@skadinna As you claimed the tasks one month ago: Do you have any update when we can expect a draft of an updated Call for Locations? With Akademy 2019 closing on us fast, we should get a Call for Locations out latest by beginning of September.

I was working on it on-and-off with some major breaks in between, so it's unfortunately not done yet. I'll try to complete it this week so we have a small window for reviews before sending it out.

Where is your stuff, @skadinna ? Can you share it somewhere?

The text with some minor edits and reorganized sections is here (it's an ODT file):

https://share.kde.org/s/sggMGK76QrN5YHC

Here's also the first layout idea I put together. This one's a bit simplistic, so if we're going to do a new one, it should probably be more exciting and varied.

My couple of minute check so far found these

Page 2: Monday to FRIDAY!!! at bottom of page
Page 9: Heading shouldn't be "Venue Cancellation", contract maybe?
Page 10: "Budget" delete sentence 2, its out of date and sentence 1 is sufficient

I have not fully read it so there may be other things wrong in it

In general I like the new layout, but 13 pages is very long. Actually it was my idea to make it shorter than that. Also try to make it (except the year we are looking for) as generic as possible.

Page 2:
" In 2018 it was held
in Vienna, Austria, and in 2017 it took place in Almería, in the south of Spain. " ... maybe to keep this as timeless as possible: "A list of previous locations can be found at https://akademy.kde.org/"
Page 3: "• A reasonably detailed budget" ... replace with "reasonable estimation of venue cost". Social Events can never be estimated, Travel cost is anyways not in the local budget ... and this was one of the points that confused me when making a bid for 2018.
Page 5: Most of this is explained more detailed later, so I think the page can be removed and some parts can be added to the "bullet points" on the next two pages.

Page 6:

• "visa procurement procedures for the

majority of the attendees (who will be from the EU and North America)": I would remove North America, I guess this is no longer true

• Accomodation: prices are out of date ... no idea what to do with them

Page 8: Just a layout thing: all the blue boxes should be on the same level.

Page 9:
Can be shortened and added in the style of the things on page 6 & page 7. Maybe change title of page 6 then to "Location & venue requirements"

Page 10:
"KDE e.V. is able to cover the travel costs for some KDE e.V. members, speakers,
and other attendees if necessary, and if travel costs are not too expensive. KDE
e.V. pays a maximum of 25 EUR per night for accommodation for sponsored
participants. " Remove "pays a maximum of 25 € per night", this is outdated. Also I would remove "if travel costs are not too expensive".
"It is possible to reserve certain resources in advance at the venue (e.g. food vouchers)." ... "at the venue or social event locations" ... something like that?
"This point is based on agreements between KDE e.V. and the local team." ... I would remove that sentence
"the KDE e.V. business manager. " ... no KDE eV business manager exists any more, remove and leave only board

Page 12:
"It is absolutely mandatory that the conference is supported locally (by a LUG, student FOSS
group or similar) " ... I would change mandatory to recommended
Page 13:
"The KDE Akademy Team starts with about
five people who will be available to you" ... I would rephrase that to not say a specific number of people ;)

Great suggestions, @derkits!! Thanks so much. I think Paul is also aiming to make the whole thing shorter, so the next version of the draft should reflect that.

Here's a cleaned-up version of the draft, including feedback from your comments. This one is shorter because we removed the parts that were just repeating the same thing.

If you have any more suggestions, please let us know. Thanks!

Thanks for the updated version, I have more remarks :)

General remark: "The KDE eV" doesnt sound right. Only "KDE eV" I guess?

Page 3: eV meeting is no longer on the arrival day. We now have it twice on monday, maybe we also move it back to Friday. Please try to find some more general way to write this :)

"welcoming reception" ... isnt that "welcome reception"?

Page 4: "The venue should be near a major airport and reasonably easy to reach by public transportation." ... we not only want airports but also train stations and maybe bus stations.

Page 5: "It is preferable for the available accommodation to be within walking distance of the conference venue." Instead of walking distance (that was nearly never the case in the last years) write: "close to the conference venue"

Page 6: "The KDE e.V. is able to cover part of the cost" ... to me it sounds as if the locals would need to put up the rest of the cost. That KDE eV aquires sponsors is anyways written in the next sentence. I would just completly remove that sentence.

"Sponsorship funds must cover the conference venue (if it costs money), the equipment, and part of the travel grants." & "KDE e.V. takes care of international sponsors mainly to cover the travel support." ... I would rewrite these two sentences like: "International & possible local sponsor funds cover primarily conference venue, equipment & travel grants". Just to say "events are lower piority". The way it is written sounds to me like "a venue that costs (even just a bit of money) needs to be paid by local sponsors"

"Required infrastructure (such as venue and meeting rooms, network and video equipment) should ideally be covered by the local organizations, local sponsors, or provided for free.
However, KDE e.V. also can help with these types of expenses. If possible, the local team can also recruit local sponsors to cover some of the social activities." .. the venue should be free, yes this was already included in the part about Budget. Also that local sponsors would be nice. I guess we could remove this completly :)

Page 7:
"The lead organizer must also assemble a local organizing team and local supporters such as Linux User Groups (LUGs)." ... the need for a team bigger than one is mentioned above and the User groups below. Sentence can be deleted.

