Speakers, sessions, schedule, co-ordinating the programme

I'm currently focussing my efforts on getting more sponsorship so that we can lower the registration fee. So far I've got a bit from Chris / xurizaemon / Giant Robot, and most likely a lot from another potential sponsor. Nothing else yet, but I sent a lot of email this week and people might still be considering and responding. I still have more people to get in touch with on my list, and will also follow up with phone calls to the likely candidates.

In the meantime however, people are getting antsy about sessions, speakers and programme. Here's a braindump;

• Angela Byron; Drupal 7, we need details
• Emma Jane;* Organized already PHP for designers
• Liz Henry; I need to follow up whether/what she's speaking about and get info
• Addison Berry; I need to follow up whether/what she's speaking about and get info
• Dan Morrison; Said he was keen to present on something, not wasn't sure what
• Modica Group (likely sponsor); Said someone will do a presentation
• Open Query (sponsor); Will do at least one presentation on OQgraph (their tree-querying database and system), MySQL vs PGSQL (maybe with Josh Waihi?) or MySQL dual masters
• Josh Waihi; Is happy to do one or maybe more on Drush, Features, ApacheSolr, aegir, PostgreSQL or DBTNG How to
• Bevan Rudge; jQuery from zero to hero (I need a better name, but it would be a slightly more technical variation of jQuery for Themers and Designers)
• Miguel Jacq (mig5) & Dave Hall (skwashd); Aegir; managing almost 2100 production drupal sites (from 1 code base) tag team to show off the features of aegir and talk about how we use it.
• These people mentioned interest in presenting in the survey; Jonathan Hunt, Chris Burgess, Chris Hood, Donna (Kattekrab), Aaron Fulton, Julian Carver, Pete Davis, Dave Lane, 4 Anonymous individuals (didn't leave name or email address) from Sweden, Sydney, Melbourne, USA

LCA Open Day (free) is on Saturday 11 am to 2 pm. Many people may/will want to spend an hour or two there. A few people are manning stalls there and won't be able to be at DrupalSouth from about 10-4. Angie has to leave mid-afternoon Sunday for her flight, and Liz Henry at about lunchtime. Others from Australia especially are likely to have flights on Sunday.

Probably Angie Byron's session and any other major highlight events should be late on Saturday afternoon or early on Sunday. Saturday would be good for sessions that are not likely to be of such great interest to the "LCA crowd", such as sessions targeted for designers. Late Sunday would be good for sessions targeted for locals (if there are any), or possibly a documentation sprint (Addie and Emma will be around). We should also have a long lunch break on Saturday to allow anyone/everyone to wander over to the Open Day and have a browse. Perhaps we could even do a Drupal parade through the event!?

It would be great if we could fit in a documentation sprint as a long session or alongside sessions and/or mingle time, or maybe even on the Monday or Friday (in addition to one at DS) for the really keen.

It might be worth considering having a small job fair of sorts. We could even have people seeking or contracting work introduce themselves to kick that off..

There are lists of topic ideas and suggestions from the NZ drupal community on http://groups.drupal.org/node/21721

We have no system, process or formal way for people to submit session proposals. All of the above is just from contact I've had with people. For Christchurch we invited speakers and some approached us directly, but it was all handled by email and private conversations. If someone has time to set it up we could allow people to submit and vote on proposals on the website. I don't have time for this.

DS Chch consisted of 10x 30 minute sessions in the mornings and break-out time in the afternoons. Some folk weren't interested in the break out time and didn't stay around after lunch. This could have been frustrating for them if they travelled from elsewhere. I suggest we have a mix of 30 and 60 minute sessions, maybe one or 2 longer ones if they are more interactive, tutorial-like or very large and compelling topics (Angie on Drupal 7?).

We can have two tracks, but one of the rooms isn't very large. We can probably have small/quiet BoFs and breakout groups occurring simultaneously to presentations at the other end of the room and/or the balcony.

It would be great if someone could own all this, liase with speakers, get their sessions on the website and put together a draft schedule/programme to discuss here. I won't get to it till December or even January.