LinuxWorld San Francisco call for papers [LWN.net]

Program committee member on thread

Posted Jan 4, 2008 20:23 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

OK. Are they seriously soliciting keynotes from entities that aren't anchor exhibitors at the show?

Program committee member on thread

Posted Jan 5, 2008 4:35 UTC (Sat) by spot (subscriber, #15640) [Link]

Even if they are, it's hard to believe that any affiliation of the speaker wouldn't be spun as
a promotional component for IDG.

Fact 1: Since LWCE's inception, everything except for the keynotes have cost a significant
amount of money to attend.

Fact 2: LinuxWorld isn't a community event (like OLS, Ohio LinuxFest, LinuxFest Northwest,
etc), intended to bring developers together and share information. It is designed to turn a
profit for IDG.

Combining those two facts, it seems safe to assume promotional material like:

"Hear sessions from experts from Red Hat, Canonical, and IBM!"

(just to name some entities who have historically not participated in LWCE, either
intentionally or otherwise, but might conceivably send in papers)

I certainly could be mistaken here, these could be free sessions, and the speaker affiliations
might not be used for any sort of advertising purposes. Alternately, the speakers might be
financially well compensated for their time/papers, and I certainly don't think that putting
money in the pocket of community members is a bad thing.

LWCE serves a purpose, to expose the open source marketplace to the IT corporate purchasers,
but that purpose is increasingly obsolete, like most of the traditional IT tradeshows (Comdex,
anyone?). I'd be impressed if it reformed into something more useful to the community than a
few free booths back near the hot dog cart, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

(In case it is not obvious from my candor, I speak only for myself here, and not for my
employer or my projects)

Keynotes

Posted Jan 5, 2008 5:14 UTC (Sat) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

I agree with everything you wrote.

Almost every speech I accept is a keynote, and I'm getting paid for most of them at professional speaker rates. LWCE in the US would, I think, offer me a speech in a room seating 150, with lots of people talking in other rooms at the same time, and no significant promotion, and maybe they'd give me a conference pass but nothing else. So, for the last two years I've missed this show because folks were giving me better venues in Europe and paying for the privilege. I expect to be be in the Bay area for the show this time, but the prospect of speaking that way isn't so attractive.

Bruce

Making LWCE more of a community event

Posted Jan 11, 2008 18:14 UTC (Fri) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

Just got off the phone with Melinda Kendall, LWCE VP and General Manager.

In order to get more participation from community people at the conference sessions, LWCE will
be giving out conference session passes to the volunteers who staff the dot-org booths.  So
when it isn't your shift helping introduce people to your favorite software, you can go to a
session and ask a conference speaker some questions.  (This should help get some interesting
questions into the sessions, which will help out the people whose employers are paying to send
them at full price.) 

As far as keynotes go, many of the keynote speakers are not affiliated with exhibitors or
sponsors. Recent keynote speakers included Bruce Schneier, Lawrence Lessig, and Nicholas
Negroponte.