[ANN] Devopsdays Paris, Berlin, MountainView , Amsterdam , Downunder and more!

[Patrick Debois]

Dear devops enthousiast, (and apologies for the crosspost)

we just wanted to inform you that after a succesfull Devopsdays London we are really picking up steam again:

I'm pretty pleased to announce that devopsdays events will happen at:

• Paris - 18 & 19 April - only a few tickets left!
• Austin - 30 April & 1sth of May - soldout but 5minutes a few tickets became available for the quick
• Berlin - 27 & 28 of May - Cfp closed and program will be announced shortly
• Amsterdam - 14 & 15th of May - Cfp & Registration is still open - send in your proposals
• Mountain View - 21 & 22 of June - Cfp & Registration is  open! - send in your proposals
• NOTE: this happens right after VelocityConf and the location is the Santa Clara Convention Centre
• Sydney - 12 & 15th of July - Cfp & Registration is still open - send in your proposals (awesome place to spend the holidays!)
  
• Rio! Brazil - 17th of August - Cfp & Registration is open - send in your proposals

More to come in Atlanta , NewYork , London , Tokyo , Bangalore ...

As always we greatly appreciate your proposals and sponsorship. Please keep amazing us!
A big thanks to all the local volunteers and sponsors to make these events awesome.

If you want to stay up to date of new events, please consider registering to the Devopsdays Mailinglist
Also we're slowly putting all past event videos online. With 100+ talks you'll never run out of devops ideas.

The organizers

[Jaime Gago]

Hey there,
While last year DevOps day in MountainView was free this year it's $100, I completely understand that there is a cost to organizing such event and it's easy to be a critic. That said I think changing the Devops Day model from "free as in beer" to "paid for" could use some explanations but maybe I just missed them.

J.

[Patrick Debois]

Hi Jamie,

thank for asking us to clarify this. There are two main reasons:

In the past in the US we've been lucky to get free to cheap hosting of
the conference that allowed us to make the event for free.
As the size of the conference grows (we expect 500+) , this is becoming
harder to find and we have decided to go for a hotel option for convenience.
Outside US in fact, the devopsdays are non-free as well, because of the
same reason. (hotels aren't charities)

The second reason is to ask for a nominal fee (100 USD for 2 days of
conference and drinks, that's not too bad is it?)
is because we had 500 people registered and 500 on the waitlinglist. At
the day of the event not everybody showed up,
much to frustration of the people that could not make it. There we think
by charging that nominal fee, we discourage to go for the freebie.

hope this helps you understand our decision,
Patrick

On 13/04/13 01:31, Jonah Horowitz wrote:
> I don't mind paying, particularly if it's in a better location, but Santa Clara is a bitch to get to from SF.

[Ernest Mueller]

As a DevOpsDays Austin coordinator, we approached Patrick about
making this year's DevOpsDays Austin a non-free event ourselves based
on our experience from last year. The ticket money doesn't defray
costs all that much, we still rely on lots of sponsorships to pay for
even the base venue and food expenses. It's mainly about the fact
that we have 2x as many people sign up as we have capacity for, and
then we have 1/3 of those who said they'd come not show up on the day
of the conference. That's not helpful for anyone. People travel into
town for these conferences, they want to attend them because of the
quality of the people there, it's not a user group for whoever
happens to be around that maybe wants to show up or maybe not that
day. It's for highly engaged practitioners to learn from each other.

The fee is truly nominal for two full days of conference, and for
those who are somehow devops practictioners that can't swing that
fee, speakers and volunteers get in for free - if the money is a real
impediment, try contributing in one of those ways.

Ernest