--- In Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com, Dimitry Sibiryakov <sd@...> wrote:

> But this is exactly the way how FrOSCon is organized. Every project

Froscon has for sure a completly different approach, i know especially from froscon germany last month with about 1000 visitors.

I was there: I prepared some firebird related material on the booth, i talked about Firebird in a session, i was part of the Open Source database comparison talk organized by MySQL Guy Lenz Grimmer, where firebird, mysql, postgresql, apache derby and some other (i do not remeber) were represented by people like me. Nobody paid for my expenses, i was there spending my own money.

There were several tasks as headline for the database comparison talk, for example backup strategy, security, etc. In all cases i had some really good answers representing the firebird technology, especially compared to the other people. In my point of view only Postgresql was on the same level, all others had some really bad disadvantages, in most cases already in their architecture. but especially in the embedded area and in automated distribution and integration in installers, also postgresql has a lot of disadvantages. there is also a video on youtube.

And here we talk about the difference between typical visitors of the
Froscon compared to typical visitors of the firebird conference. I know the structure of typical firebird conference visitors since i organized it until 2007 and knew almost every visitors company and name.

Age
Froscon: typical age 18-25, perhaps 20% older.
FBCon: typical age 30-50, perhaps 20% younger

Students:
Froscon: perhaps 80% or more
FBCon: perhaps 5% or less

Responsible for descisions in companies
Froscon: perhaps 5% or less
FBCon: perhaps 50% or more

webapplication developer
Froscon: perhaps 75% or more
FBCon: perhaps 10% or less

There are a lot of other issues i found while i was talking to people on the froscon. I know that a lot of the people among the visitors of the froscon are the responsible people from tomorrow, but when a typical question "why do you think is firebird better than mysql" is answered by me, and perhaps 80 % of the people do not know even know about the keywords in my answer (transactions, constraints, acid, MGA, ...) and they still think, what i do not know, i do not need.

The froscon attracts only one area of programmers and it is for sure not the typical Firebird developer.

When you talk about money, you will for sure find much more companies creating and selling software based on firebird compared to all other Open source database platforms. I know a lot of them personally and a lot of them are happy, that they use a robust database server on their customers computers, that requires no administration. This will save a lot of money for software companies, a lot of them remember the time when repair an index was a daily job. Have people working in their company and pay them for talking to customers who want to restart their broken database system.

We all know that firebird is perhaps the best database solution for similar projects. I know customers with hundred thousands of embedded firebird installations, i am myself also responsible for more than 3500 running replicated firebird instances working on laptops from insurance agents. This works really fine and we choose Firebird for several reasons, not only because it is free. If there would be a better alternative, we would have used it, but there is no one.

So lets get back to the money: a conference only base on freelance speaker will have a really low quality. I spend some time in sessions on froscon, where i went out a few minutes later due to the bad knowledge. Most of the people in the Firebird area who attract visitors do have their job and why should they attend a conference thousands km away from their home when most of the communication can be handled online also. You need money to pay for traveling, you need money for a hotel, and most of them need money for the "lost" working days, at least a little bit.

I started a few years ago the first Firebird conference because i know the value of a physical conference. I talked also on embarcaderos virtual coderage conference about firebird, but you can not even compare this in any case to a real physical conference. It has much more input for all visitors, sometimes more input from other visitors who talk to you about their projects and descisions in the lunch hour.

And most of us remember some highlights, for example helen asking at the receiption desk for a power supply and standing next to somebody she knew since years from emails and newsroups but never personally. Or the battle between nikolay and jim ... You can read a lot of the stories in the newsgroups.

But there was simply one issue, that made all this possible: You need somebody who will guarantee for the expenses: To the speaker, to the travel agencies, to the hotel, for the meeting rooms, for the meals, for advertising and marketing etc.

In the first years it was my own decision to organize this event year by year and it was never a positive result after you recalculate your real costs. For prague, Paul and me were together responsible and we had to pay for the negative results.

No conference would be much cheaper. Why did i decide to do another conference?

One of the reasons is that i have this time a dfferent way, based on experiences i have from German Delhitage and brasil FDD.

This year is the first time where you can attend the firebird conference for an entrance fee of 69 Euro (or if you come with a friend for 62 Euro per person). This will give you access to all sessions on saturday and it includes a product voucher for ibexpert products for 50 Euro (this voucher can for example be used by students to buy a 50 Euro educational full version).

Anyone who like can already meet us on friday evening, when we will meet somewhere in munich in a restaurant and as all experienced speaker and visitor know, later in the hotel bar, typically until teh first saturday sessions starts ;-)

We already have some confirmations of the in my point of view most important speakers and the session program is alredy in work.

The 69 Euro entrance fee is only valid for the saturday, so we called this the private ticket. Even if your employer will not pay for your conference fee, you might be able to come to munich and pay on your own. Firebird knowledge might sometimes help you a lot to find a new better paid job.

Especially for people with more commercial background there are two more days, where the focus of one of the two tracks is more dedicated to "how to use firebird", especially with the focus on replication, security, integration, legal questions, etc. All people who pay for the business ticket for all 3 days wil have some other advantages, but this can be found on the website www.firebird-conference.com

But first fact is: Attending the firebird conference is cheaper than ever. Based on the number of subscribed visitors we might invite more people involved in the project, but this depends on the amount of paying visitors. So if anyone from the active project members (in the meaning of entries firebird cvs checkins) is interested, they will get free entrance on saturday 21. Simpley send me an email to hklemt at ibexpert dot biz.

the more people we can attract for the conference, the more visibility the firebird project will have.

btw: when i always talk about money:
in the sense of

"Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money"

"Only when the last commercial software company declared bankruptcy and the last commerical software turned over into open source, all programmer without paid jobs will realise the we can not eat open source"
Holger Klemt
www.ibexpert.com