Hi all, Bryen and myself have had a look at the approximate travel costs for the three options we have for the Marketing Meeting. The costs for each option are about equal - almost $15.000 for air travel alone. Yes, that is excluding local travel (trains in Europe for example) and hotel. We're darn international it seems :D Luckily it is not counting the fact that part of the team who wants to join will be at SCALE and FOSDEM, saving some costs (SCALE much more than FOSDEM). Still the costs are more than my budget affords me to pay. So I am going to be the dick here that makes the hard decisions as it is my budget. I went over the list and based on my own experience with all of you, with how much I think you'd learn from this (some of you already have much experinece) and how new you are (I prefer to bring at least some new ppl to a meeting like this) I have decided who I will sponsor and how much. Before I make the final decisions I'd like a travel cost estimate from all of you. Then I will tell you how much I will sponsor. Tell me also if you have the $$ to book in advance or not. I will usually reimburse 50% or 80% of your travel costs. For some, that simply is not enough - like if you're a student. Let me know that too. Now FYI: - I sponsor hotel for anyone who comes. So if I had to decide not to pay (all) your travel but you come anyway, you get the hotel for sure. Please understand I would love to pay all the travel so you could all be there but I just don't have the money! - The cheapest option is doing this in the USA. That is also good for the USA promo work - we all know how hard it is to promote openSUSE there (while in and around Nuremberg and FOSDEM we have plenty of promo). So we do our first Marketing Meeting in the City of Angels (LA). - I want to make the whole thing a few days longer so we get more value for the huge travel costs. 4 days it'll be. So this is what it will be: We have a marketing meeting in the 4 days before SCALE in Los Angelos, California, USA. Dates: Mon 21 start hackfest (pls arrive sunday evening!) SCALE: fri 25-sun 27 (it's OK if you have to leave a bit early, like sat night if you're from India and have a job on Monday) Hotel for all attendees will be fully paid from the Novell/openSUSE community budget. Please, all those who want to and can be there for those 4 days MM + 3 days SCALE (I expect you to stay for SCALE, yes), send an email with: - Name (like in passport), address, phone (international!) - most up to date travel costs in USD - how much reimbursement you would need to be able to come (50/80/100%) - if you can afford to pay and get reimbursement later - a short description/explanation of why you should be there - what do you intend to contribute and what are your contributions to date. Note that the travel costs must be realistic: I will decide to pay up to $$, not "your ticket price, no matter how expensive it suddenly turns out to be". I will make decisions (in dialog with my boss) on the travel support on individual basis. Those decisions are NOT up for discussion, sorry. It is how it is. Deadline for your travel cost estimates is Januari 4. I will contact each of you with my decision individually. I have updated the wiki page on http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:11.4_Marketing_Hackfest according to this. Greetings, Jos