On 17 Jan 2013, at 09:57, Kieren Diment wrote:
On 17/01/2013, at 2:08 AM, gvim <gvi...@gmail.com> wrote:
PHP UK (22nd Feb.): £380
London Perl Workshop: £0
'nuff said.
Apparently not.
Having been part of the teams that organized the first YAPC::Europe
and first LPW there is a good reason for it being free or in the case
of YAPC as cheap as possible. Kevin Lenzo had done the first YAPC as
an alternative to expensive conferences, especially thinking of
students and/or poorer open source hackers. The phrase "Inclusive not
exclusive" I remember being used a lot. And that tradition has stuck
and influenced LPW, and it isn't just for moral reasons alone - if you
run an event where nobody is profiting you tend to get the goodwill of
groups and people like Westminster University (who have supported
other open source events) and companies like O'Reilly - apologies for
skipping the full list of sponsors.
And of course it means you have the freedom to just say no to
commercial talks from sponsors - which is the reason YAPC::Europe has
auctions ;-).
I think its great that there is a paid for PHP event, i'm sure a lot
of people will go along and learn a lot (i'm so avoiding making a joke
here) and thats great, but i'm quite proud that London.pm 13 years on
has kept the seem moral objective of being accessible.
G.
