10 Oct
2025
10 Oct
'25
4:47 p.m.
On Tue, 30 Sept 2025 at 11:14, Daniel Gultsch <daniel(a)gultsch.de> wrote:
• How did you like the format of the last three
summits? (Renting a
conference room in a hotel with lunch provided (in buffet style) by
the hotel)
Sadly I only made it to the last one, and it was good - but I'd have been
fine without the fancy lunch, to be honest.
The lunchtime *company* was great, though, as always!
• Do you have a concrete lead for some company or
organization that
could provide us with a conference room for free in the city of
Brussels? I’m not asking for vague suggestions like "maybe someone
could try to reach out to xyz" I’m asking if you personally know
someone who has a key to a room.
As you know, I'm working on various options, paid and otherwise.
• Do we want a 1 day or 2 day summit? Last year the
'official' part of
the summit was over after 1.2 days and had we known this we could have
probably managed to squeeze it all into one day.
I'd like to stick with 2 days if we can.
• If we do a repeat of the last two (three) years
(which i feel is
somewhat likely due to how difficult it is to find places that would
have us for free and because I’m under the impression that people like
the "fancy environment" with the snacks and the fancy bottles of
water) I feel somewhat strongly that we should switch to a model in
which every participant pays for their own seat (at per cost) and add
a fairly generous fee-waiver on top of it.
I’m very much in favor of keeping the Summit accessible.
(Socio)economicly speaking our community is very diverse. We have
people in our community who would not be able to come if they had to
pay the ~250 Euro the hotel charges us per person. But we also have
people in our community to whom this is a rounding error in the
overall travel+accommodation cost. (I have personally been on both
sides of this.)
The XSF notoriously doesn’t have a lot of money and efforts to change
this over the last 3 years haven’t been very successful. Switching to
a fee waiver model would allow board (or whoever) to set aside a fixed
amount and send x (where x=10 for example) applicants to the summit
for free.
I'm entirely unconvinced that the Summit offers €250 worth of value to most
people.
I also think the value increases the more people who are there (at least to
me), and this especially includes relative newcomers and others who may
well not be able to justify a €250 fee, even if they can afford it easily.
(To be clear, the more people who are there /and also feel empowered and
encouraged to speak up/!)
If people cease to be able to come for free, then I firmly believe it
lowers the value for all of us.
Dave.