ten events in the ExUSSR territory shows
that people are rather passive. Or at least have strong inertia. There
should be external impulse to fire the interest. For example, there
were four speakers at our first Russian PW in 2007, and tomorrow we
have two days and two threads at YAPC::Russia 2009, and about 20
lightning talks. Another example is the workshop in Taskhent, where we
were the only two(!) speakers.

People do not want to talk. Or at least they are shamed to talk for
the first time or at new event.

From that point of view, hosting NPW in Baltics in a "promotional
mode" would ease the organization. I am sure that there will be more
than two speakers who'd like to talk at that event. This is very
important to have the variety of people on the scene.

On the other hand, the year next to Baltic event you might expect
attendees from Baltics who'd like to come to one of
Nordic-by-definition countries.

I don't think that NPW consept is getting shallowed when foreigners
(in terms of "Nordic") attend it. The workshop is still
Nordic-centric, but with foreigner guests. Language-centrism is good,
but again I think that should not be the main goal of the event.

[Geir Aalberg]

Post by Claes Jakobsson
My primary objection to hosting it in Riga is that of the Baltic
states are not part (yet) of the Nordic countries nor share our
common ancestry or language (sorry for being slightly nationalistic).

Not really true. Estonia has been under both Swedish and Danish rule,
so has parts of Latvia. Estonian is closely related to Finnish, and
the Baltic states also have close ties to the Nordic Council.

Anyway, the main point is not where the venue is, but which audience
it's intended for and who is organizing it. Neil Bauman has arranged
several Perl cruises, but nobody insisted on calling them Caribbean
Perl Workshops.

-geir

[Andrew Shitov]

Hi Jonas,

thanks for the longest 2 cents I've ever seen :-)

My short answer is that the main goal of the event I propose is "to
show the Baltics that there exists Perl community" and that Perl guys
attending workshops are cool.

I don't mean to make Riga the permanent (in rotation) place for NPW in
the future. I'd rather like to make a "guest event", something like
"NPW visiting the Baltics". Some kind of promotion. The seed to grow
Baltic PW from.

Post by j***@gmail.com
Sorry this mail got so long, it was just my 2 cents,

[Salve J Nilsen]

=20
I am actually more keen on the idea of a Baltic Perl Workshop,=20
traveling between the 3 countries. I am not saying that we will not=20
promote it and a lot of people will probably attend.

I'd love to see NPW include the Baltic states.

I got the impression that the Baltics are quite interested in moving=20
closer to the nordic countries, and with the long history they have=20
with especially Finland, Sweden and Denmark, I think it would be nice=20
to let them arrange a Nordic Perl Workshop. Let's welcome them into=20
the community with open arms. :)

Of course, if the locals (should we find someone willing) rather would=20
call it a Baltic Perl Workshop, I think that's fine too. But saying=20
they can't call it NPW because of some old history or notion of what's=20
"Nordic" just reeks old-school (cold war) politics, IMO.

But in the end, the locals who organize such an event should make the=20
decision themselves, and if they would like to use the NPW name, we=20
should allow it.

We made a rule that NPW should be in the Nordic countries, and we can=20
change this rule just as easy as we can make it.


- Salve

--=20
#!/usr/bin/perl
sub AUTOLOAD{$AUTOLOAD=3D~/.*::(\d+)/;seek(DATA,$1,0);print# Salve Joshua =
Nilsen
getc DATA}$"=3D"'};&{'";@_=3Dunpack("C*",unpack("u*",':4@,$'.# <***@foo=
=2Eno>
'2!--"5-(50P%$PL,!0X354UC-PP%/0\`'."\n"));eval "&{'@_'}"; __END__ is near=
! :)

[j***@gmail.com]

Hola,

My point was that:

- NPW is aimed at local community, users and sponsors

So we can have a NPW in Baltikum no problem, it is simply a matter of
JFID.

But at the same time I want to emphasize that it is just a workshop
and any other party can organize a NPW in 2010 in addition if the
local user base and potential organizers feel like it, so perhaps it
is time to remove the year identifier from the name and refer to: NPW
<city>.

I am afraid that we are creating a new YAPC, which was never the idea.
Workshop used to be the general label for these non-YAPC mini
conferences.

The annual scheduling has been good at helping us to keep continuity,
but expending the area, so we now look at: Denmark, Sweden, Norway,
Finland, Iceland and Baltikum - will give us at hard time building a
foundation for continuity for local groups and users. So perhaps the
NPW tag should just be set free and anybody can organize a NPW.

We could also stick to the annual round-robin scheme and then
organizers would have to wait their turn or local organizers should
organize something else, like hackathons etc.

NPW is becoming a good brand and we just need to keep the brand alive
- also locally.

jonasbn

Post by Salve J Nilsen

Post by j***@gmail.com
I am actually more keen on the idea of a Baltic Perl Workshop,
traveling between the 3 countries. I am not saying that we will not
promote it and a lot of people will probably attend.

