On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 02:55:12AM +0200, Henning Brauer wrote: > I unfortunately have to suggest that those of you planing to go to > eurobsdcon in karlsruhe hold back on booking your tickets. The > organizers have failed to confirm that they cover speakers' travel and > accomodation expenses despite countless requests. This is not an issue of > us being able to afford it or not - it is standard practice for > conferences to do so. And it must be. Writing software in your free > time, giving it away for free, and then traveling around the world on > your own budget to speak about it just doesn't work out. It's a matter > of fairness. Conferences charge quite a bit for admittance, and part of > that money covers the speakers' expenses. We don't know where/how the > organizers intend to use that money. The talks and thus the speakers > are what you pay for, after all.
I have no insight into EuroBSDCon's budget, but I'll say that statement is very ignorant of conference expenditures. Speaker travel and hotel can easily suck up 50% of a small conference budget, but the venue (space, networking, power) and catering can quickly overwhelm all of it. I wager that most of the other conferences benefit from academic venues which are typically free or low-cost. I have no such luxury with DCBSDCon. Not sure about EuroBSDCon. But I will agree that any conference that charges admission should first and foremost, cover speaker costs. Larger conferences should strive to pay speakers an honorarium. If you can't do the minimum, then you shouldn't have the event. Don't half-ass it. -- Jason Dixon DixonGroup Consulting http://www.dixongroup.net/
