[ubuntu-us-ut] Utah Open Source Conference thoughts

[Thad Van Ry]

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On 9/11/07, Adam Olsen  wrote:
> Wait.  I think at this point, you're just ignoring Bryan's arguments,
> which I think are valid.

I'm not ignoring them, I believe I covered them in previous responses.
No need for me to re-hash them. If you missed my responses, go read
the previous e-mails from me again.

> I attended as much of the conference as I could, and absolutely loved
> it.  I'd even go as far as to say that it was the best I've ever
> attended.  I will attend again, no question.
>
> That said, I still think, as a valid contributor to the community, I
> still didn't know enough about the price of registration.  It was
> confusing and misleading.

Interesting. I wasn't involved with planning the conference, however,
I do attend some of the local SIG meetings and I was never confused
about the price. In fact, I specifically remember the $40 price being
mentioned at the end of the August Ubuntu Utah meeting.

> I also agree that anything over $100 would have been too much.  Prices
> over $100 seem excessive for any "Open Source" conference for your
> regular nerd.  Donations are an entirely different thing.  Just my 2
> cents.

OSCon is designed for "your regular nerd" and yet they charge well
over $100 for their "Open Source" conference. If you don't feel that
the price was worth it, state why. Are you willing to fork over
$1,000+ to travel to Oregon to attend OSCon? If not, why not. If it's
because you are a student, would you be willing to do that when you
are a working professional?

In my opinion, a conference that charges over $100 to attend is going
to attract people that really care about the topics covered. It will
also discourage those who are there for the free swag and snacks. I
have enough T-shirts from years past at Comdex. Knowledge is more
useful to me then T-shirts are. I personally don't want a conference
that only attracts college students and makes business people not want
to attend.

Do I think this conference was worth paying $40 to attend? Yes. I
thoroughly enjoyed Tom Welch's session about an Online Open Source
community. Many of the organizers of this event as well as SIG
leadership could have benefited from attending that session. I also
enjoyed Michael Place's session on Linux Performance Tuning. I didn't
learn anything new from Michael's session, but, it was still enjoyable
to hear his take on Performance Tuning. I'd like to see an "Advanced
Linux Performance Tuning" which assumes that you know everything that
he covered this year and digs deeper into the struggles that a major
ISP deals with in tuning machine performance.

Do I think this conference was worth paying $199 to attend? No. In my
opinion, there were not enough advanced level sessions available. I've
been employed as a Systems Administrator for over 10 years. I would
have liked more sessions dealing with advanced topics or at least the
problems I run into daily. Like maybe a session titled "How to talk
tech to non-techies". This session would be designed for those who may
struggle with explaining technical issues to customers, upper
management, and other non-techie types.

So those are my thoughts. Worth about what you paid for them.

Thad
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