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 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!) .
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.
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.