Keynote Speaker

I don't know if I feel the need to have a keynote speaker. But, I do feel like the camp needs some plenary content to focus around and/or to bring everyone together for a little while. In our recent arrangement at St. Thomas, a good plenary sessions brings people into the atrium and provides some value to our sponsors. This was missing last year.

Another option would be a panel discussion on something like:

1. Drupal 7 EOL - Release of Drupal 9 (with some visiting leaders in Drupal)
2. The future of the Open Web (with representatives from several open source projects)
3. Being Human (addressing issues around work/life balance in tech)
4. Becoming a more diverse community (invite some local people from outside of Drupal community to talk to us about diversity)

My preferred plan for making this decision would be (in this order):

1. Create a programming committee
2. Have programming committee discuss and propose a plan that includes:
1. First - decide on the general topic or theme for camp
2. Second - decide on the best format for camp (session length and session mix) considering theme and camp goals
3. Third - propose suggestions for keynote or plenary sessions based upon theme and format of camp.
3. Full committee discusses proposal and makes final decision

This would be something I'm very interested in working on.

I think a good keynote has been an important part of Camp. We've had a few in the past, and I definitely think it was missed last year. I missed it from a content perspective and I think it also had a big negative impact to the sponsor area. Without providing lunch and with no keynote there was not a whole lot going on in the atrium.

Some of this could be negated by having other non-keynote-specific full-camp content, but I still think there is value in a good keynote. The question then becomes who and whether or not they're available or interested. That's been our biggest problem.

I think we should have a keynote. There is value in good content presented to the entire group - otherwise the conference lacks a major unifying event. The separate sessions are all good, but disconnected without a couple "all together" experiences, outside of the party, photo, and maybe trainings.
Plus I think sponsors expect a keynote event - and since we have an atrium space we should use it as much as possible.
So I'd also advocate for at least three group events: a distinct opening session, a keynote, and a closing event.

I also missed having the keynote last year. I would love it if we could focus on the open web and Indy web in light of growing censorship and corporate ownership world wide. The keynote doesn't have to be long, maybe 30 minutes, but right now I feel strongly about this topic.

I don't think we're going to have much push back over having a keynote speaker, The bigger question becomes, who?

I don't have a lot of insight to options that are outside of our community. I can reach out to a handful of people within the community to gauge their interest, but if we want someone more topic driven and less Drupal-centric, then we'll need some ideas.

Is there any way to get data out of Basecamp from last year? It seems like it's been deactivated. I had started a list there of local people that I thought could make for interesting keynotes.

Are we budgeting to pay a keynote speaker? Help with travel?

I would still love to see https://twitter.com/sharonkennedyv speak. She talks about things like inclusion and digital equity. While I didn't see it, I've heard she gave a great keynote at DevOps Days MN. And I'm guessing she could talk about technology in our local government etc. Making it a very local keynote.

https://twitter.com/bridgetkromhout/ who helps organize DevOps Days might be worth reaching out to. Should might be able to make introductions, and/or be interested in talking.

https://twitter.com/IanColdwater is another local person who I don't know personally but follow on Twitter. And has always seemed to have opinions I appreciate. She was the keynote speaker at Midwest PHP this year so I'm assuming someone we know saw it and could give us feedback.

https://twitter.com/experimatt has been running this super awesome MPLS Jr Developers meetup. And either he, or someone he knows, might be able to give a good talk about mentoring and fostering jr. developers.

I think we should pay a keynote speaker some kind of stipend, and if traveling from out of town cover their expenses. I don't have a dollar amount in mind, but I think this is fair for the time and effort the speaker puts in. It is work.

I like the topics for the keynotes at DrupalCon this year. I think that either of them would be a good direction to go, if we can find someone to speak on them.

• Javascript and Civil Rights
• Building Inclusive Communities

https://events.drupal.org/seattle2019/keynotes

As discussed on the call last night, we have a list of 4-5 potential speakers that we are reaching out to. Thanks to @minneapolisdan for the text suggestions!

Does it make sense to put these folks into a spreadsheet on Google Docs and list possible methods of contact along with who is taking lead?

It sounds like this one might be done?

I think we can marked this as fixed. While, we have not yet publicly announced it or put it on our website, the Asian Penguins are going to be giving our keynote address.

https://www.csemn.org/programs/asian-penguins

We are still sorting out a few details, such as how to schedule the keynote around lunch, when we don't yet have the budget or an onsite lunch. (I'll create a new issue)