Re: Akademy+GUADEC *2009* Hosting Proposals

[Lennart Poettering <mztabzr 0pointer de>]

On Mon, 30.06.08 22:21, Behdad Esfahbod (behdad behdad org) wrote:

>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Quick reminder that we are all ears to hear your comments about the
> three proposals.  Please send them sooner rather than later.

Here are my three reasons to prefer Gran Canaria:

1. The money. I know that a non-trivial number of attendees had
problems with the cost for food/beer/stuff in Norway and
England. Finland is not cheaper than .no or .uk -- it is *very*
expensive. Especially the beer part. Attendees with a corporate
background, with a well-payed job won't have much problems with high
cost of living for a week -- but for new contributors, students, new
faces, people who won't necessarily get sponsored by the Foundation,
they won't like it. Furthermore for non-europeans and non-americans
the cost of living in .fi might appear astronomical.

OTOH Spain might not be as cheap anymore as it used to be, however in
comparison to Finland prices are certainly reasonable. And then, to
the canary islands you can get charter flights from most places in
europe, especially during summertime. That means very cheap flights,
and a lot of direct connections. Tampere cannot really come close to
that. Are there even any direct flights to Tampere, except from HEL? Of
course the Canary islands are a bit off the corner of the map. But they
are nonetheless relatively easy to go to, for cheap money.

So, in the interest of attracting more students, more new faces, more
international attendees, more people with a small budget, let's go to
a place that is awesome *and* cheap.

There's already a conference where mostly only those guys attend who
already *have* a GNOME related job. It's the Boston Summit. Let's make
sure GUADEC is a place for a much broader audience.

2. The conference tourist that I am would prefer to go to the Canary
Islands, it's way more interesting from a tourtistic pov than
the other two suggestions.

3. Let's face it, finnish food and beer just sucks. In Spain at least
the food is very good.

And to the often heard comment on "oh, no, not spain again!" I can
only respond that Vilanova was one awesome conference, one of the best
conferences ever. If the spaniards can throw awesome conferences, why
not let them?

Lennart

--
Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
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