Re: GUADEC registration fee

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

On 5/05/2004 3:12 PM, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:

> I guess I don't mind the "hobbyist" fee at all, it's a small price to
> pay for some and I would gladly pay it under any circumstances.  But if
> "corporate" fees apply to all people that just happen to work for a
> company, it's too much.
>  
From Mark's mail in April:

> 	From a brief discussion on irc, it seems that the idea behind such a
> large fee is that only attendees who are being sponsored by their
> employer should pay it, thereby increasing the corporate sponsorship of
> the conference without having to chase companies at length.
So "professional" should be interpreted as "my employer is sponsoring me 
to go" rather than "I work at a company".  If your employer is not 
sponsoring you to go, or if they think it adds too much to the overall 
cost of sending you, pick the hobbyist fee instead.

If it helps, here are some price comparisons with other conferences:

   * OLS (4 days): early bird registrations are US$237 for normal
     registrations, and US$145 for students.  After that it goes up to
     $364 and $182 respectively.  Registrations in the last week are
     $547. (prices converted from Canadian Dollars -- see
     http://www.linuxsymposium.org/2004/faq.php for full details).
   * LCA in January: US$438 for professional registrations, US$200 for
     hobbyists, US$72 for concessions/students.  This included 3 days
     of paper presentations, 1 day of tutorials, and 2 days of "mini
     confs" at the start.
   * LWCE in San Fransisco (3 day conference plus tutorials): US$995
     for conference plus tutorials/labs.  US$650 for just conference. 
     US$295/day if you only want to attend part of the conference.  All
     prices go up the closer you get to the conference. See
     http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/live/12/register///CC60804 for details.

(I could probably find more examples if I hunted round a bit longer).

The fee for Guadec is not out of the ordinary for community run 
conferences, and is much lower than a commercial conference like LWCE.

James.

--
Email: james daa com au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/