> I'll answer for myself - I would expect FrOSCon to contain much less Firebird related sessions, and Firebird is the only open source product that is very relevant for my work (the other open source stuff that I occasionally use are very simple). Sure, if there were two or more rooms reserved for Firebird sessions the entire conference, then it would just be a bonus to join forces with FrOSCon, but I don't think that would be quite fair to the other open source products. The Firebird Conference is also intended to last three days as opposed to the two days at FrOSCon. I have never seriously considered attending FrOSCon, but have been to all the annual Firebird Conferences so far.
>
> I remember that when the conference was in Prague, there was a special price for Prague students, and I'm not opposed to cheaper pricing for certain groups with limited funds. However, people like me (my employer has paid for the conferences so far) should pay a fair price. Anyway, pricing is up to the organizer, too cheap means deficit and too expensive means too few attendees.

Beside the core crowd (people who attend even if it would be a pyjama
party *g*), beside pricing, IMHO the number of attendees is highly
dependent on the session topics/quality. I'm not sure if e.g. teaching
the SP language and such basic topics are *still* interesting, because
there are presentations downloadable from previous conferences and there
is Helen's excellent book and other ressources like Release Notes ...
Sure, there are always newbies in the Firebird field, but I'm not even
sure, if they would go to the conference anyway.

Firebird is an excellent product and we love e.g. it's zero
administration/maintenance and that stuff, but I'm afraid that's a
"problem" for events like conferences, because there is not much to say
about maintaining a Firebird database. There are other similar topics as
well.

I think, the sessions need to be more attractive, being a mix of:

* A few basic stuff
* Best Practices (why have I done it that way *g*)
* Real-world examples / applications
* More in-depth stuff for performance optimization (e.g. Arno's sessions
on the Optimizer were really great, because things discussed there were
no where written down - at least I think so)
* "New" usage areas for Firebird (OLAP, ...)
* Mad auction - the "we love to entertain you session"


So, move a away from basic to more advanced stuff.


Just my 0.2c.



--
Best Regards,
Thomas Steinmaurer
LogManager Series - Logging/Auditing Suites supporting
InterBase, Firebird, Advantage Database, MS SQL Server and
NexusDB V2
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com
My blog:
http://blog.upscene.com/thomas/

> As for whether there will be a conference or not this year, I'll await the site to be more completed and some official announcements on the lists, currently there are some funny inconsistencies that gives me the impression that it is still work in progress (e.g. I never knew that 19 November happened to fall on both Thursday, Friday and Saturday this year or that the click of one button increases the price by 149.80 euro).
>
> Set
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Dimitry Sibiryakov
> Sent: 17. september 2009 12:43
> To: Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [Firebird-general] Firebird Conference 2009?
>
>> C'mon Dimitry, speakers never had to pay conference fee or hotel, and
>> even got paid for presentations, so they had travel expenses (more or
>> less) covered. That way we're able to get there those that would have
>> problems to come.
>
> But how many listeners we lost because they weren't able to pay for
> speakers? There is no free beer. You know numbers of visitors on last
> conferences. It is decreasing.
> If somebody didn't go to FrOSCon because 250 euros is too much for
> him, why he would go to FB Conference where only fees are more than two
> times bigger?
>
> SY, SD.
>
>
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