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

One note: PHP Conference Brazil is not a "new" conference, nor is it "not
for profit".
It was first held in 2006, so its older then most community conferences,
and its hosted by a commercial event company, not the community, who
participate and have influence, but don't have "final decision" rights.
Disclaimer: i have been involved in the conference, on the community side
and in the organizer side.

The unique thing here is not the "new" or "community" status of these, but
the higher price points of flights and etc.
I agree we should do what we can to help these conferences and like Stefan
i would also pick them over the usual ones.

I see php[world] appealing to a greater audience of Joomla, Drupal and WP
devs, and even in this case it starts the day after Joomla Conf.
However having organized conferences we need to take into consideration
that venues are date drivers, can't have a conf without one.

This is also not the first time, remember Symfony Live Paris and DPC 2
years ago?
Well, we had people take the train from Paris to Amsterdam and actually
speak at both conferences *on the same day*.

What i mean is this is not all black and white, and i feel we should not
have this as a point of "disruption".
We need to work together and have a place to communicate, that would be a
first step, dates are set and that can't change anymore, let's look forward.

Meanwhile there are lots of great speakers out there and we are fighting
over Rasmus :P

*Rafael Machado Dohms*

*Developer, Evangelist, Gamer*
*http://doh.ms <http://doh.ms>*


On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 4:50 PM, Mariano Iglesias <
[email protected]> wrote:

> 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?
>