It is time to start the bid process for this year’s Flock. Flock 2018 will be held in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region. If you’d like to help host the event in your city, it’s time to start putting together a bid.

The bid process has changed this year to be easier to complete and more streamlined. To propose a city, please visit the Flock Pagure Repository and open a new issue using the bid-2018 template. The template will guide you through 10 questions that the bid committee needs to know the answers too. You don’t have to contact or confirm things yet with a venue, this just gets us started. You’re of course free to go ahead and contact venues if you would like.

Bid submissions are due on 29 October 2017 12 November 2017.

Once the submissions are in, the committee will read them and pick a few to explore in detail. At that point we will begin contacting venues and making firmer plans.

While we have tried to make bidding easier, it is still something you will need to put some thought into, so don’t wait until the last minute. Also, take advantage of the Pagure issue format and solicit feedback on your proposal and update your original post as you get information.

Tips and advice for Flock 2018 planning

Keep in mind that committing to help plan a conference is a lot of work and shouldn’t be approached lightly. It’s a big time commitment, and as the local contact, you’re critical to the success of the event. Flock has been held successfully on college campuses and in hotels. We need to make sure that the space will work for both the conference and be affordable. Every dollar we spend on activities, rooms, etc. is a dollar we cannot spend on funding travel for Fedora contributors. Therefore keep costs in mind as you think about potential locations. You may find checking the Flock budget from last year helps you understand how money gets spent. Note: All 2017 costs have not yet been posted.

Not sure where to begin? You can view some of the previous winning bids (that used the old system) for past years as a reference point for building your own bid. Check out some of these for examples:

Feel free to ask questions or request help getting your bid together on the flock-planning email list. If you’re not already subscribed to that list, you should do so.

Banner Image Courtesy of Martin Petr

Note: The deadline was extended as part of the committee is unavailable at the beginning of November. Rather than have bids sit, we wanted to give greater opportunity.