Ready for Drupaltown Maastricht?

A lot has happened since the dutch/belgian drupal community met on the drupaljam in breda to kick off the organization of the next drupalcon in Maastricht, Netherlands.
What first started as a wicked idea from Bert Boerland at the entrance of the Szeged venue, has now shaped into the current proposal that has been submitted to the Drupal Association.

Now that the proposal has been officially submitted we can look forward to the next drupalcon in Washington where the decision of the Assocation will be announced. Will it be Paris, will it be Maastricht or another European city?

For those interested in reading the full proposal, you can find it at : http://tinyurl.com/aru3ge
If you want a quick update in what is in there, read on.

Maastricht in the Netherlands makes an ideal location for a DrupalCon. It is a nice compact town with plenty of bars where Drupal people will easily find their way around and meet each other. The surrounding area of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany offer possibilities for extended holidays.

An option has been taken on The Maastricht Exposition and Conference Centre (MECC) as our venue. It is modern, scalable and on walking distance from the city centre. We will use its +1000-person auditorium and several 200 to 120-person rooms for tracks, developer rooms and bird of a feather sessions.

We are realistically aiming at 600 attendees which is in-line with other EU DrupalCons, yet prepared for becoming the biggest DrupalCon ever, with room for 1600 attendees! We have contacted a small number of local companies and they showed a similar enthusiasm for getting the next drupalcon to Maastricht. Even now we were able to 'collect' one third of the expected sponsorship money, the expenses for the video-recording will be taken care of a friendly company offered to cover the costs for a kick-off party. We are confident that we can fullfill our mission of organising a great conference and still keeping the tickets low.

"Connecting the nodes" is the working title for this proposal. This conference will focus on the nodes of the drupal community: People! Bringing the existing community together for a loaded programme on interesting sessions and allow everyone to hang out together in the bars and restaurants of drupaltown Maastricht. That's a must! But we will also throw in a good deal of initiatives to bring in fresh drupal blood.

Do you want to join the current team of enthusiastic community-members then get active in this group and send us your feedback. Or you can get in touch with us at Fosdem in Brussels next weekend.

Download the proposal (pdf, 250kb)
(please note: sensitive details about providers and sponsors have been removed)