Re: [UG-ADMINS] php[world] Call for Papers

If you look at the last paragraph you'll notice I wasn't talking about
coordinating ALL THE CONFERENCES (tm) ;) The point I was making seems to
somehow fall trough the cracks, so I'll try to rephrase.

There are obviously two types of conferences: community non-profit driven
conferences, and for-profit conferences (commercial and community profit
conferences.) If we look at non-profit conferences, some of them are
located on remote locations: locations where there is not an overwhelming
number of conferences; probably those conferences are the only option for
attendees within a year. I see NZ, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and South
Africa falling into this category (though I'm not exactly sure about their
for-profit vs non-profit status.)

These are conferences that should receive support from the PHP community as
a whole. Why? Because they drive adoption to PHP on locations not exposed
to conferences, and they make a huge effort to fly down prominent speakers.
Incidentally, why is it that for-profit conferences tend to have a much
bigger ticket price than these non-profit conferences, yet they offer a
very small (most of the times NO) reimbursement package? But I digress.

Rasmus is someone who, IMHO, understands this clearly, because he jumps on
a plane to help kick-start such conferences. He did it last year for
Argentina (it was our first edition so he didn't know what he was getting
into ;), he's doing it again for Brazil this year, and he would've done it
for Venezuela if his schedule didn't conflict. However a big part of the
PHP community doesn't seem to understand this, or at least is not
interested in reaching out (no reference to anyone in this thread, this is
a general feeling I have, and being a generalization it is most likely
wrong ;)

Date conflicts create more than the speaker submission problems I've talked
about. Just to name a few:

* Take php[world] (notice the word "world" in there, btw ;)? Now I assume
php architect has at least one subscriber in the LatAm region.
php[architect] will have a clear interest in selling their conference to
such audience, and rightfully so. Helping spread the word about a community
conference that happens, and let's correct this thread on this, THE DAY
BEFORE (php[world] is listed as Nov 10-14, btw, while PHPConfAr is Nov 7-9)
is something that would clearly go against that.

* Some companies sponsor almost all (if not all) PHP conferences (eg:
ServerGrove). Awesome. Now there are some sponsors that pick their battles.
They either have a limited budget, or they don't want to sponsor more than
a certain number of conferences. If you put two conferences within the same
week, regardless if they are miles away, then these companies have to
choose one event or the other. And the remote located conferences tend to
loose that battle: it's far more advisable for such companies to target the
US market than say New Zealand, isn't it? Without a conflict, that wouldn't
even be an issue.

* Speakers DO look into conflicting conferences. Brandon's point is not an
exception, but the rule. I've spoken to literally hundred of speakers, and
the feeling is the same. It is true that locations like Argentina are
appealing to some people: they offer a remote, "exotic" destination you as
a speaker normally wouldn't go to. It is also true that (again) these
remote conferences are more likely to cover your expenses than the
for-profit conferences (oh the irony). But some popular speakers (Rasmus is
a clear exception to this) have to battle with conflicts. For example: I
have a specific speaker I wanted to bring down to Argentina since last
year's edition. Last year wasn't an option for medical reasons. This year
was a much bigger possibility, until that speaker told me we had to wait
for "True North to pick their dates". The speaker had the dilemma I spoke
about: choosing between a remote, +10 hour flight away location, or the
more familiar True North PHP conference, where lots of familiar faces would
be there. If you ask me, I would choose the closer location with familiar
faces, particularly if I go to as many conferences as this particular
speakers goes to in a year. Our dates were set literally over 10 months
prior to the conference (we have to do this because of this very same
reason.) I obviously reached out to True North to ensure we find a solution
were we would not conflict our dates, contacting them before they chose the
dates. Clearly I failed :)

* Attendees are also in a dilemma. I know a lot of local programmers who
fly to the US or Europe to attend PHP conferences: I am one of them. We do
it, again, because there are no many options here. These people would
probably choose the local conference, but if there is a US/Europe
conference that targets the same audience and same speakers (PHP
community), then they have a harder choice. Granted, this is a very small
subset of the audience.

The point I was making was NOT to work to avoid conflicts among all PHP
conferences. That's unrealistic. I am trying to bring us as a community to
HELP these remote located conferences, help them build their audience, get
the right speakers, and succeed. We really need to think globally. For
several reasons, South America, Africa, even Austral-Asia have a much
harder game to play. This international collaboration is not an original
idea: I see this succeeding in other communities (Ruby in particular), but
I don't see it in the community I care about the most: PHP.

The Latin American PHP conferences started to talk to each other, even
share efforts in speaker selection, recommendations, organizational help
and more. We did it as a result of the problems I describe here. We are
already seeing the benefits of this collaboration, but we still have lots
of progress to make. If this works within one continent, why not between
continents?