Re: COMMON - the week's over...

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Shannon,

I go to COMMON to teach, not to learn.

Sessions on a topic that I can learn from are relatively rare. Perhaps 
one or two each year is about all I can hope for.  When they *do* pop 
up, I'm usually too busy to catch them at COMMON, so I'll catch them at 
one of the other half dozen or so conferences that I participate in.

I think if you look at my participation in these mailing lists, as well 
as my open source projects, the stuff on System iNetwork, etc, you'll 
get a good idea of my motivation: I really enjoy teaching people stuff, 
and I really love this community and want to help wherever I can.

And that's really why I participate in COMMON as well.  To help the 
community.  And that already costs me money out of pocket -- I don't 
mind spending money out of my pocket to help the community.

But, as with anything, there's got to be a limit.  I can't afford to 
spend thousands of dollars AND spend hundreds of hours helping.

I wish I could, and I hope there's a resolution to this, because I 
really do want to keep participating and helping COMMON and the community.

FWIW... there's a similar discussion happening here (with Paris & 
Gantner's opinions)
http://ibmsystemsmag.blogs.com/idevelop/2009/05/the-future-of-common.html



Shannon ODonnell wrote:
> Your company won't pay for your training/air/hotel fees Scott?
>
> That's how most of us afford to go in the first place...our companies pay
> for it.