Location of the 2006 kernel summit

[Theodore Ts'o]

Hi there,

	It's been a few weeks, and no doubt people are wondering, given
the discussions that happened at the end of this year's kernel summit,
what's up with possible plans to have the kernel summit somewhere other
than Ottawa, as a one-year experiment.

	We've managed to delay signing the contract on the Ottawa
Kongress Center, and it turns out there may be other facilities
available near by (for example, we're investigating the possibility of
using the Westin next door, so at least we would not be down in the
dungeons).

	In the meantime, there are two locations that folks had
expressed interest.  One was Vancouver, and the other was Cambridge,
England.  Vancouver is actually pretty easy, as Usenix has some good
relationships with hotels in the area, and so we can get a meeting rooms
fairly cheaply.  The problem with Vancouver is that it's even farther
from Europe than Ottawa, and as one respondent to the Usenix survey have
observed, with roughly a third the attendees coming from Europe, it
seems only fair to try to hold the summit in Europe once in a while.

	The Cambridge location will requre working with people who have
connections with various colleges at Cambridge, so it's taking a bit
longer.  The poeple have been interested in working this have set up a
mailing list(http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/operationcambridge) 
and a wiki (http://operation-cambridge.linux-mips.org/wiki/Main_Page).  The
mailing list hasn't seen much activity as of late, but I'm hoping that's
just due to people taking August vacations.  If you have connections at some
college in Cambridge (particularly if you're a full professor :-), do
feel free to join the mailing list and help out.

	In the meantime, so far we've had about 50% response rate on the
survey which Cat sent out right after the kernel summit.  So far, the
results that have been tallied are as follows:

   Should the Kernel Summit be held someplace other than w/ OLS?

   Maybe					36%
   Maybe (if held with another conference
   	or made longer)				12%

   Yes:						28%
   Yes if held with another conference		 2%
   No:						24%
   Don't care					12%

   Other conference suggested: Linux-tag, Linux.conf.au, LinuxKongress,
   	UKUUG --- and OLS!

   If yes: please rank the following four locations by order of preference

   				1st choice	     2nd Choice
   Cambridge, UK		   40%			7%
   No preference		   26%
   Vacouver		 	   17%                 31%
   Portland, Oregon           	    9%                 17%


If you haven't responded to the survey yet (it should be in your
inbox), we'd really appreciate your input.


Thanks, and we'll keep you informed,

						- Ted