Re: [LACTTE] Re: [Linux-aus] About a User Conference (was...)

[Anthony Towns <secretary@linux.org.au>]

Michael Still wrote:
> > > > - users are extremely price sensitive
> > Note anything more than $0 is too much.
> Perhaps. How do you fund an event without having any money though?

There're at least three ways:

 * have people who present pay for it (tradeshow)
 * finance it by sponsors (essentially advertising)
 * run it at a loss (mistake ;)

The second two options are how the open source forums are run; but 
they're pretty small and expected to stay that way, so the loss doesn't 
matter so much.

> Absolutely. I was more thinking of Windows-centric ISV / bespoke 
> programmers wanting to port their worlds to Linux / open source however.

Some possibilities:

  * people who'd like to know if they can switch to Linux, and why they
    would, and get some idea how to -- they don't want to devote too
    much time (it's all wasted if the answer's "no they can't switch"),
    and aren't too fussed if it's not too in-depth.

  * people who've already decided they want to swich to Linux, and want
    to get some real useful help in making the step -- they probably
    want to actually devote a day or two in their entirety to seeing
    tutorials, networking with consultants, and whatever else.

  * people who're already using Linux and want to use it better --
    they're not so interested in basics, and want in-depth tutorials and
    a chance to talk to people in depth.

  * people who're using Linux and want a chance to "give back" to the
    community in some valuable way, but aren't able to hack on the
    kernel or openoffice.org -- not sure what we might want to offer
    these folks, but they're probably worth considering

Maybe we should try a user conference that caters variously to all the 
sorts of people we can think of, then get feedback on how to do it right 
next time -- more as a deliberate experiment, than a first actual run?

I guess the in-depth stuff would be hardest to do as a roadshow, and 
also the most likely to be interesting enough to get people to actually 
fly somewhere to attend.

> (I suspect the idea is going no where by the way. I don't sense a 
> concensus happening on this list at the moment. There are approximately 
> three competing visions for the event at the moment, and I don't think 
> there is a clear winner.)

Well, hey, it has only been a couple of weeks; and your proposal was so 
draft it had a request for "$xxx" :) There's not really much of a 
definite idea to have a consensus on yet.

Cheers,
aj

--
Anthony Towns <secretary@linux.org.au>
Secretary, Linux Australia Inc

http://www.linux.org.au/