[OSM-talk] State of the Map 2013 venue selected.

[Jeffrey Johnson]

Just want to be clear, wasn't complaining, just wondering, and got a
sufficient answer. Ill try to find some way to make both :)

On Feb 16, 2013, at 20:15, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:

On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 6:04 PM, Jeffrey Johnson <ortelius at gmail.com> wrote:

> I realize my opinion probably doesn't count for much, but I'm curious if
> there is a reason this couldn't be held the following weekend (13-15) so
> that those of us already traveling to the UK for FOSS4G (17-21) dont have a
> whole week in between.
>

Hey Jeff,

I can't tell you anything about SotM 2013, as I'm not involved in any way,
but I have organized conferences before.  And I can tell you that
organizing a conference is an essentially[1] thankless job.  There are
always too many compromises as Shaun describes.  (un) available venues and
/ or hotel blocks, and dozens of other moving parts, etc.  As an organizer
you can do everything you think of to appeal to as wide an audience as
possible and you can still end up with complaints like, "That venue will
take me 45 minutes on public transit from $home, so I'm not going", while
others will happily travel six times that distance by carpool and thank you
with a beer.  There is just no telling.

It is, in fact, _impossible_ to please _everybody_ with conference
selections. And with a volunteer organized conference, we can only thank
the organizers for their service on our behalf.   That's all we can do for
a paid / professional conference organizer as well.  But there is no way to
reduce the number of complaints or or compromises, just by paying the
organizers.  :-)

Best regards,
Richard.

[1] you'll get thanks and criticisms in approximately equal quantities, but
the criticisms will each cut you to to the quick.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20130216/169f2ca8/attachment.html>