Re: Akademy+GUADEC *2009* Hosting Proposals

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org>]

On Thu, 2008-07-03 at 17:30 +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> 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:

All well-said Lennart.  Your spared me writing my comments ;).

behdad

> 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.
> lennart [at] poettering [dot] net         ICQ# 11060553
> http://0pointer.net/lennart/           GnuPG 0x1A015CC4
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-- 
behdad
http://behdad.org/

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