Given that LISA moves from city to city each year, does it really need
to pick the city more than a year in advance? You do want to be able
to say at LISA one year where the next one will be, but do you really
need to know 3+ years ahead?
yes, because there's usually only one hotel in that city that meets all
of the criteria during a particular time, and because Usenix runs a lot
of conferences, not just one, and because Usenix can only run more one
big conference at a time, and because arranging for all of the tutorial
instructors, registrants, paper presenters, keynote requires a defined
date many months in advance. Keynotes sometimes require a year.
SCALE (now about a 1800 person conference with similar meeting
requirements to LISA) is limited to one metropoliton area (Los Angeles
area) and is booking hotels between one and two years out. This year
it did end up with the date shifting a bit more than normal, but LISA
has moved around as much as well. SCALE doesn't get hotel rates that
are a lot better than LISA (but they do seem a bit better), but it is
charging far less for the conference (and therefor buying fewer hotel
services to go with the room block). A couple of years ago SCALE did
fail to meet the room block but that was in the depths of the
resession and the hotel was happy enough for the increased business
that they waived the penalty.
scale is a bunch of people running only 1 thing. How similar? Are we
quibbling about 2 years vs 3?
It's hard to understand how volunteer run conferences are able to do
so much more with so much less money, the full year's salary of the
staff does not account for the difference (and shouldn't be charged
against one event in any case)
I think, if you tally up the spaces (in terms of number of rooms) and
number of attendees that you'll find you aren't making an equal
comparison, and if that is true, then the conclusion is somewhat lacking
a basis. Some of the scale organizers are on this list. Maybe they will
add some data.
Do you really think that Usenix hasn't thought about all of this? Have
you ever talked to them? (I think if you were to answer yes to the first
question you would have to have answered no to the second)
This entire thread reminds me of the people in coach arguing about the
pilot's choice of runway (when really it's not much of a choice once you
know what airport you are going to)
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators
http://lopsa.org/
