[LUAU] Am I going to TPOSSCON - If not why?

[Jim Thompson]

Clifton Royston wrote:

>On Sun, Jan 29, 2006 at 11:17:37PM -1000, Jim Thompson wrote:
>  
>
>>On Jan 29, 2006, at 10:23 PM, Matt Darnell wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>>I really don't follow this.  For the most part, people did not attend
>>>>because of the time of year, time of week, and time of day.  Next  
>>>>year
>>>>we will do this on Friday and Saturday.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>I hope changing the day makes a big difference.
>>>      
>>>
>>We've had some feedback.  (I saw Scott ask people for it.)   Here is  
>>what I remember of it:
>>
>>1)  Don't count on people from off-island attending.   I believe that  
>>TPOSSCON has been 'marketed' as "come to Hawaii, enjoy the beach,  
>>learn some great stuff, hang out with cool people".   Based on what  
>>I've seen over the last two years, and an earlier experience when the  
>>IETF held a meeting in
>>Honolulu (1989), I don't believe that folks can "sell" their own  
>>management on attending a technical conference in Hawaii.
>>    
>>
>
>  Yes.  Pat Sullivan of Oceanit and Hoana Medical has made some very
>astute and enlightening comments on this, and I have seen it over and
>over again in my technical career here.
>
>  Our tourism industry has spent many millions of dollars a year over
>many decades to inculcate the image of Hawaii as a place that is
>carefree, where no serious work gets done.  If most national executives
>and managers have any experience of Hawaii, they think of it as a place
>where they had a wonderful time on a honeymoon, or golfing on a
>luxurious vacation - this means they reflexively shy away from
>associating it with doing serious business.
>
>  A story of my own: When I was with VeriFone and involved in setting
>up training for customers' application programmers (major
>national/international banks) 8 times out of 10, our customers'
>corporate management would not approve sending their programmers to
>Hawaii for training as it was automatically viewed as a junket. 
>Sometimes when they did send someone, they'd send a non-progamming
>manager as a "reward", even though that was useless in helping them get
>their applications off the ground.  We ultimately had to move the
>application training centers to the mainland.  Eventually the company
>headquarters went too, for essentially the same reason.
>
>  This is something we'd better just live with and plan around, because
>it will take decades to reverse it.  If you want to work around it, it
>will have to be done on a case-by-case basis, using an extensive media
>campaign in national tech-oriented media to make the case that this is
>different.  If you don't have a budget for that, then focus efforts on
>boosting local attendance.
>  
>
Thus, its best to avoid attempting to generate the audience from 
anywhere but Hawaii (and Oahu, in particular).