All,
> What is the purpose of these conferences? Why are there so many?
It seems to be the way that PostgreSQL events are growing organically. We
seem to be a very decentralized project. Partly it's also timing; in the
world of tech conferences, the current trend is for smaller, thriftier,
regional conferences (e.g. the growth of "LinuxFest [location]" and the
collapse of LinuxWorld).
Also, we (the community) don't seem to be yet capable of filling a worldwide
1000-attendee conference, while having any number of locally sponsored
conferences between 50 and 200 attendees doesn't seem to be a problem. Maybe
PGCon will grow to MySQLCon/DebConf size but I expect that's not for a few
years yet.
Means a lot of frequent flyer miles for me, though.
> Maybe we should discuss this (again) on the eu list.... so we can be
> sure that just one conference labels itself as "international" and
> we don't drain each others guests from other continents?
Yeah, this is important. I doubt that I can speak at more than one EU
PostgreSQL conference, especially since we're also committed to a large
presence at FOSDEM (or have people forgotten this?).
--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco