Hi Gaudenz, and thanks for this thoughtful, cold-headed and overall nice mail :) I'll snip most of it and just make some punctual observations (hopefully!) > (...) > (2) Alternative accomodation for people to arrange their own > accomodation is too far away. Realistically you need a car to get > there. There have been historically some (not many, but I'd say ~5-10% - Of course, depending on the quality of the hotels/dorms/hostels we have stayed at) of our attendees that have prefered arranging lodging on their own. Also there is the issue of people coming with their couples, which have grown every year (and with the couples becoming involved in Debian as part of the process). Having alternative accomodations is not only to cater for the excess of 325 people, but for those that want to stay at places other than the loud group. > (3) The venue was advertized as "camping will be allowed" and now it > sounds like camping won't be possible. You are telling lies. It's > true that the local team thought that camping will be possible in > some form. We are still negotiating about this with Le Camp, but > currently it seems that individual tents won't be possible on their > site. Please do not take it as "you are telling lies". Yes, it is an expectation. No, I don't think anybody (realistically) called any of you a liar. > - Camping on the site may not be possible, but still unknown if we > can find a lawn in walking distance for camping. > - They can probably cook for more than 325 people and the main > auditorium has more than 325 places. Enough rooms for hacklabs and > smaller talk rooms. Important point, thanks for pointing out that non-lodged >325 is feasible. > (2) Suitability of the venue: We did quite some evaluation of different > possible venues. The only way a DebConf in a city seemd possible was > with "bunker" (Zivilschutanlage) style accomodation [2]. The local > team's opinion on this is that we would rather not organize DebConf > in Switzerland than with this style of accomodation. So unless > someone is able to find some cheap accomodation, a DebConf in a city > won't be possible. Right, the bunkers look as completely unfit. Even if many people could pay for their own accomodation in the city, we would probably be unhappy at the bunkers. > There were 2 other holiday camp style centers (...) not > significantly cheaper and had other drawbacks [3]. But they both > provide more beds than "Le Camp". (...) Also they are both in > the German speaking part of Switzerland while more than half of > the local team is mainly French speaking. (...) To summarize: > They raw quantity of beds is not the only thing that counts. Thanks again - this sumarizes important points we did not really understand while arguing last week. > (3) While I don't like turning interested people down I also think > DebConf can not grow indefinitely. I belive that the spirit of > DebConf will suffer if it gets a lot larger than 300 people. Things > will get more anonymous and we will have to enforce stricter rules > and policies. It will get even harder to accomodate everyones > personal wishes. Yes. That's an important point I also share. I am happy with a small-to-medium DebConf. Being over 400 people takes part of the fun away. > (1) We don't know yet how many participants we'll reall get. Maybe the > whole discussion is just moot because not more than 325 people want > to stay at Le Camp. Sadly that's something we won't be able to forecast until much closer to the conference. Thanks - and see you at the meeting quite soon.
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