On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 04:33:41PM +0800, Ben Jensz wrote:
> In that people who aren't
> working in high paying jobs and/or having their employer sending them
> along to it simply aren't going to be able to attend the conference,
So, uh, now you know how the NZers have felt since '99?
> The other argument is that if flights to NZ from the east coast are
> cheap, then one would presume that starting at the NZ end and flying
> *to* Australia would cost the same? So in fairness for attendees from
> wider Australia *and* NZ, wouldn't a good compromise be to have it in
> say Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne so that its cheaper for NZ attendees
> and its also relatively cheap for Australian attendees as well?
If cost of airfares for people who come every year were the overriding
concern, maybe it would be. But really, it's not. If we were a corporate
conference, maybe we'd actually care about ensuring that our numbers
go up every year, but we aren't, and except as a lark (and for planning
purposes) we don't much care whether we get 200 or 600 people, as long
as we put on a top-notch Linux technical conference.
The main concern has always been ensuring we have a team that's competent
to run the conference, and excited enough about it that they'll actually
put in the huge amount of effort that's required. Having it operate as a
roadshow so that people who can't afford the airfare to anywhere can still
attend has been a pretty nice off-shoot of that. The variety of locations,
the new ideas from each independent group of organisers, and the challenge
of starting from nothing to build a conference that's better in almost
every single way than all the previous ones have all paid off too, IMO.
I'm sure that the NZ guys will address the issue of flight costs when they
put in their bid; and I'm sure it'd be stupid to dismiss them without even
giving them the chance.
Cheers,
aj, a ghost of conferences past
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could.
http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004
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