[Pdmtl] puredata conference - Montreal

[Matju]

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004, Alexandre Castonguay wrote:
> On Tuesday 12 October 2004 08:30, Matju wrote:
> > so, i hope this is food for thought and that I have covered enough
> > potential issues. any thoughts?
> The intent of the first email was not to tackle every organisational issue 
> right away but rather to involve everyone who might want to be at this pre 
> planning stage.  I believe that addressing all the important issues that 
> Mathieu raises is premature at this stage.  I think we should aim for a 
> meeting (online or in real life, sometime in late October?) where we can go 
> through the documentation form the Graz organisation and discuss our visions 
> for a conference.

Well, the intent of _my_ email was to prepare questions for that upcoming
meeting. I don't want that meeting to be only a time to ask
questions; let's save some time and ask ourselves the questions. In the
meeting we should define what kind of conference it should be, and what
would its relationship be with the Graz Konferenz.

> Not only are everyone in Graz and IEM doing really amazing things they
> also do not pose their work in any sort of competitive framework.

It does not matter whether they do this in a competitive framework because
as soon as there is duplication there is some implied competition. I mean
there may be some people who will prefer to come to only one of the two
conferences, so which one would that be?

> At least I felt that principles guiding Open Source software
> development were present in the warmth and scope of their invitations
> extended to the puredata community.  This is something to be inspired
> from, not weary of.

I'm not wary of this. There was a lot of warmth and friendliness (and this
is not implied by the concept of Open Source so we should feel grateful
that it's happening this way). However if we want to make this a
significant event (regardless of any drive to outshine anyone...) we ought
to look at the Graz convention as a measurement of how good it can be.

> They did express regrets for not being able to invite everyone who is 
> contributing to Puredata on the occasion of the first conference.

Well, I don't know about that, but after hearing 25-30 talks or so, plus
the shows and such, I was somehow saturated. Any more people than that and
they might have had to split it in two conference rooms and let the people
pick the talk they prefer (and drop the other...). So I think they
actually did hit an optimal size (??) ... although i did have to cut down
severely on what I could present in my talks, to make them fit in 2*30
minutes... I'm not too sure after all.

What I'm sure about is that, if you limit everything to one week, then,
the more talks you have, the more the time limits show, and/or the more
there is a competition for attention.

> I have heard so far enthusiastic response from (in no particular order ;-) :
> The SAT, Inter/access, early contacts at Concordia, Videographe, artengine, a 
> number of artists. I still have to approach Miller's contact at McGill and I 
> am sure I am already forgetting people and orgs.

good work alx!

____________________________________________________________________
Matsjö Buschahr @ Ruby Konferenz, Muenchen
http://artengine.ca/matju