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

Just a reminder that there is a compromise. A speaker can come on for a day and speak without registration (I believe this has always been the policy and is not changing - I am sure one of my fellow directors will correct me if I am misremembering).

Not easy if it is far removed, but if feasible it does reduce the cost to travel and meals (and potentially one night's hotel if the flights don't work out).

Of course we don't want to impact anyone, but we just can't afford to. We could continue as we have and simply close up shop next year (if we made it that far), but we desperately want our legacy to continue past these bad times.

We know we have to change with the world, but we have to stop the bleeding first, and that's our goal this year. Unfortuntely the world changed a bit too fast for the changes we had put in place to mature and catch up.

Suggestions are welcome. Sponsorship for speakers? Drawing on more local volunteers? No clear cut answer, but we are listening. I don't even know if I'll have a company to pay any of my expenses next year, but I will do everything I can to go. It will be different for sure, but not necessarily worse.

Here's to fewer worries in the future!

-----Original Message-----

From: Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: May 6, 2009 2:00 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: COMMON - the week's over...

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.

--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.