[yapc] YAPC::NA SOLD OUT!!!

[Rob Kinyon]

I'm not trying to pick a fight. I think you guys have done an awesome
job and probably going to have one of the better conferences of the
past few years. Madison is a beautiful place to have a conference and
you'll definitely have better walkable eating than we did.

That said, turning someone away at the door is a pretty hard-core
no-no in my book. We published our numbers quite loudly as we did have
the best-attended YAPC to-date (by heads in the door, not
full-passes). We did have our issues (auto-accepting every talk was
seen as quite hideous by prolific speakers). But, we did find a way to
make sure every person who wanted to hear a talk could do so.

I'm sure you'll figure it out. Madtown is a seething morass of creativity. :)

Rob

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 09:47, Matt S Trout <mst at shadowcatsystems.co.uk> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 11:38:59AM -0500, JT Smith wrote:
>> I'm not sure if you're just trying to pick a fight or not. I'm certainly not trying to say that you ran an inferior conference. All I'm saying is that we have sold out the space that we have to sell out.
>
> And you said:
>
> "Because the university won't allow standing room. They're very strict on fire
> codes and such. I've sold 20 more tickets than I was supposed to sell just to
> account for the fact that some people won't actually be in the room, so if
> everybody shows up we will actually already have standing room only seats."
>
> However, as Rob said:
>
> "For the last session of lightning talks at YAPC Columbus, we didn't
> have a room able to hold everyone. So, we simulcast to a second room
> with monitors."
>
> He isn't trying to pick a fight. He's trying to tell you that Columbus found
> a workaround for this problem that didn't require standing room. And I think
> perhaps implying that you could've asked him and didn't, which is perhaps a
> little passive aggressive but should also be taken as an offer to ask him as
> many questions as you'd like in order to figure out a way to deal with this
> that doesn't involve preventing people coming to YAPC.
>
> Because that's really not in the spirit of the perl *community* conference
> that I was hoping to attend this year, and while it's your choice how you
> run it, I'm hearing an increasing level of murmuring in the areas of the
> community that I keep an eye on suggesting that more and more, this
> conference doesn't seem to be shaping up to be the conference other people
> were hoping to attend either.
>
> I do very much take your point about not judging in advance, but I'd be
> remiss not to express these worries now, especially given if I don't then
> I can hardly complain later if they don't get addressed :)
>
> --
> Matt S Trout - Shadowcat Systems - Perl consulting with a commit bit and a clue
>
> http://shadowcat.co.uk/blog/matt-s-trout/   http://twitter.com/shadowcat_mst/
>
> Email me now on mst (at) shadowcat.co.uk and let's chat about how our Catalyst
> commercial support, training and consultancy packages could help your team.



-- 
Thanks,
Rob Kinyon