JabFab
2004-12-14
It's time.
We've never held a pure developer conference for people working on Jabber technologies. Oh sure, there was once (actually twice) something called Jabbercon, run by the good folks at Jabber Inc., but it was a combined business + developer conference, with the main focus on business. Ever since the last Jabbercon in 2001, people like Doc Searls have been lamenting its disappearance, because it was fun and productive to get lots of Jabber-oriented folks together. Justin Kirby of the OpenAether project pinged me this morning about the possibility of resurrecting Jabbercon, and we chatted for quite a while about the idea. Here's my take:
- This time we need a true developer conference, similar to MacHack and Mozilla Developer Day.
- Group dynamics are important. Dunbar number considerations would point to keeping the size around 40 people, IMHO, but I can probably be argued into something a bit bigger. (Personally I prefer smaller groups in which everyone can get to know each other.)
- It might be best to hold one meeting in North America and one in Europe. Justin chatted with Ralph Meijer and they discussed the idea of holding both meetings at the same time, with a chatroom and voice or video link between them. Sounds challenging, but might be fun.
- We need to keep costs down, so running it at a university or finding a corporate host might be best.
- Co-siting it with OSCON 2005 might make sense so that people can get their employers to pay for travel costs (if they have employers, that is).
- What to call it? Along the lines of MacHack, I like the name "JabFab", since it's a place for people who are fabricating Jabber technologies. Plus it should be fab. :-)
So I've started to think about this and plan for it. It's all preliminary so far, but the conversation has begun. Let's make it happen!
Peter Saint-Andre > Journal