[OSGeo-Conf] Speaker Discounts

[Frank Warmerdam]

Paul Ramsey wrote:
> The subject is a bit misleading, since Anselm weaves a larger critique
> of the open source geospatial community in general after his specific
> critique of the FOSS4G pricing.
> 
> http://lists.burri.to/pipermail/geowanking/2008-October/005650.html
> 
> However, I have heard this criticism before, in 2007, although usually
> from alumni of O'Reilly conferences. See my followup. If we were
> willing to up the general fee structure slightly and knew we were
> going to have something like 700 attendees on 120 speakers, we could
> at least provide a discounted admission to speakers.
> 
> If we wanted to, that is. Do we want to?

Paul,

It is my opinion that presentations are relatively light weight to prepare
and that there is no compelling need to compensate people for doing them.
We have had no shortage of decent presentations offered.

We already provide substantial discounts for lab and workshop presenters
which I think it is keeping with the greater work they represent, and
the particular draw they provide.

If the LOC can work out a way, I think it might make sense to offer
particular presenters a discount/free entrance if it would help to get
very interesting speakers to the conference and providing talks that would
be considered "high interest".  If we did the voting thing again (which
I thought was great!) we might offer discounts to the top 12 rated
presentations.  Or perhaps selection could be done within the LOC with
the explicit intent of attracting some good speakers that were otherwise
on the fence about coming.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent