[Pdmtl] puredata conference - Montreal

[B. Bogart]

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Indeed there are challanges, but also I think there is something to be said (of
value) for a conference on this side of the ocean that is accessible to those
Canadians that are making a contribution, but may not be able to fly over to
Graz. Perhaps thinking of it as a Canadian chapter of the Graz conference.

See more comments inline:

Matju wrote:
| 1. IEM/ESC/CC/MKL did it real good this year, and are very likely to
| organise one next year, no matter whether there is one in Montreal or not.
| The Montreal one is going to compete for attention with the Graz one. Graz
| is a small city, about the size (population) of Gatineau, which is 10% of
| Montreal or so. YET they kick ass when it comes to PureData. They've been
| doing it for, I don't know, 3-5 years. You know where the
| toggle/slider/etc objects were created? Graz. You know where the central
| repository of GEM's source code is? Graz. You know where is
| http://PureData.info/ ? Graz.

Fantastic that it is going on. I wish I could have been there. Indeed the
Canadian (Montreal) conference should be complimentary (as Marc said) but I
think it really could be a kind of chapter over the ocean. The SAT is well
connected (bandwidth wise) and there is certainly potencial for having some
cross events-lectures that get streamed from Graz to Montreal and visa-versa.
Perhaps using DVTS which will eventually make its way into pixelTANGO. Miller
has made at least one lecture on Accessgrid that I was able to see/hear.

| 2. The average location of major PureData developers is not even in the
| Atlantic Ocean. I think it's more east than that. This year only three
| northamericans flew overseas: Miller Puckette, James Tittle, and myself.
| (note: Alexandre Castonguay came with his own funding; Chris Clepper and
| Adam Lindsay cancelled). If the same event is going to happen in Montreal,
| you either need to be well organised and buy the plane tickets yourself
| and get group deals, or have some bigger source of financing. If you try
| shifting the focus towards NorthAmerica then you have to be careful
| because the authors of extremely important plugins such as GEM and PDP
| live in Graz (.at) and in Barcelona (.es) and in Leuwen (.be) and you do
| not want to miss those people.

True, but I don't think a Pd conference in Montreal needs to be a conference
that expects to be totally international and expect the whole community to be
here. We should start with making our conference most accessible to those who
could not make it all the way to Graz and build from there with a few key people
from over-seas.

| 3. Everyone's English must be good enough. Especially understanding other
| people's thick accents. You have to deal with (mostly) German-English and
| Catalan-English, but also with (for example) Paris-English, Dutch-English,
| Belarusian-English, Polish-English, and all of those people have to deal
| with the thick Montreal-French accent too.

I think this is simply a problem of any international conference. Perhaps
lectures would be in difference languages. I think people will find around any
communication issues by thier own means.

| 4. paying hotel for how many people for how long? and how close to
| downtown (or to whatever buildings used for the conference) would that
| hotel be?

Indeed big issues here. Depending on the size of the conference there is always
the option of locals hosting visitors.

| 5. The Graz convention happened in three buildings. How many rooms do you
| have to your disposal? VG is smaller than the ESC/CC complex in usable
| size. (They don't have professional video edition equipment over there,
| but that's irrelevant to the conference) I think their _total_ area is
| bigger than VG too. The SAT is big, but last time I wanted to use it for a
| PureData meeting, SRC had invaded most of the nice space for long enough
| that I just decided to have that meeting elsewhere.

This would certainly require some research. SAT would be a key spot for some
activities, but there would need to be other organizations providing space for
the conference. What orgs would be interested in such a thing? There is
something to be said for a number of smaller spaces rather than one big space.

I think the conference would have a strong advocacy role here in Canada as well,
encouraging those who have not already started using PD. We should encourage new
users.

What are the options for funding? CC? Heritage Canada? ??

B.

| so, i hope this is food for thought and that I have covered enough
| potential issues. any thoughts?
|
| ____________________________________________________________________
| Matsjö Buschahr @ Ruby Konferenz, Muenchen
| http://artengine.ca/matju
|
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