16 Oct
2025
16 Oct
'25
4:38 a.m.
Hi!
Many thanks for bringing this up early, and putting in all the work that
goes into this. It is highly appreciated.
I get that the summit is costly for the XSF, and I don't want to downplay
that: it's definitely a significant expense. But I don't think introducing
any kind of "people-that-go-to-the-summit-should-pay" model is a good idea.
It raises the bar for attendance, and I'm worried it would hit some groups
harder than others.
For example, people who can write this off as a business expense might not
think twice, but others, especially individual contributors or those coming
on their own dime, would be much more affected. Given that our attendee
pool already isn't all that diverse, I think this would add another filter
we really don't want.
As long as there's room in the budget (and we're not taking away from
something more important), I think the XSF should continue to cover it.
Keeping the summit accessible to everyone feels more valuable in the long
run.
Kind regards,
Guus
On Wed, Oct 15, 2025 at 11:24 PM <emus(a)mailbox.org> wrote:
Hello everyone,
this is coming late, but first of all, many thanks to Daniel for reaching
out on this topic early and elaborating!
On your four initial questions:
* I very admire everything, even if that's a luxury choice - because this
event and you all deserves it.
Though, I was not happy with the amount of money we spent vs. our actual
total budget at XSF (unfortunately).
Not ignoring that we had generous sponsors, but still it used to be a lot.
* No, unfortunately, I have not contacts. But may in Hamburg my employer
could sponsor a place.
* To answer the question of the daily well, I we can also crawl for
potential agenda topics and see how much we fill
a day and if the agenda is worth it or we could have a well organised
online follow-up (happy to help). But I admire
goffis suggestion much more spending time working or being together. It's
valuable time in my view.
** What could also happen is that we reduce interest to travel to Brussels
for just one day. Less people make the event maybe also less worth / more
expensive.
* First of all, I think this is correct on the limited XSF budget and
effort in the recent years.
(And being member of the Board mostly in this time I also take
responsibilty here and this one reason why I won't apply
again for Board the next phase.) Still, I don't think raising a fee is the
answer. To be honest and expanding the perspective as Syndace (in chat
said): We
don't need to meet (always and by hard) in Brussels; there are cheaper
options for sure.
Just out of traditions and failure to address the situation that would
lead now to charge people is not a positive development in my view.
That siutation would rather question to me:
** How is our sponsor engagement sufficient?
** Is this the right time and place?
** Where else could we maybe even have a better venue?
** If we find better can cheaper places, can we have more physical
meetings?
** Do we need to be in Brussels by hard until we solve the financial
situation, we should go for less expensive places / cities?
Are we even sure at least 50% of the participants would be okay to pay a
250 / 150 EUR fee? That would be 10-15 people according to the last years
participation, right?
How many people would consider not even to pay 50€?
And yes to Peter & Matt (in the SCAM chat), sponsoring is something that
needs to be continued as we did for 2025. Hence, more in the
bank would make the discussion less pressing.
(Note: Also many thanks to Alex, Daniel, Matt for also sponsoring dinner
and with their time organising (please correct me if I am mistaken).)
In general, one may be interested in the disussion in the SCAM chat:
scam(a)muc.xmpp.org
Thanks all,
Eddie
On 11/10/2025 00:47, Dave Cridland <dave(a)cridland.net> wrote:
On Tue, 30 Sept 2025 at 11:14, Daniel Gultsch
<daniel(a)gultsch.de> wrote:
most
• 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 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.