Wow we hopefully are already down a few pages and maybe these proposals bring down another half page or so :)

1. Event format and dates

Social activities such as a welcoming reception, party, and a possible sight-seeing tour or day trip activity.

"possible" should be removed

2. Venue Infrastructure

microphones and loudspeakers in all rooms

replace "all" with "the rooms used at the weekend for talks"

whiteboards and/or flip charts should be available in BoF/coding rooms

add "or blackboards" to whiteboards

3. Venue Contract

This section is just confusing as talking about cancelling doesn't seem to be related to the rest of a section talking about how KDE eV can be the signatory of any contracts

4. Accommodation

We do not recommend youth hostels due to the major impact lack of sleep has on attendees. We only normally use twin rooms

5. Budget

Not really sure what paragraph 4 is trying to say

6. Sponsoring

As Stefan said paragraphs 3 & 4 don't make sense currently either remove or reword what ever is trying to be conveyed there

7. Tasks that the local team takes care of

replace "conference party" with "social event" we do not use the word party

remove point Research local options to print t-shirts, posters and other merchandise as that isn't needed any more due to existing relationship with supplier

add point along the lines of "Take part in carrying out the general organisation tasks"

I cleared up the text using your comments, @duffus and @derkits and I am attaching the text again:

I am having trouble with the following, though:

3. Venue Contract
   
   This section is just confusing as talking about cancelling doesn't seem to be related to the rest of a section talking about how KDE eV can be the signatory of any contracts

I am interpreting this as like when you have to cancel a flight, but you still incur in some costs by doing so. I understand that the venue costs of cancelling the event, if they exist, would be assumed by KDE e.V.

5. Budget
   
   Not really sure what paragraph 4 is trying to say

Does this paragraph not refer to the "school dinner" vouchers that we usually have so that attendees can have lunch for free during the event? Or also the vouchers to get a free drink during the social event?

Both paragraphs were ported over from the original text and in my mind were clear until @duffus drew attention to them. Am I the only one interpreting them as described above?

Apart from those two points, everything else has been changed.

In T11123#196825, @paulb wrote:

I cleared up the text using your comments, @duffus and @derkits and I am attaching the text again:

akademy-2020-call-for-hosts_paul_ID_KD_SD.odt16 KBDownload

I am having trouble with the following, though:

---

3. Venue Contract
   
   This section is just confusing as talking about cancelling doesn't seem to be related to the rest of a section talking about how KDE eV can be the signatory of any contracts

I am interpreting this as like when you have to cancel a flight, but you still incur in some costs by doing so. I understand that the venue costs of cancelling the event, if they exist, would be assumed by KDE e.V.

OK, probably better to split it clearly into those two things i think then

---

5. Budget
   
   Not really sure what paragraph 4 is trying to say

Does this paragraph not refer to the "school dinner" vouchers that we usually have so that attendees can have lunch for free during the event? Or also the vouchers to get a free drink during the social event?

---

Both paragraphs were ported over from the original text and in my mind were clear until @duffus drew attention to them. Am I the only one interpreting them as described above?

I still think it is a problem that you have to try to interpret them rather than them being very obvious. Anything relating to finance needs to be clear, especially for varying levels of familiarity of English

7. Tasks that the local team takes care of
   
   add point along the lines of "Take part in carrying out the general organisation tasks"

This should be an explicit point in the list of tasks, doesn't seem to have been added

We have years where the local team do very little and expect everything to be done for them which isn't possible or fair on core Akademy Team who are overstretched as it is. This is why it needs to be very clear that that is also part of their work in organising Akademy

Thanks for sorting the other things

I think I have now amended all the bits you mention, @duffus. Would you mind checking that everything is correct now?

looks good to me, that is a lot clearer. thanks

Okay. I'll get on with the layout now.

New version @duffus :

All resources and source files are available from https://share.kde.org/s/JLQyN5xQMYXKPiD

Scribus version is 1.5.5

Looks good to me

Looks amazing! Thank you so much for creating this layout, Paul!
The only issue I noticed is the address on the cover page - I think it's misspelled, so it might be worth double-checking. Everything else is great.

In T11123#197288, @skadinna wrote:

Looks amazing! Thank you so much for creating this layout, Paul!

Wel, erm... you did the design.

The only issue I noticed is the address on the cover page - I think it's misspelled, so it might be worth double-checking. Everything else is great.

I copied it from here: https://ev.kde.org/contact.php

Is that one incorrect?

I did get rid of a trailing slash that was bugging me:

Also notice the links are clickable. I have checked them a couple of times, but I may have missed something. Could you check the link to what they are supposed to link to?

Where was the call for locations announced? I don't see a dot story ... was it really only sent to the community mailing list? We should try to repeat this as often as possible. Also maybe a BoF about the topic ("Think about organizing Akademy 2020? Ask us anything!")

Or maybe close this ticket and make some follow-up ticket with ideas how to promote the call for locations so that more & more people see it?

We want to promote this more via social networks. Let's leave it open for now and plan something that will get us results.