On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 9:06 PM, Jon Stanley jonstanley@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 8:42 PM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
It's not double edged. It's exactly how we say the conference funding works. We fund people coming to provide the content of the conference. Speakers first, then if there are funds left over, we fund non-speakers. Which, aside from the lower number of non-speaker registrations anyway, is why the majority of the conference is attended by speakers.
I think that when you say "we" fund, you mean the Council and the Premier Fedora Events budget. I think that Stephen was referring to
Yes.
something broader. Lots of people's $DAYJOB doesn't see the value of attending Flock (either as a speaker or not, actually) and forces them to take vacation in order to do it. I suspect that this is equally true for (some) Red Hatters that attend, but particularly for those that are not speakers. Their $DAYJOB doesn't fund it as a business trip (I suspect that I may be able to convince mine to at least not make me take vacation now that I'm a member of the Server WG, something that has demonstrable value, even if I am self-funding the trip - though hopefully they'd pay for that as well!) .
How is that any different from any other conference? It isn't. You can either convince your employer it is worth their time/money, or you cannot. It is simply the nature of conference travel. Being a speaker helps massively in most situations. Flock tries to make it even better by not charging conference fees.
This speaks to my specific situation, but I'm certain that there are many others in the same situation - self-funding an expensive trip (at least when it's on the opposite continent that they are) and taking vacation time in order to better Fedora. Inspiring, but not exactly fair in my mind.
I've paid out of pocket before as well. I did not feel slighted or for it to be unfair. I felt strongly enough that it was worthwhile. Fedora, for me, is inspiring. That people are willing to pay out of pocket because we cannot afford to cover everyone's costs is even more inspiring.
That said, I don't think that the conference itself should fund more folks, except to the extent that it is possible without compromising other things - venue, etc. However, we should make it *much* easier for folks to do a business justification to their employer of the time that they spend working on Fedora, to include attending Flock. I so happen to have a manager that "gets it" - not everyone is so lucky.
You say we need to make it easier. Great! I don't disagree at all. Do you have an actual suggestion though?
Seriously, if we're being candid here, Flock is the Fedora conference. There are employers that use Fedora (outside of Red Hat even!) and wish it to improve for whatever reason, but most companies are interested in technology that runs on top of the distros. And that technology often is distro agnostic and often has it's own conference if it is hot enough. Flock isn't comparable to LinuxCon, or DockerCon, or whatever the hot new technology tomorrow will be. Business justification for Flock is a tiny part of the overall Fedora marketing and relevance problem. We're working on that, but it isn't as simple as funding more people to attend Flock with money we don't have.
josh