Announcement: YAPC::NA 2013 pre-notice!

[mark]

Hi folks!

This year, Dreamwidth has chosen to go to YAPC::NA 2013 as the conference of choice for the year. Like last year with OSCON, we will have a sponsorship program to help active contributors make it down to Austin, TX for the conference.

YAPC::NA 2013 is being held from Monday, June 3rd, 2013 to Wednesday, June 5th, 2013 in Austin, TX, USA. denise, fu, misskat (I think!), and myself all plan on being present for the entire week, however, from the weekend before through the weekend after. We invite anybody eligible to stay for as much or as little as they wish!

We will be paying for the conference admission ($80), accommodations (a group house/apartments), and we will help with your travel expenses (how much depends on how active a contributor you are, with a max of about $500 USD for a single contributor).

What does this mean for you?

If you are interested in attending YAPC::NA 2013 and hanging out with the Dreamwidth staff and other volunteers, start working on those patches! We will be awarding travel stipends based on contributions in 2013, so now's a great time to pick up those patches you've been sitting on and get them finished up. :)

I will post more details soon when we hammer out the contribution levels. I will say that we are intending on maxing out our travel stipend at $500 USD, though. If it will cost you more than that to get to Austin, TX, you will need to find a way to cover the difference.

Fine print: patches don't have to be committed to count; pull requests are fine! Also, we don't presently have a cap on how many people we will try to fly out or accommodate, but we reserve the right to set one if needed. (We have a budget, of course, and it'd be nice to stay within it.)

Comments and questions welcome!

Comments

[brainwane]

My comment is that this is awesome. :-) Thank you for doing this.

[mark]

Thank you! Companies with employees invest in "employee development", so I believe that it only makes sense that an open source project with some income would do the same. :)

[exor674]

Nooooooo! "June 3-6 Monday-Thursday Final examination period" *cries*

[denise]

:(

[swaldman]

wrong continent :-(

EDIT: But awesome idea in principle. I was grouching at the world and its geography, not at you guys!

[denise]

LON->AUS looks to be around $1k, so you'd at least have a discount on the airfare?

[swaldman]

Heh, true, but I shall have approximately No Money for the next three years, so not really gonna happen. If you do something similar with a European event sometime, and if I'm still active then, it might be a different matter :-)

[denise]

:) YAPC:EU is in Kiev this year, probably a bit too far for you, alas.

[swaldman]

Aye. Given where I'll be living for the next few years (http://swaldman.dreamwidth.org/243357.html), "a bit far" is an easy threshold to cross...

[denise]

ha. yes. :)

[momijizukamori]

Is the same offer going to be open for OSCON this year? I know last year it was just the senior devs.

[denise]

Nope, we're doing YAPC instead of OSCON this year. (OSCON is good and all, but it's really expensive!)

[momijizukamori]

Noted! Sadly the 'where I'll be' for June is waaaaaaaay too up-in-the-air right now.