PHP "community"

[Greg McCarroll]

On 17 Jan 2013, at 09:57, Kieren Diment wrote:
>
> On 17/01/2013, at 2:08 AM, gvim <gvimrc at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> PHP UK (22nd Feb.): £380
>> London Perl Workshop: £0
>>
>> 'nuff said.
>
> Apparently not.

Having been part of the teams that organized the first YAPC::Europe  
and first LPW there is a good reason for it being free or in the case  
of YAPC as cheap as possible. Kevin Lenzo had done the first YAPC as  
an alternative to expensive conferences, especially thinking of  
students and/or poorer open source hackers. The phrase "Inclusive not  
exclusive" I remember being used a lot. And that tradition has stuck  
and influenced LPW, and it isn't just for moral reasons alone - if you  
run an event where nobody is profiting you tend to get the goodwill of  
groups and people like Westminster University (who have supported  
other open source events) and companies like O'Reilly - apologies for  
skipping the full list of sponsors.

And of course it means you have the freedom to just say no to  
commercial talks from sponsors - which is the reason YAPC::Europe has  
auctions ;-).

I think its great that there is a paid for PHP event, i'm sure a lot  
of people will go along and learn a lot (i'm so avoiding making a joke  
here) and thats great, but i'm quite proud that London.pm 13 years on  
has kept the seem moral objective of being accessible.

G.