[AuckLUG] Installfest location

[Karl.]

Hi Vince,

I suspect that we have the same basic perspective, but for the sake of 
argument...


On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 09:59:01PM +1200, Ghodmode wrote:
> If the offer is only extended to people who are already active 
> participants in the community, then we've completely ignored our 
> target audience.  

Completely true.  Largely irrelevant.

We are discussing postings on a LUG list - we (or at least I) have no 
idea how it has been promoted elsewhere.  I presume it has been promoted 
elsewhere, and I agree that if it has not then that would be silly.  Do 
you have any basis of support for thinking the latter?


> Yes, we do it at our own expense and the reward is not a salary, but 
> the feeling that we have contributed to to Open Source community.

Yep.  Do we have any reason to believe that anyone is looking for 
payment?  Not as far as I can see, and I said that before.  Good on them 
for being so generous with their time.  I went to the last AuckLUG 
installfest and had great fun (ok, maybe it wasn't *great* fun, but it 
was *fun* and I did make new friends  :-)


> How many campuses does University of Auckland have?  How many buildings?
> How many of us just arrived a few months (or weeks? or days?) ago and don't
> have a clue to the answer to these questions.
 
As I said, it would have been good if they had been more thorough about 
saying 'main campus' at the very beginning, but that's an easy oversight 
to make.  As for specifically where on campus, I really don't think 
that's going to be a big factor in deciding whether to go or not, having 
ascertained that it is at main AklUni campus.

Going from a set of baseless assumptions and stereotypes I have, I 
suspect that Sigrid is generally rather thorough and is quite annoyed 
not to have made everything possible clear at the outset, including the 
fact that *exact* location is not known until closer to the event.


> No one suggested that freedom is being taken away.

That's true.  I was merely making an equally preposterous response to 
the suggestion that registering "... does defeat the purpose of a 
installfest."


> But it's not being promoted in the same spirit that the software 
> itself is

Who says it has to be?  Doesn't the GPL give us the right to do anything 
we like just as long as we don't take away anyone's freedom?  So surely 
this installfest is within GPL?

(that was largely a joke, that bit about the GPL - I don't actually know 
what 'licence' the installfest is under.  But, for the people who don't 
like this installfest, they can always fork)

(that was a joke too)

 
> The registration process and non-disclosed location acts as somewhat of an
> obstacle to people who are not already active participants in the
> community.

Nonsense.  We're talking about something that was advertised on an email 
list - if someone has managed to find and subscribe to this list then it 
is reasonable to assume that writing an email to request info is not 
going to be too much of an obstacle for them.

Asking for rego first just allows the organisers to plan ahead a little.  
I think that is perfectly reasonable of them.  They have to draw a line 
somewhere, as to how much effort to put in without having any idea of 
how many people want to come.  I'm sure that no-one wants the organisers 
to spend 6wks planning a mega-event, only to find that they get 2 people 
wandering in off the street, plus a couple of lost people who were 
looking for the cafe.


Well, that was fun, wasn't it?  I think my point was conveyed in the 
first email, but it's always nice to do a bit more of non-coding typing 
- nice not to be reaching for punctuation keys all the time.

Vince, if you're on the North Shore, let's have our own LinuxFest over 
coffee - one can never spend too much time talking linux  :-)

Karl.


PS: I'm too tired to proofread again - if I said anything rash, or 
anything incoherent, blame it on Augustus Dvorak (G*d rest his soul)