[Linux-aus] Notes for Council Meeting 2010/02/17

[Steve Walsh]

(Removed to council to minimise the crossposting)

On 02/17/2010 10:31 PM, Joshua Hesketh wrote:
>
> Although probably a bit more of a topic for the LCA team, but perhaps
> basic guild-lines on attending the conference would be appropriate. For
> example, does the LA council get to go for free, LCA team, papers,
> ghosts, volunteers, zookeeprs, etc.
>
>    
These are just my thoughts / recollections of the last few years, feel 
free to dismiss, deride, etc.

Traditionally, the LA Council has had a policy of covering the basic 
costs of a committee member attending if they were otherwise not able 
to. I don't remember it happening in 2007, 2008 or 2009. There was 
discussion about some of the new 2010 council OCM's being covered to 
attend LCA2010 following the AGM, but I AFAIK that wasn't considered to 
have a good ROI (as some people are aware, flights a week out from the 
conf were topping $1500 return economy).

The LCA team organising the conference generally get to go for free (for 
given values of "get to go") in return for getting to spend a year 
planning the conference and making it happen . Helpers / flying monkeys 
/ evil networking bunnies are at the discretion of the LCA organising 
team[0].

Papers ctte are sometimes invited to the speakers dinner as a thankyou, 
but again, it depends on the LCA committee. AFAIK ghosts pay the same as 
everyone else, but they (in previous years) get a little ghost icon on 
their badge, which, along with $3.50, gets them a cup of coffee ;)

Again, AFAIK, Voluteers have never been asked to pay to attend the 
conference, again as they're putting a reasonable amount of work in for 
the week, and asking them to pay for the privilege is a bit much.

The zookeepr and the sysadmin[1] teams are more people that put work in 
over the year making sure things happen, keeping the servers and sites 
rolling along in the run up to, and during the week of the conference, 
and probably deserve something on their badges indicating that everyone 
should buy them a drink at some point in the week, if only to forward 
buy Karma.

Steve [2]

[0] in the interests of disclosure, I paid for my tickets at LCA2009 and 
LCA2010, then ran around and helped the org committee for the week, 
despite at least one those years offering me a full professional ticket 
as part of the team.
[1] Yes, I'm on the LA sysadmin team, my views on the purchasing of 
drinks as thanks maybe slightly skewed.
[2] Ha! I didn't miss the numbering this time.

-- 
--==--
Steve Walsh, RHCE
Some random guy who does things with linux and conference networks