[OOTB-hive] Introducing BeeCon

[Richard Esplin]

I agree with all of the above.

There are a few "conference management sites in a box" open source projects. 
I'm sure we could set one up without too much trouble.

As for usage of the trademark, I believe that these are the relevant 
paragraphs from the Trademark Guidelines and Policies:

"Building on Alfresco or for Alfresco. If you are producing new software that 
is intended for use with or on Alfresco, you may use the Trademark in a way 
which indicates the intent of your product. For example, if you are developing 
a backup tool for Alfresco, acceptable project titles would be "Backup and 
Recovery for Alfresco" or "Alfresco Based Backup Tool". We would strongly 
discourage, and likely would consider to be problematic, a name such as 
“Alfresco Backup”, “AlfBackup”, “Backfresco”, etc. Furthermore, you may not 
use the Trademarks in a way which implies an endorsement where that doesn't 
exist, or which attempts to unfairly or confusingly capitalize on the goodwill 
or brand of the project.

"Commentary and parody. The Alfresco trademarks are designed to cover use of a 
mark to imply origin or endorsement by the project. When a user downloads 
something called Alfresco, they should know it comes from the Alfresco 
project. This helps Alfresco build a reputation that will not be damaged by 
confusion around what is, and isn't, Alfresco. Using the trademarks in your
discussion, commentary, criticism or parody, in ways that unequivocally do not 
imply endorsement, is permissible. Anyone is free to write articles, create 
websites, blog about, or talk about Alfresco -- as long as it's clear to 
everyone -- including people completely unfamiliar with Alfresco -- that they 
are simply referring to Alfresco and in no way speaking for Alfresco, or the
Alfresco project.

"We reserve the right to review all usage within the open source community, 
and to object to any usage that appears to overstep the bounds of discussion 
and good-faith non-commercial development. In any event, once a project has 
left the open source project phase or otherwise become a commercial project, 
this policy does not authorize any use of the Trademarks in connection to that 
project."

I think "BeeCon: The Independently-Organized Alfresco Community Conference" 
meets both the letter and spirit of this policy.

Richard

On Wednesday, May 06, 2015 21:25:20 Jeff Potts wrote:
> I like all of your suggestions, Richard. Especially the crowd-sourced
> session selection as that is one of the more time-consuming activities that
> goes into planning.
> 
> On the web site and registration, I would suggest keeping this as simple as
> humanly possible with low emphasis on marketing/polish and high emphasis on
> simplicity and cost reduction (or elimination). Sites like Eventbrite
> should be used for registration, for example, as they offer a low cost
> solution that includes an on-site ticket scanning app.
> 
> The web site should be little more than a landing page that points to
> Eventbrite.
> 
> The crowd-sourced session selection could be based on an out-of-the-box
> framework. I'm picturing a reddit style site where each post is a session
> abstract and then people vote it up or down. We can then take the top X
> most popular sessions, and those could be slotted into a scheduled the
> morning of the first day similar to how it is done at an un-conference.
> (Imagine a grid on a wall and then each speaker, in order of session
> popularity, places a post-it in their preferred schedule slot. Once the
> spots are filled speakers could engage in last-minute trades based on
> conflicts).
> 
> In earlier discussions about this there was a concern raised about using
> "Alfresco" in the name or branding. As this conference is about "Alfresco"
> as a topic, I think this falls under fair use, so I'm hoping you can
> confirm that would not be a problem. For example, we might want to say
> something like "BeeCon: The Independently-Organized Alfresco Community
> Conference" or something more succinct. We simply must be able to use that
> word as part of promotion activities so that we can reach beyond the 100 or
> so people already on the list.
> 
> Jeff