Is Xtech 2006 attendance too expensive ?
By glazou on Wednesday 17 May 2006, 11:42 - General - Permalink
So I'm sitting in the Foyer Room of the Krasnapolskystink hotel, listening to Robert Sayre's talk. And to be honest, I am a bit worried because there are roughly 45 persons in the room, and a good half of them are mozillians... I mean Mozilla Corporation folks or Mozilla Community members. And most people in the other half are europeans. I seriously wonder if attendance to Xtech 2006 is not too expensive in a city where lodging is too expensive too far away from the US. Overall, it's a 2000 euros trip for a 3 days conference, meaning students are not here, teachers are not here.
More surprising, Microsoft has not a single talk.
Comments
Ils pourraient faire comme à polythech'nice ( jm2l.polytech.unice.fr/ ) et proposer de suivre les confs sur webcam avec support diffusé via le net en temps réel ... c'était assez impressionnant par la qualité ...
C'est évident que c'est cher. Je suis étudiant en informatique, j'habite à Leiden (13€ aller/retour pour aller à Amsterdam) mais je n'y vais pas, parce que les prix m'ont arrêtés net.
C'est vrai que les confs en vidéo c'est vraiment pratique, les conf que j'ai ratées aux JM2L et aux JDLL 2005 je les ai en vidéo, et je suis content d'avoir pu les voir
I would loved to have come over, but there's no way I could afford something like that myself, and even less chance that I could pursuade my comapny to send me
"Overall, it's a 2000 euros trip for a 3 days conference, meaning students are not here, teachers are not here."
Not for EU students... If the conference would have been in the US, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to attend. So it’s great that it’s in Amsterdam :).
~Grauw
(but I don’t think it was promoted at all among students, at least I heard nothing of this on my university, neither do I know any professor who is aware of the conference - let alone attends.)
Agreed on the expensiveness thing. Additionally, given the timing, students in the EU and in a lot of other (non-US) countries still have classes (or even exams!) during this time of the year. I wouldn't have been here if it wasn't for the Mozilla folks sponsoring me. I might add that I'm noticing a lot of W3C/Opera/Webdev people here, too... so it's not *that* bad, imho.
Thanks for the comments, Daniel. I am listening to everything people are saying, and we're putting that into next year's considerations and planning. I would definitely like to get the attendee cost down. The better news for you personally, I hope, is that we're very likely to be in Paris next year.
According to my standards, the prices are *exactly* ten times what they should be for me to attend. I mean, the non-member pass is (probably) exceeding my monthly salary (hint: the prices on the site are VAT-excluded). It would maybe be acceptable for a once in a lifetime event, but certainly not yearly.
I understand all events can't be free like the FOSDEM, but it is probably possible to rent similar rooms in an university in Amsterdam (or Paris btw) for a (much) lower rate. Is an entire five-star hotel really needed?
I'm going to assume that the lack of microsoft attendance is either caused by:
1. The committee not accepting anything from Microsoft.
2. Microsoft making a political decision not to attend.
3. Nobody in projects in MS that could benefit from XTech submission have decided to submit, this could be due to a feeling on their part that any MS submission at XTech will be met by a frosty reception at best. I remember I thought last year it seemed somewhat antagonistic.
Well, I'm here at XTech, but yes, it is way too expensive. We already know that next year it will be on Paris, but I hope that it will mean "cheaper" too...