[Linux-aus] Announcing Everything Open - Conference 2023

[Russell Stuart]

On 14/10/22 10:40, Anthony Towns wrote:
> Isn't the point of the LA council to make sure that these things get
> done despite the conference team being busy doing real work? Isn't that
> a reason why the council running a conference is a bad idea?

Of course it's a bad idea.  But it seems the majority of the exec 
thought not having a conference was an even worse idea.

In the interests of transparency I'll try to explain why they might 
think that.  "Might" because while it has been discussed many times, I 
can't speak for anyone but me.

The general consensus is that COVID hit us pretty hard.  After running 
one online conference no one was stepping up to run a second one.  My 
own experience is while I loved being at in-person LCA's, I would find 
it very hard to ramp up enough enthusiasm to attend a third purely 
online one.  Anecdotally seems to true for all conferences, not just LCA.

Now that COVID lock downs have passed the committee's general consensus 
is people in the open source movement still want to attend open source 
conferences - the enthusiasm for in-person conferences hasn't gone away. 
  But now we have a problem - it's the people who attended previous 
conferences who step up to run the next one, but no one is stepping up 
after the online conferences.

So the idea is the exec will boot strap the process again by running a 
conference.   As you say, it's not ideal, in fact I personally doubt 
it's sustainable - burning out the exec seems inevitable if it continues.

But for the life of me, I can't think of a better way forward.  If you 
have one, it would be really helpful is you shared it.