From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2006-07-28T13:44:53+09:00
Subject: Re: About last night ...

Charles O Nutter wrote:
> for one have been very disappointed with the limtations put on RubyConf
> this year.
>
> - Only ten days were given to submit proposals
> - Only 16 proposals were selected, no more than the previous year (or at
> least not much more)
> - Only 240 people will get to attend, a measly 20% increase in space over
> last year when last year's attendance more than doubled over 2004
>
> I have friends and friends of friends polling for me. The limitation 
> to such
> low numbers seems to be entirely counter-productive.
>
> That said, I would be very happy to see other conferences come around to
> pick up the slack, and if it looked like RubyConf was going to be a no-go
> I'd consider attending something else.
Clearly there *are* limitations ... it costs money to host a conference, 
and the hosting organization is a non-profit one. That said, quite a few 
universities have space available during the summer at rates far more 
reasonable than any hotel you could stand to stay in. One of the best 
SIAM meetings I ever went to was on the RPI campus in Troy, NY, and I 
spent three weeks on the UC Santa Cruz campus one summer for about a 
third of what a cheap motel would have cost.

The issue of supply/demand goes deeper than just the conferences. What 
about *code*? Sure, we all think Ruby is at least as productive as the 
other "dynamic/scripting/interpreted" languages and possibly more 
productive, and certainly more productive than a compiled one. It seems 
to me there's a lot more demand for code than there is supply.