[Talk] Re: Cheaper conferences Not in commercial hotels would help BSD.

[David Purdue]

I am following this discussion with interest, as it is something
that AUUG has discussed at board level before.

A couple of points that come to mind:

- If cost was the whole story, then we would get a lot more
people attending the AUUG one-day symposia (which generally come
in around, usually under, $100) than the annual conference.
This is not the case.

- If we slashed and burned the conference budget, went for the
absolute lowest cost conference we could stage, then I think we
would not necessarily get more people, just different people.

- To expand on the above - I am not convinced that a slash and
burn conference would even get all the Linux hobbyists, as some
here have suggested.  They are already well served by linux.conf.au,
and we do no service to AUUG members by cloning linux.conf.au.



That being said, there is perhaps room for another event that
AUUG could sponsor and help organise - call it a "Student
Conference".  Aimed at and primarily organised by students,
held at Uni's during holidays, open to non-students. This would
supplement rather than replace the annual conference.

I feel a board agenda item coming on...

DavidP