Subject Re: [Firebird-general] Re: Summarizing
Author Helen Borrie
At 06:35 PM 2/10/2005 +0200, Jakub Hegenbart wrote:

>Don't you think the price he'd pay for attending the conference is quite
>high? At least for a typical Central European student. I'd be insanely
>happy if I'd be able to see those people, but given the price, I will
>definitely prefer investing those money into my new bathroom, even
>though i'm writing this letter from a place 1.2 km north from the
>location in question.

So who do you think would pay? Such a rich panoply of speakers but, except
for a few who are paying their own way, speakers have to be paid,
accommodated and fed. Considering that international speakers will get
$1400 US and nearer ones 800 Euros, the conference facilities at the hotel
for three days are considerable and the free coffees and lunches are not
free, the asked registration fees look pretty cheap.

>I'm sad to say that, but OracleWorld some time earlier was much cheaper
>for a student I was then. :-/

What's to compare? OracleWorld is a planned loss-maker, paid for from the
marketing budget of a huge, greedy corporation. But how many students are
able to plan doctoral theses on Oracle's source code?

On the "hopeful" side, if there are enough registrations to cover costs AND
there are still seats available, we would like to make cheap day passes
available to students and other locals. The "Early Bird" registration was
a way to establish the position in that regard earlier rather than later.

On the "less hopeful" side, it didn't succeed. Today, we still don't know
for sure that the conference can happen. Sponsorship is minimal and
inadequate to underwrite the event. We currently have many more speakers
than registrations. If that doesn't change fast, there won't be a conference.

It's simplistic to assume that Central Europeans are the only potential
attendees handicapped by the cost. For example, a speaker fee of $1400 is
going to leave the Brazil speakers seriously out of pocket, but three of
them are going anyway. Those even more distant (including me!) must be
content with being absent friends.

I'd suggest that, if Sean considers it important for him to attend the
conference, he needs to get proactive and rally some sponsorship for himself.

Helen