On Thu, 3 Mar 2011, Benson Margulies wrote:
To me, however, the issue is the *time*, not the money. If I use vacation time for such a thing, I'm going to get some pretty hairy eyeballs across the dining room table from the my spouse and kids. If I use work time, I have to justify the time, and that's no small thing.
We've tended to hold the retreats on weekends, so that hopefully most people can make it there without needing either work time or vacation.
The hope is that we'll have more of these in the future, across a wider geographical area so that people won't have too long to travel to get to their nearest one. That should certainly help with the above. However, the limiting factor at the moment is people willing to help organise...
Maybe, amusingly, the selection function is tending to select people who don't have pets, kids, or spouses competing for their time?
I believe that quite a lot of the people who come do have at least one (or more!) of those three. I'm told that a common trick is to get your other half to mind kids and/or pets for the weekend, then you do the same when they want to do their thing one weekend. Maybe the selection function is a product of interest and free time?
Nick
