FUDCon:Managua 2014

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Goals

As far as we have seen there is no previous FUDCon bid proposing goals.

1. Provide as much skill transfer between international contributors and local contributors as possible.
2. Provide as much training for collaborating with Fedora as possible as a mean to recruit new contributors.
3. Produce results such as translation, documentation, packaging and not least important regional working agreements.
4. Promote the local collaborators to be known by the rest of the international community.

As we focus on goals, organization and budget; we provide here just the basic travel information. Detailed travel and tourist information will be provided later.

Organizing Team

(Alphabetically by surname)

• Neville A. Cross Event Owner
• Fernando Espinoza Transportation
• Cristhian Vanessa G Conference and Barcamp
• Aura Lila Gutierrez Promotional and printing materials
• Samuel J. Gutierrez Aviles Hacking
• Eduardo Mayorga Lodging
• William Moreno Budged Tracking
• Porfirio Paiz Workshops

Team members have organised and been part of the staff in small and large events. Small events like university visits, informal gatherings and Fedora release parties. Large events like, Document Freedom Day, FLISOL and Software Freedom Day.

We will be looking to have supporting staff, so current collaborators can make the most of the event. All the possible venues have a degree in tourism which usually staff events at their universities.

Managua

Managua is the Capital city of Nicaragua. One distinct feature is that has a lot of concrete cobbled streets. You can not walk the city, you may walk within some neighbourhood, but usually distances are beyond walking distance and there is lack of side walks. The address system is based on landmark references. You may think that Managua is a place "Where streets have no names", but in true is that nobody uses them.

Airport

Managua International airport Agusto Cesar Sandino has MGA code (which is very important for internet fare searches). It is serve by Avianca-TACA, Copa, American Airlines, Delta, United, Spirit and Nature Air. You may expect to get connection at Miami, Houston, Atlanta, San Salvador or Panama City. Airport is about 12 kilometers from city center.

Local Transportation

The public transportation is overcrowded. There is plenty of taxi cabs but they don't have fare meters. You have to agree on the fare before hand, and it is expected that you bargain over the price.

Schedule

Proposed dates

October 30th, October 31st and November 1st, 2014.

This will be at mid rainy season. Temperature will be around 26C / 80F with 50% of rain probability. When rains, usually it is for a short time, most likely at the end of the afternoon.

Schedule

The schedule we propose tries to address some concerns. It is really difficult to obtain sponsorship if there is not topics. Also it is difficult to invite people with no topics. So we propose to have predefined talks to attract sponsors and public. We want to lower the profile of barcamp, as not many people understand the concept. All local barcamps organized had been social (drinking) activities with no technical part. Going further, we want to produce results, so we need workshops where people do stuff while they learn something. It is a two fold goal.

Day	Time	Activities
October 30th	Morning Afternoon	Opening and barcamp votation Pre scheduled talks
October 31st	Morning Afternoon	Barcamp Workshops and hacking
November 1st	Morning Afternoon	Workshops and hacking Barcamp and closing

As usual there are informal gathering after the daily activities, we are planning on having a conference room at the hotel. This will be avaliable to meet and engage in further interaction between local and international collaborators. The plan is to have a car to provide transport for those collaborators that live far and where public transportation stops to provide service at certain hours.

Sponsoring People

As we have set some goals, the selection of people to be sponsored should be relevant to the goals. Beyond proposing and giving talks, sponsoring people should:

• Be able to provide a workshop on the proposed elements of collaboration.
• Be able to provide a hacking on topics that will produce result for the projects.
• Have a role that will impact on recruiting new collaborators.

Fud-Pub

There is a popular Nicaraguan food for festivities called "Caballo Bayo". Food is serve in a buffet, clay pottery that holds ignited charcoals and on top there is a big clay plate holding the food hot. Usually there is shredded beef, shredded chicken, minced pork, plantains, cheese, cream, among other stuff. You take corn tortillas in a plate and serve whatever you like. By default we can have this at the hotel. We are exploring other locations to offer different locations.

Venue

At this point, there is no definitive venue. The proposed Venue is Universidad Centroamericana, it is a catholic university administered by the Jesuit order. It is one of the best universities on the country and it has a FOSS community GUL-UCA. Among the private universities UCA is the biggest, having several conference rooms. It has several labs, one of them has already installed Fedora. Starting 2012, UCA is a smoking free area.Their staff will provide some talks as part of the commitment to the event. They are reviewing the schedule of internal activities. It has been said that the will sponsor the event providing the venue and some internet bandwidth free of charge.

There are several conference halls. Aula Magna 400p, Xabier Gorsotiaga 220p, Roberto Teran 120p, Ponsol-Astorqui 100p, Amando Lopez 60p. There several post graduated class room 40p with air conditioning. Also there are several computer labs from 20p to 40p all of them with air conditioning.

The university have book shop, school supply store, snack bars and banks with ATM. Around the university there is several low cost small buffet. Within walking distance there is a Shopping centre with food court, cinemas pharmacy, computer store, electronic store, office supply stores, banks and offices of mobile phone companies. There are some restaurant more up scale near by.

We have talks with Universidad Autónoma de Nicaragua and Universidad Americana to host the event. Both have offered their facilities free of charges. We are please to have options to choose from.

Logistics

Accommodation

At this point there is not definitive selection. Our proposed Hotel is Mansión Teodolinda. Has a good Internet infrastructure and is offering a meeting room for hacking after hours. It has been offered to provide transport to the venue free of charges. The hotel has airport shuttle service, this is a pending issue to negotiate.

