[Linux-aus] Announcing Everything Open - Conference 2023

[Russell Stuart]

On 15/10/22 08:16, Paul Wayper via linux-aus wrote:
> The LA Council summarily dismissed the bid.  No conversation was entered 
> into.  We were told it wasn't suitable.

The bid was for a hybrid in-person/online conference, and it made it 
clear the team was not interested in running a purely online conference. 
The proposal was put in while COVID was in full swing.  It was 
effectively "betting" the COVID restrictions would be lifted.

I can tell you what was going through my mind at the time.  As a 
reminder, at the time the proposal was put up we had stories of people 
getting out of the plane at home only to find a snap decision made while 
they were in the air meant they had to go into quarantine for 2 weeks. 
Council members had been told by their employers personal interstate 
travel was not acceptable.  Hotels and airlines were being very cagey 
about giving refunds travel and accommodation that COVID later made 
impossible.

What we had before us was a proposal for a conference that had most 
attendees coming from outside of the state, and those attendees would 
have to book accommodation and travel a month or two in advance.

As it happened, COVID was very much still a thing at the start of 2022.

Finally, the current executive was surprised by your characterisation of 
the communications from the 2021 council, so this morning we dug up 
their written response to the bid. Yes, it said the TL;DR is a motion 
was moved to accept the bid, but it failed for lack of votes. It didn't 
reveal the private deliberations of the council of course, but it did 
discuss the ruminations that happened in general terms. I won't publish 
the full response here (it's quite lengthy and maybe you would prefer we 
didn't do that, but feel free to do it yourself). Instead here are two 
quotes from it:

- We have also discussed the current COVID-19 situation

- We would like to extend an invitation to this team to submit a bid for 
LCA2023