On 2008/10/07 11:19 AM, Chip Taylor wrote:
I have to agree that something more "local" needs to be offered as well. I
attended the Victoria conference and found it to be one of the most useful
conferences I had attended in many years. But the cost of an airline ticket
from Seattle to Capetown was nearly $2,000 US. Flying time to Capetown was
on the order of 24 hours and returning the flying time was over 31 hours.
That's 55 hours of grueling travel time, not to mention airport time. Add in
the hotel/B&B/tent/sleeping on the street, food and the conference fees you
are talking a good bit of expense here. In both cash and time, this was
just too prohibitive. My company would have rejected it outright and I
certainly could not have afforded it from my own funds.
I hope to attend a FOSS4G conference again, but I am afraid with world
finances the way they are, as well as airline situations, it will be quite a
few years before I can do that.
Chip Taylor
Prepared Response, Inc
Tacoma, WA
If you 'reverse the directions' in Chip's text, you might get
the wording used by people in Capetown to explain why they
perhaps didn't wouldn't a FOSS4G conference in Seattle. And
the same might have been said for some people in Australia who
didn't attend FOSS4G 2007 in Victoria BC Canada, but then you
could probably 'reverse' that in 2009 for why some people won't
attend FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney Australia. It just reinforces
that by moving FOSS4G around geographically, each year some
people will be unable to attend, while at the same time
others will have an opportunity to attend that year. Overall,
the most good for the most people, given time.
--
Dave Patton
CIS Canadian Information Systems
Victoria, B.C.
Degree Confluence Project:
Canadian Coordinator
Technical Coordinator
http://www.confluence.org/
OSGeo FOSS4G2007 conference:
Workshop Committee Chair
Conference Committee member
http://www.foss4g2007.org/
Personal website:
Maps, GPS, etc.
http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/
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