Since the request I sent out last week, I've received quite a lot of
email expressing interest in a lucene pre-conference, but it hasn't
been an overwhelming amount. Based on this, I think it's safe to
reserve the smaller, wi-fi enabled room that we've been discussing,
and to plan for a max of 40 - 50 people. The group consensus seems to
be that we do not need to charge a registration fee, although there
have been requests for refreshments during the afternoon session, so
maybe during lunch we can take up a collection and send someone out
for donuts.

Here is my proposal for a pre-conference format:

A full day event devoted to lucene and solr, led by Erik Hatcher. The
morning will be devoted to background and theory, and the afternoon
will be an opportunity to try some hands-on projects. Participants
should either bring a wi-fi enabled laptop or be prepared to look
over someone else's shoulder. So that we can get as much accomplished
in the workshop as possible, we will provide a list of software and
documentation to be downloaded before the workshop. If you are
interested in working with a specific data set, please bring the data
set with you, preferably on a sharable media format (e.g., CDROM, USB
Flash Drive) so that we can exchange data sets quickly and easily. To
save time at the event, please get your data into XML before the
conference.

Enough people are interested in ILS related topics that it might be
worth forming groups around specific ILS products. If you are one of
these people, email the list if you're interested in setting up such
a thing.

To keep things simple, maybe registration can consist of just an
email to me? But we will need to put something on the conference
registration website, and send a message to everyone who has already
registered in case they are not also on the code4lib mailing list.
This would be the day before the conference proper, so that's Feb 27,
right?

Comments? Suggestions?

Bess



Elizabeth (Bess) Sadler
Head, Technical and Metadata Services
Digital Scholarship Services
Box 400129
Alderman Library
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22904

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(434) 243-2305