[maemo-community] Organizing Maemo Summit 2009

[From: timeless]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Quim Gil <quim.gil at nokia.com> wrote:
> I think this year Europe is still the default candidate to beat.

fwiw, I don't disagree on the choice of locations. However, I do
disagree on the described logic for choosing it.

> There
> seems to be a higher density of developers a good network of really
> cheap flights giving many alternatives at a decent price and within 1-2h
> flight range.

i'm not really sure about this.
It depends on what you're actually calculating.

I can get a much cheaper flight across the continental US than i can
from Finland to anywhere in continental Europe.

I've been doing this for three years now.

> USA is only one county but this doesn't mean that it is easy for the
> developers of one coast to go to the other coast and etc.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enFI291FI307&q=fly+was+to+sfo+9/14+to+9/18&btnG=Search
click a travel engine link. The result is 200 USD. (Even if you add in
50 USD taxes, this doesn't significantly affect the calculations
below.)

I average 300 EUR for flights to Continental Europe. For simplicity,
assume an exchange of 1 EUR = 1 USD. Conclude that I'm paying 50% more
for my flight to Brussels than I would to fly across the Continental
US. [For people who aren't familiar w/ currencies, the EUR tends to
cost 1.25 to 1.5x that of the USD, which means I'm paying closer to 2x
as much.]

FWIW, average minimum flight time is about 3hrs from Helsinki to just
about anywhere. Crossing the continental US is 5 1/2 hrs min
Flying from HEL to BCN for the same dates listed above yields a 330
USD ticket (taxes excluded), on a 4 hour flight, this is fairly close
to a continental (Europe) crossing.

Yes, I'm aware most of the European audience is more centrally located than HEL.

Yes, I'm an expat.; yes, I'd love for Nokia to pay for me to fly home
sometime; but no, I don't think 2009 is a good year for anyone to ask
their employer to send a large cadre of people across the pond.

> Another idea would be to combine a main event in Europe and in the same
> weekend a parallel hackfest somewhere in SF and perhaps in other
> 'satellites', with some kind of lo-fi community interaction between sites.

this could be interesting.

personally, I'd suggest going w/ the Mac World model.

Sep '09 in Europe, and spring '10 in the new world.
Note: Canada is included as a possible location (and Mexico or Latin
America aren't explicitly excluded)

fwiw, the place Mozilla used for Moz Camp Barcelona was nice (CitiLab),
https://wiki.mozilla.org/EU_MozCamp_2008

And yes, I know some people (hi Quim ;-) are partial to Spain.
Personally, I've already been west and am looking forward to traveling
North and East.