All Hands/2014 Portland

"What if, by some magical coincidence, everyone's work week happened to be at the same time. In the same city. Within a square block (or a few)? Everyone can have their work weeks, and do their normal things. And maybe on some of the day we can get together for a guest speaker. And then on Friday, hey - let's have a f-ing party!"

"The idea is a sewn together work week. This won't be an all hands: not scripted, no conference schedule. We want to bring in everyone who would normally come to your work week. That generally includes paid staff and sometimes core, very active volunteer contributors. It won't be a summit where we can bring in the whole community; it really means people working effectively full time."

"Now, when you look at a thousand people going anywhere, it's hard to make that look like anything other than corporate boring awful. So here's our idea: Let's go to Portland! And instead of just booking a big hotel/convention space, let's actually go and "live in Portland" as part of this. Surrounding the Portland Art Museum are a set of small- to large-size hotels. So we can take that space and come together when we want to. Take meeting rooms in the museum and around the city. We use those for meeting rooms for our work weeks. And, instead of having expensive hotel catering, we can go out and hit the food trucks!" [1]'