Near by there are some small bars, pharmacy, shopping centre (food court, cinemas and small stands of mobile phone companies) and a gas station (24 hours convenience store and ATM).

Catering

Hotel Mansión Teodolinda have offered lunch boxes delivered to the venue, this may be convenient. There are some restaurants in walking distance of the university that can be explored.

Pre-registration system

There is not estimated cost for this item, but it will be sponsored by Kakao media in their web site Folcano which displays activities and sells tickets on-line for events. This means that we will have a preregistration on a well known web site, what will attract attention of many people looking for other activities.

Travel

Visa information

People from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador only require valid government issued ID to enter Nicaragua.

The rest of countries required valid passport. The passport expiration day should be at least six months later than the entry day. Most country does no require visa. However there is a short list of countries that their nationals require to obtain visa before travelling to Nicaragua. Having in mind countries that have fedora collaborators, people from Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru require visa. This is a decision within the consular office, should be a short time waiting. For some other countries, not relevant to our case, the visa have to be consulted to the inmigration offices at Nicaragua and take longer to be processed. You can consult the complete list at the foreign ministry web site (Spanish)

There is a fee at the migration check point (airport o border) of USD 5.00 applied to foreigners.

Buses

As Nicaragua is at the centre of Central America, it is possible for people to travel by bus. Both way bus tickets to Managua

City	Ticabus	Transnica	King Quality	Transporte del sol
Guatemala	(Overnight) Mix USD 140.32 Tourist USD 107.52	n/a	(Overnight) Quality USD 138	(Overnight) Executive USD 140
San Salvador	Executive USD 100 Tourist 60	n/a	Platinum USD 102	Executive USD 99
Tegucigalpa	Tourist USD 40	USD 60	Platinum USD 82	n/a
San Pedro Sula	Tourist USD 64	n/a	Quality USD 92	n/a
San Jose	Executive USD 80 Tourist 56.40	Convetional USD 53 Executive USD 73	n/a	n/a
Panama	(Overnight) Executive USD 190.10 Mix USD 162.10 Tourist USD 132.10	n/a	n/a	n/a

Mix =Over night travel that is booked half in executive class and half in tourist class

Direct Fligths

The table below only shows direct flights. You will have to make connection in one of those cities to get to Nicaragua. Prices searched in Orbitz on December 14th, 2013. Travelling to Managua on October 29th and returning November 3th.

City	Air Line	Price
Miami	American Taca	USD 436.90 USD 436.90
Atlanta	Delta	USD 608.90
Houston	United	USD 797.4
Guatemala	Taca (1 stop) Copa	USD 443.10 USD 443.10
San Salvador	Taca	USD 298.43
San Jose	Copa Taca	USD 317.81 USD 317.81
Panama	Copa Taca (1 stop)	USD 590.10 USD 579.40

It is possible that a flight from Panama stops in San José, Costa Rica, for 30 minutes without need to change plane. The flight from Panama by Taca, goes up North to San Salvador, change planes and then returning South to Nicaragua.

Conecting Flights

The table below is for long distance flights that requires connections. Searches made in Orbitz on December 14th, 21013. Travelling to Nicaragua on October 29th and returning November 3rd 2014

City	Air Line	Price
São Paulo - Brazil	Copa (1 stop)	USD 1,141.56
Rio de Janeiro - Brazil	Copa (1 stop)	USD 1,139.52
Caracas - Venezuela	TACA (1 stop)	USD 2,512.80
Valencia - Venezuela	Insel/TACA (3 stops)	USD 1,149.60
Bogota - Colombia	TACA (1 stop)	USD 948.90
Quito - Ecuador	Copa (1 stop)	USD 946.56
Lima - Peru	TACA (1 stop)	USD 1,229.74
Cuzco - Peru	LAN/COPA (2 stops)	USD 1,591.01
Santiago - Chile	Copa (1 stop)	USD 1,333.50
Asunción - Paraguay	COPA (1 stop)	USD 1,114.30
Montevideo - Uruguay	COPA (1 stop)	USD 1,616.90
Buenos Aires - Argentina	Copa (1 stop)	USD 1,283.72
Córdoba - Argentina	Copa (1 stop)	USD 1,531.52

Budget

The current budget is made with certain assumptions that may change in the upcoming months. We think that we will have a crew of 40, including organizing team (10), people giving talks (20) and supporting staff (10). Most likely this will be reduced. This is our starting point. There has been short time to call for sponsorship and the holidays season has not helped. We are aware that there will be some minor expenses like printing identification tags, and some more important expenses like printing posters for promoting the event. But our goal is to show that there is a remainder budget to sponsor travelling. We expect to have ups and downs, as less travelling sponsored will reduce expenses which in turn will provide more budget for sponsoring until it find an equilibrium. We hope that we can sponsor people travelling by bus from nearby countries.

Item	Description	Price
Drinks	water and soda bottles	USD 235
Venue	Conference Halls	USD 0
Rooms	10 double rooms for four days	USD 2106
food	3 day lunch for 40 people	USD 960
fud pub	rent and food (40 persons)	USD 665
t-shirts	150 units	USD 0
booklets	300 units	USD 113
Banners	4 units to show our sponsors	USD 80
		USD 4159

Sponsors

• Güegüe Comunicaciones will be sponsoring t-shirts
• UCA will be hosting the event
• Folkano will be host our pre-registration system.

Pros and Cons of the proposed location.

Pros

• Centrally located in Central America. People can travel by bus.
• Venue will be low cost (free)
• People has experience with events and links with local news media.
• Hotel is providing facilities such conference room and it has a good internet connection.

Cons

• few sponsors at the moment
• Bad transportation within the city
• Expensive air fares