Re: "Boston" Summit 2013?

[Piñeiro <apinheiro igalia com>]

On 04/30/2013 06:22 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 6:43 AM, Benjamin Otte <otte gnome org
> <mailto:otte gnome org>> wrote:
>
>     Sriram Ramkrishna <sri <at> ramkrishna.me <http://ramkrishna.me>>
>     writes:
>
>     > I agree that is a point worth considering.  Portland is a second
>     tier city
>     and sometimes takes a extra hop because there are not a lot direct
>     flights
>     especially from Europe.
>
>     That's a nice way to say "Only Amsterdam offers a direct flight".
>     Which
>     means everyone from Europe will have to pay the big fee for that
>     flight
>     (~$500 more) or transfer inside the US. Yay.
>
>
> I'm not sure if it will be that much.. but usually a lot of people fly
> into Seattle or San Francisco and then take the flight to Portland. 
> Even Vancouver works.  The flights from Seattle to PDX is only an hour
> or less.

But in any case, that is still one extra flight on the trip.

Again, although several people already mentioned it. One of the main
reasons to have a Boston Summit was their convenience. There was a
really convenient place on a really good connected city. (The only
unconvenient thing is the hotel). So people started to assist the summit
for pure convenience. That is also one of the reasons it was always a
small event, and in several aspects, more informal. We already have the
big event where we choose a different venue every year, the GUADEC.
"Boston" Summit was never (AFAIK) intended to be "another GNOME big
event". As others already mentioned (II), just until some years ago
people started to ask help to the travel committee in order to assist,
and was in really specific cases.

What is the point of that long previous paragraph? Sincerely, for me,
taking into account that we are talking about a small event, just
starting to move to a different city for the sake of moving is an overkill.

And as Benjamin opened the can of "Europe is far far away from
Portland", this is even worse for people living in small cities. In my
case I assisted the Boston summit twice (2009, 2012). And it was a
Coruña-Madrid-Boston. In the hypothetical case of repeating this year,
that extra "hop" would mean Coruña-Madrid-Amsterdam-Portland or
Coruña-Madrid-Seattle-Boston.

> But I'm under no illusion that for some that this might be harder to
> get to.  I'm still working the venue and hopefully I'll have something
> by next week.

Although working for the venue is appreciated, imho, is irrelevant. If
that extra hop means that suddenly every one (or almost every one)
interested on assist the summit would need to ask for help (or
extra-help) to the travel committee in order to assist, it doesn't
matter if we got a venue for free. It would be still really more
expensive, and more trip-exhausting.

BR

-- 
Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias