[systemd-devel] systemd.conf early-bird tickets, cfp and workshops

[Chris Kühl]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 7:18 PM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson
<johannbg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 06/27/2016 02:36 PM, Chris Kühl wrote:
>>
>>
>> Workshops:
>>
>> A new addition to this year's conference is the workshop day. The goal
>> of this day is to offer hands-on training sessions to those who want
>> to learn more about systemd. It's intended that these trainings be
>> conducted by systemd community members. Proposals for workshops can be
>> submitted at https://cfp.systemd.io
>>
>> If you have questions about workshops please contact us at info at systemd.io
>>
> Or you can just be replied to here since you advertise 300 euro
> participation fee for workshop schedule that a) does not exist and b) is not
> part of the professional package ( read as corporate sponsored individuals
> since we do have quite few that would be considered professionals in the
> community, where this might be a value add to ) is expected to be conducted
> by systemd community members for systemd community members ( since they
> would also have to pay 300 euro fee also to attend ).
>

Hi Jóhann,

There's a few things to address from your comment. Let's see if I can
cover them all.

Firstly, regarding pricing, the workshop day needs to be completely
self-financed, meaning ticket revenue needs to cover the costs of the
venue, catering, drinks, & misc. For planning purposes, we assume
we'll have approximately the same revenue from non-workshop attendance
and sponsorship as last year. That should cover the cost of the
conference which this year includes extra costs for the additional
space and upgraded (warm) meals. It would be very optimistic to assume
we could also cover the extra workshop day comfortably with just that
revenue.

The reason for having separate tickets for workshop and conference
days is simply that the audience is potentially rather different. The
workshops are not really intended to be for systemd developers or
expert users, which made up a large portion of last years attendees.
To reiterate from above, we want to make sure the workshop day can be
self-sustained and is not being financed by attendees that are not
really interested in the offering.

> It would be good to know who's the genius behind this idea, ( read sat
> somewhere at an meeting and had the "hey here's an idea let's add workshop
> to the mix, have the community manage it and charge 300 euros for it in the
> process" )  the pricing behind it and where does all that money go?
>

The motivation behind the workshop is to open systemd.conf up to those
ppl who are looking to learn more about what systemd can do in a more
hands-on way. It's something we were considering doing last year but
wanted to keep the scope small for the first year. I think most would
agree that there is a lot of room left to educate ppl about what
systemd is and can do.

While I like your extreme optimism, those of us who have to carry the
financial risk of putting on the event have to use a more cautious
optimism. This is the first year we've done the workshop, so we are
being cautious with regards to estimating attendance.

Anyway, we're always open to constructive suggestions on how
systemd.conf can be better.

Cheers,
Chris

> JBG
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