Attendee Invites

[makanyane]

This first post here is as much to say we need to start considering this seriously as to actually give info (running out of steam at moment).

We need both text for attendee invites and agreement on how and who to issue to.

Invite text I think we can come back to, I assume we need to have list of topics - speaker - time - method etc. to actually put in invite so people can respond directly to which one/s they want to attend?

Who to invite: purely personal opinions so far; if anyone on original speaker list responded on lines of "interested but not able to speak because..." I think they should get individual invite to attend. Also all other speakers should get auto included as attendees in others threads if they want to.

Additional to that prof suggested on msn sending invites to all mod teams. I think we need to work a bit on mechanics of that, eg. checking we have contacts for all mod teams, I'm assuming still by pm and not by spamming their forums? Also at this stage should we include M2 / newer mods that we didn't have listed before?

Other suggestion was for front page announcement (need to beware on that, that we can actually get it when we want it - I think demand can be quite high - Wiki is currently trying to get one and a bit delayed, though that isn't time critical) - I guess we can post in TW community / workshops / gathering / threads sections if that fails.

Final factor is if any particular topic is over-subscribed with attendees to suit hosting method, how we narrow that down if necessary. Prof suggested speaker should decide - which sounds reasonable (with back up from committee if they don't want to make choice)

[Publius]

One idea might be to get an announcement header at the top of the mod forums (Header as in the large announcements you see at the top of pages like this: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=104)

Front Page might work, but that's used more for mass announcements whereas this has been (to date) a fairly small, focused affair. It certainly wouldn't hurt though.

We can also pool our msn contacts and see if that is a viable option - it's certainly more likely to get responses I think. Lists can be sent via pm (posting them here is no good for obvious reasons).

[makanyane]

Thanks Publius - A header message would probably be better idea than front page at least for attendee stage. It could be aimed more specifically at the modding community (I think they can be forum specific) and we've probably more chance of getting it when we need it.

Maybe if we make list of those we want to invite to attend individually we can just 'claim' any we have MSN contacts for so they can be sent that way. (I don't have a lot of contacts on mine - I only just made it out of stone age and started using it)

We need to be clear on how we work out timing for the 'live' discussions - ventrillo / msn etc. I assume we really need to be able to put a time in the attendee invite? Which would mean we used whatever the speaker wanted (obviously trying to aim it at something that would get best coverage) and hope for the best on getting attendees available at same time? Or has anyone else any idea on how we co-ordinate that..... ... maybe check with a few key people likely to want to attend first, and obviously make sure we have the necessary volunteer to record discussion...