I'd love to see NPW include the Baltic states.
I got the impression that the Baltics are quite interested in moving
closer to the nordic countries, and with the long history they have
with especially Finland, Sweden and Denmark, I think it would be
nice to let them arrange a Nordic Perl Workshop. Let's welcome them
into the community with open arms. :)
Of course, if the locals (should we find someone willing) rather
would call it a Baltic Perl Workshop, I think that's fine too. But
saying they can't call it NPW because of some old history or notion
of what's "Nordic" just reeks old-school (cold war) politics, IMO.
But in the end, the locals who organize such an event should make
the decision themselves, and if they would like to use the NPW name,
we should allow it.
We made a rule that NPW should be in the Nordic countries, and we
can change this rule just as easy as we can make it.
- Salve
--
#!/usr/bin/perl
sub AUTOLOAD{$AUTOLOAD=~/.*::(\d+)/;seek(DATA,$1,0);print# Salve
Joshua Nilsen
is near! :)

[Andrew Shitov]

Hi,

Would you please let me ask if you have any standard procedure or such
in terms of defining deadlines. I mean, I'd like to know when the
proposal is marked as accepted or rejected.

Thanks.




On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Jonas Brømsø Nielsen

Post by j***@gmail.com
Hola,
- NPW is aimed at local community, users and sponsors
So we can have a NPW in Baltikum no problem, it is simply a matter of JFID.
But at the same time I want to emphasize that it is just a workshop and any
other party can organize a NPW in 2010 in addition if the local user base
and potential organizers feel like it, so perhaps it is time to remove the
year identifier from the name and refer to: NPW <city>.
I am afraid that we are creating a new YAPC, which was never the idea.
Workshop used to be the general label for these non-YAPC mini conferences.
The annual scheduling has been good at helping us to keep continuity, but
expending the area, so we now look at: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland,
Iceland and Baltikum - will give us at hard time building a foundation for
continuity for local groups and users. So perhaps the NPW tag should just be
set free and anybody can organize a NPW.
We could also stick to the annual round-robin scheme and then organizers
would have to wait their turn or local organizers should organize something
else, like hackathons etc.
NPW is becoming a good brand and we just need to keep the brand alive - also
locally.
jonasbn

Post by Salve J Nilsen

I am actually more keen on the idea of a Baltic Perl Workshop, traveling
between the 3 countries. I am not saying that we will not promote it and a
lot of people will probably attend.

I'd love to see NPW include the Baltic states.
I got the impression that the Baltics are quite interested in moving
closer to the nordic countries, and with the long history they have with
especially Finland, Sweden and Denmark, I think it would be nice to let them
arrange a Nordic Perl Workshop. Let's welcome them into the community with
open arms. :)
Of course, if the locals (should we find someone willing) rather would
call it a Baltic Perl Workshop, I think that's fine too. But saying they
can't call it NPW because of some old history or notion of what's "Nordic"
just reeks old-school (cold war) politics, IMO.
But in the end, the locals who organize such an event should make the
decision themselves, and if they would like to use the NPW name, we should
allow it.
We made a rule that NPW should be in the Nordic countries, and we can
change this rule just as easy as we can make it.
- Salve
--
#!/usr/bin/perl
sub AUTOLOAD{$AUTOLOAD=~/.*::(\d+)/;seek(DATA,$1,0);print#  Salve Joshua
Nilsen
near! :)

[Andrew Shitov]

Let NPW::$year be the NPW that rotates yearly between nordic countries
and, say, NPW::Riga (or NPW::Baltic or NPW::Tallinn)

OK, I've got your point.

Any possible Baltic event can have "NPW" substring in its name only if
the event is the part of NPW. Otherwise it is just silly.

[Salve J Nilsen]

Post by Andrew Shitov
Hello,
I actually vote for letting the annual indication go all together.=20
We have proved that we can organize an event at least once a year.
NPW::<city>
should even apply for Copenhagen, Olso, Stockholm, Riga and Talinn.
So we can have more NPWs in a year if we want to.

Yeah, why not? Maybe we can get away a little from the=20
YAPC::NorthernEurope tag we've made for ourselves, and make it open it=20
up for different kinds of events.

I'm personally quite happy to make this change so that the Baltics can=20
use the NPW name on equal footing with the old NPW. :)

+1 from me.


- Salve

--=20
#!/usr/bin/perl
sub AUTOLOAD{$AUTOLOAD=3D~/.*::(\d+)/;seek(DATA,$1,0);print# Salve Joshua =
Nilsen
getc DATA}$"=3D"'};&{'";@_=3Dunpack("C*",unpack("u*",':4@,$'.# <***@foo=
=2Eno>
'2!--"5-(50P%$PL,!0X354UC-PP%/0\`'."\n"));eval "&{'@_'}"; __END__ is near=
! :)

[Lars Thegler]

Post by Andrew Shitov
I would like to propose to host next year's Nordic Perl Workshop in
Riga, Latvia.

That's a fantastic idea, and I would very much like to come to Riga
for a Perl Workshop :)

But I disagree on the naming. At least to the locals, 'Nordic' refers
to a well-defined group of countries (see [1]). Something like 'Baltic
Perl Workshop' would be much better.

/Lars

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries