What has Guadec become?
So, it’s time for Guadec again, I’m surprised to see the same crappy mistake being done this year again. This year even worse, this year even speakers get charged an entry fee.
The only fee I think can be justified is the non-member professional fee. All other fees are totally counterproductive. There are a lot of companies involved in GNOME these days, this is GOOD for GNOME, if these companies have to chose which to send to the conference and which not to send becaues of the in my opinion high fees that would SUCK.
Do I sound angry? If so, good, because I’m pissed off to say the least. This is a hackers conference, for hackers to get together and discuss the future of GNOME. Or should we do a Guadec Reloaded for that. I guess this is the Boston Summit, this development will only lead to hackers going to Boston Summit and not to Guadec…
As far as I can tell the Guadec organizers this year hasn’t tried very hard to find sponsors for Guadec to avoid having to charge, at least I’ve not been contacted by them. Well… I guess it’s easier to just put a charge not on the web page and invest the efforts in setting up an online payment system…
I hope you are pissed off to say the least, and not pissed…
Haha, yeah, changed
I can only second that. As I am always late on such things, I haven’t decided yet whether to join this year’s Guadec. But basically I was pretty much sure that I would go. Yesterday though I learned that I would have to pay an entrance fee. So not only do I need to pay for travel and accommodation (which is OK), I also need to pay a fee to meet the people I’ve been working with over the last couple of years. This sucks and it certainly doesn’t attract developers.
Let alone the fact that the payment is paypal only. That alone would be enough reason not to participate.
We’d like sponsorship to cover all the costs, and I guess we are near that. But until we get there, everyone who doesn’t pay is asking everyone else to pay for them.
However, we allow that. Nobody will be prevented from going to GUADEC because they can’t afford to contribute. That would be unthinkable. That’s why we also help some people with travel and accommodation, which cost far more than the registration fee. I’ve asked the administrator to make some changes to the site to make this clearer. We’re sorry for not getting the communication right from the start.
Personally, I put so much of my time into GNOME that a few euros extra is insignificant in comparison. We give to the community all the time, so I don’t quite understand why this is different.
Murray, huh? So this is really a situation of not starting hunting sponsors in time? And if you get the sponsors in time, what will you do then?
A few euroes extra isn’t just a few euroes for companies like Red Hat or Novell sending quite a bunch of people (I hope). These companies have invested deeply in GNOME already by contributing tons of code. Asking these companies to also pay extra for sending their developers to a conference where everyone will enjoy their company is just rediculous. Most of these Foundation-member developers won’t learn a thing at Guadec but will most likely teach a few things. So it’s not like you can argue that it’s of educational value to go there for long time GNOME hackers.
And just because we all have put endless hours in the project doesn’t mean that the project should just continue exhausting our resources in every possible aspect. I think that is a very good reason why members should be able to go their for free (entrance-fee wise).
So instead, drop this horrible everyone-must-pay and add a optional contribution option with a t-shirt or something if you do. Charge the non-foundation-member professionals that get there since they are obviously users of GNOME that doesn’t contribute to GNOME or they would be members…
Just because someone has shown willingness to freely give of time/money doesn’t mean you have to mine that resource until it leaves… that’s the last thing we want.
Murray, in my opinion that is so backwards that I’m not sure where to begin. Are you actually saying that if someone is giving a lot, they might as well give even more?
“So this is really a situation of not starting hunting sponsors in time”
Feel free to help with that in future. This is not a completely new situation.
“I think that is a very good reason why members should be able to go their for free”
Yes, of course that would be nice. But the money must come from somewhere. I’d like to pay for everyone but I’m not that rich.
Murrayc, I (Imendio) would have happily sponsored Guadec if I had found some information about the different levels, or at least been contacted by someone.
This just seems like the easy way out, “it was like this last year so no one can argue if we do it again, money issue solved!”…
Murray, or someone else. Can someone show what it costs, where those money goes to and how much sponsoring you’ve been able to get?
That would be really interesting to see since the only argument seems to be to pay for those that feels OK with asking for money to pay for flight.
It may be too late for this year, but I hope that future GUADECs will not have any registration fees and only suggest donations (like for FOSDEM).
Note that I am not against paying a bit for GUADEC on top of paying for my travel and accomodation. I registered and paid for GUADEC last year but unfortunately other events prevented me from joining. So in the end that was a donation from me. I will probably pay for this year as well, except that I don’t want to use PayPal.
The problem is not the money. The problem is the attitude. I hope that it will change soon. I also hope that someone will edit the main GUADEC web site (not only the registration page) and clarify the registration policy.