Ok, it’s time to get some final numbers here. So far we’ve got 16 attending on Upcoming, 28 watching and 11 on the wiki (nearly all of which are already on the Upcoming page).
But I need to know if you’re really going to come. You lurkers — time to pony up.
Or else ya don’t eat!
See, France Telecom R&D has pitched in big time to help make this event a success and to create an environment conducive to collaboration and conversation… but needs to know how many mouths we’re going to need to feed. …That and we’ve got limited space. 40 to be exact.
So, we’ve got a week to go. And you’ve got a week to make up your mind. If you’re really going to be coming, mark yourself as attending on Upcoming. I’m not saying that we’re going to necessarily turn away anyone — I know a few folks who are only coming for a half day — but getting a solid count would be really helpful so that we can plan food.
And, if you’re curious about how it’s going to go down, here’s the current itinerary:
- Doors open around 9. Coffee, tea, the typical breakfast fixin’s available at 801 Gateway Boulevard Suite 500. Mingling commences.
- 9:45am I’ll introduce the event, talk about what the big plan for the day is (similar to what I’m outlining here).
- 10am we start brainstorming projects to work on. After 15 minutes, we’ll have final candidates, and depending on how many people are attending, we’ll vote on the number of people divided by 3, 4 or 5 depending on how large we want the work groups to be.
- By 10:30am we’ll have broken up into teams and will begin brainstorming, gelling, getting into the nitty gritty of whatever project each group decided to take on.
- Break around 12:15 for lunch, socializing. We’ll reconvene at 1:30pm, take our collective pulse and get back into it.
- 4:45pm — or as teams dictate — the groups convenes in the Jardin (pictured above) to give 5 minute report backs /demos of what they created and worked on. This will take us to around 5:30pm when we’ll do an event breakdown and talkback.
- Drinks somewhere following up in the city — anyone care to buy a round? 😉
So, like I said before, pretty much an all day hackfest. I’m taking lessons from the other ‘Pits and trying to get us into teamworking as fast as possible — not taking time to review APIs or process quite as much this time and letting folks figure it out for themselves. I am hoping that presentations go pretty well — and that we spend some time documenting our projects on the wiki.
One last thing… getting there isn’t totally straight-forward, but it’s not impossible. You have a couple options. For one, I’d encourage folks to rideshare — feel free to use the comments of this post or the wiki to organize. You can take BART, but it’s a little difficult — the best possibility is to go to the airport and then hop on an Embassy Shuttle which’ll drop you off across from France Telecom’s offices… Lastly, you can take Caltrain to the South San Francisco stop and walk a little less than a mile over 101 and up Gateway Blvd. It’s a pleasant walk and easy enough to navigate. Finally — when you arrive, the front door may be locked, so just call the number on the door (it’ll be one of our cell phones) or wait for the guard to come around. He or she’ll be expecting you.
Any questions, feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment. Looking forward to seeing how this event plays out given our incredible venue..!
Factory Joe 