<quote who="Bret Busby">
And, perhaps, the issue of locations for conferences, and the way that
they are decided, should be determined by the membership of Linux
Australia, as opposed to being decided by the committee, to reduce
disenfranchisement and inability to attend. A possibility, as an example,
is a rotational allocation (eg, each state gets to host the conference,
once every seven years, for example, in the rotating order Brisbane then
Sydney then Canberra then Melbourne then Hobart then Adelaide then Perth
then Adelaide (or Darwin) then starting again with Brisbane).Similarly,
with the deciding when the conferences are to be held, it may be better
for the membership as a whole, rather than the committee, making the
decision.
I disagree with these suggestions:
* We delegate decisions such as these to the elected committee, so that the
entire organisation is not ground to a halt in {mind,end}less debate.
* A rotational conference would mean throwing out the "best proposal wins"
method we're using at the moment, and result in lower quality events run
by teams who didn't have to prove their mettle. I'd predict that after a
few bum conferences, we'd end up choosing a reliable, distributed team,
but they would suffer from burn out, lack of inspiration, and most of
them wouldn't be from the host city.
linux.conf.au really benefits from having a fresh and fired up local team
putting it together. It totally avoids the cookie-cutter sameness of other
conferences. It's stressful, but it's a hell of a fun job. After a few years
off, I think I'm almost ready to do it again. :-)
- Jeff