Re: On what we want to support: travel?

["Joshua D. Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>]

Josh Berkus wrote:
> Andrew,
> 
>> 1.      Do we think it is a good idea, in general, to fund
>> individuals' travel, assuming such individuals are fairly prominent
>> members of the community?
> 
> Yes.   Currently, the only people capable of speaking for PostgreSQL who 
> also have jobs that pay them to do public speaking frequently are me, 
> Bruce, and Gavin (plus others in Japan).  There are more than 100 open 
> source conferences a year; we can't possibly cover them all with the three 
> of us.\

I can also speak but it does effect me financially but as many know I
don't like to travel much. Anywhere in North America is no sweat.

> 
> Travel sponsorships allow other members of our community to promote and 
> educate about PostgreSQL in many, many more places.  I know that if we'd 
> had travel money available in 2003, I would have gone to conferences in 
> Brazil and Indonesia to promote PostgreSQL -- that was a big part of the 
> reason why Robert Treat and Greg Mullaine started to put together a 
> non-profit in the first place.

Right.

> 
>> 2.      If the answer to (1) is "yes", what weight do such cases
>> carry compared to other possible expenditures, such as paying coders
>> for features; paying for hardware or network service; paying for
>> community presence at exhibitions (e.g. getting a "commercial" booth
>> at a trade fair); paying for marketing such as advertisements,
>> conference "swag", release CDs, and the like; paying for tools for
>> individual (or groups of) developers, such as real copies of the SQL
>> standard; or even paying for entry to the "industry" groups or
>> standards like TPC, ANSI, &c.?  The list is not exhaustive; make up
>> your own case.
> 
> Personally, I think it's co-equal with the things above categorically, 
> *except* for paying for a commercial booth at a conference, which I feel 
> should be our lowest priority if we have cash just lying around.  It's the 
> most expensive item, with the lowest benefit to the community.

In general I agree with this.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake



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