[Linux-aus] Re: LCA: bringing the process forward

[Glen Turner]

In the spirit of contrarianism (so remember, flamers, this
is a list of the reasons against the notion that I can
think of, and thus risks we need to address).

1)
Moving the decision date too far forward increases risk
of losing key organisers.

You're asking for a committment of, say, 1.5 years.  Average
job tenure in IT is three years, so 50% chance of any key
organiser needing to reduce l.c.a committments.

2)
Announcing "lca after next" is fine. But what happens
when the "lca after next" is obviously going to be a
dud, even one year out?

3)
What are organisers meant to do in that extra six months?

4)
Do we really want two distinct groups chasing the same
set of sponsors.  I'd suggest not.  So this proposal
implies LA taking on more sponsorship-gathering.  Which
then implies that l.c.a success also depends upon LA
cmte, not just l.c.a organisers.  And it splits the
revenue/cost in the l.c.a bugdet into differring organisations
and means l.c.a organisers can't tradeoff revenue/cost.

5)
Are we moving dates forward because we have inadequate
information capture from previous lcas?

Remember, I'm not necessarily opposed. I just want to
point out that it's not all up-side.

Glen
(one of the lca2004 team)