- E04 - Leadership! Google, Guido van Rossum, PSF

[Steve Holden]

Anton Vredegoor wrote:
[...]
> But frankly indeed, I just don't even like to participate to events
> that claim to be open for all but don't even acknowledge that the
> barriers are extremely high compared to some participants budgets. Your
> hype about it being cheap has a very chilling effect on my enthousiasm,
> it's the same way with pypy congresses, which I also would have liked
> to attend (and this thing even seems to be sponsored by public EU
> money). Probably I am still a *rich* person, on a global scale, because
> I live in a place with free internet (from a public library).
> 
[...]
Well, if you can organise conferences that have lower costs of 
attendance might I suggest you go ahead and do so? Personally I found 
that venues were remarkably unhelpful in wanting to be rewarded for 
their donations of facilities.

I'm not saying that conferences *can't* be organised more cheaply than 
PyCon and EuroPython, just that to do so would take a considerable extra 
level of effort that those of us who have compromised to the extent of 
wanting to earn a living just can't give up enough time to manage.

So get off your soapbox and do something.

> 
> 'hey, and my laptop doesn't even have a cdrom, needs almost continous
> electricity, it's keyboard is broken (but it works fine with external
> keyboard), and it networks via a pcmcia card with a *cable* '
> 

What do you want, a medal? You've made life choices, which is fine. Just 
don't moan about the inevitable and predictable consequences of those 
choices. Instead enjoy that advantages (like you don't have to spend 
weeks at a time away from home working for clients or teaching classes, 
for example). Everything has its compensations. If you *could* bring 
down the cost of computer conferences the world would be forever grateful.

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC                     www.holdenweb.com
PyCon TX 2006                  www.python.org/pycon/