[Linux-aus] BarCamp Geelong - 9th July - formal request for grant $500

[Kathy Reid]

Getting stuff going in a regional area is tougher than in a metropolitan 
centre for a number of reasons:

1. There are less people to attract to the event. Promotion, marketing 
etc is harder.
This has a knock on effect in that the event(s) is/are less attractive 
to sponsors.

2. We are limited in the venues that are available.
Luckily I have an incredibly supportive boss, and an incredibly 
supportive workplace in general.

3. It's harder to draw people in from a metropolitan area.
How many people are going to drive the 1 - 1.5 hours from Melbourne to 
Geelong, or take an hour train ride from Southern Cross to BarCampGeelong?

4. There are less people to 'carry on' the events if the main organisers 
no longer can, or no longer wish to.
The last BarCamp in Victoria was 2009 - nearly two years ago.

In some ways, getting stuff like this going in a regional environment is 
more important - as manufacturing jobs wane, it will be imperative that 
regional centres are able to develop knowledge based economies - which 
obviously require strong ICT infrastructure and skills.

On 6:59 AM, Russell Coker wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Jun 2011, Donna Benjamin<donna at cc.com.au>  wrote:
>> We really need a metric load more stuff going on in regional centres.
>> There's something FLOSSY on just about every week in the big smoke -
>> meetups, user groups, etc... but that's just not possible to sustain in
>> smaller cities and towns.
> We should have more events like the inaugural Ballarat LUG meeting.
>
> The BLUG meeting in question was run on a Saturday and a bunch of people from
> LUV traveled there to give talks about various topics.  It was a small
> conference.
>
> Some LA funding for travel/accommodation and food for such events would be a
> good thing.  To follow the BLUG model we need money for food (something other
> than just sausages in bread would be good and a Vegan option would be great)
> and some portion of hotel expenses.
>
> Note that I'm not volunteering to run such an event (I live in the Melbourne
> metropolitan area) but I would be happy to give a talk at such an event.
>