Oakland (venue)

[visnup]

we want to bridge the two sides of the bay. it's an ongoing suckiness that there are SF people and Oakland people. any and all ideas about how to bring the two together and/or if we should do some events in Oakland can go here.

also, this is not high priority right now (we're focusing on SF for the first couple of meetups), but wanted to get the discussion started now.

possibilities

• new parkway theatre
• @mikeal's warehouse

[mikeal]

Here's the deal with the warehouse:

• People who live in Oakland and get around by bike or car will find it relatively easy to get to.
• People from SF or other surrounding areas will find it more difficult as public transit really isn't an option.
• People from out of town will find it quite convenient as it is within walking distance of two well priced waterfront hotels.

The warehouse is great for informal events and very formal destination events. The in-between, the formal regular local event, it's not as ideal.

However, if your idea to "bridge the gap" between the bays was to run shuttles then it would be fine.

Keep in mind the capacity limitations. Would shoot for no more than 80 people until we prove it can comfortably fit more.

[mikeal]

In contrast, The New Parkway is pretty close to ideal for a regular formal event. It's walking distance from a Bart station and is an attractive enough venue to entice people to come over from the city, you'll just have to figure out how to fund the event enough to pay for it.

[visnup]

I'm not shooting for more than 80 for the first couple of events anyway. for the first one I'm only even anticipating 50 and am half-scared of more. I still don't know how to handle that many people and still get the same effect without basically pulling a nodeconf summer camp.

[mikeal]

just get a big name to speak at the first one, maybe Paul Irish.

[visnup]

if I got Paul Irish to commit, I'd give him a pseudonym and make him talk about not-devtools.

[visnup]

actually, I'd try to convince him to just do a karaoke duet with me and call it done.

[visnup]

but damn, he is a guaranteed good 10 minute lightning talk.

[mikeal]

Here's a thought, why not do both venues?

We could do a 2 hour speaking event and then head to the warehouse for a Karaoke party. At brunch we were talking about how easy it would be to just create a shared playlist on youtube for karaoke videos :)

[mikeal]

Although shutting down karaoke by 10pm would kinda suck, maybe not.

[mikeal]

@visnup do you have any idea what day of the week you want to do? It makes a difference in cost.

[visnup]

@mikeal on a cheap weekday at first, like Tuesday.

[mikeal]

Ok, that's much cheaper. The New Parkway is only $375/hr.

So, if you do $15 tickets and $500 Sponsorship.

$15 * 50 Tickets = $750

2 hours 6pm-8pm Tuesday = $750
Insurance should be $100 or less.

Credit card fees will eat a tiny bit but you're pretty close with just 50 tickets and if you lock in a sponsor you've got some wiggle room. I have a tito account that is free per-use forever so we don't have any additional cost to the ticketing vendor if you want to run it though my bank account.

I have the additional audio equipment and a transportable podium.

[mikeal]

For anyone who didn't make it to JSFest Oakland, here's some photos of what The New Parkway is like:

• DHTMLConf
• Nothing is Sacred
• HapiDay
• NodeConf ONE-SHOT
• CSSConf

[visnup]

@mikeal you're like a walking conference.