[Scottish] Time flies - January's meeting and other stories

[Kenny Duffus]

On Wednesday 25 January 2006 11:10, Ben Thorp wrote:

> One other suggestion is that Jono Bacon (writer, Linux advocate, LUGRadio
> presenter, etc - see http://www.jonobacon.org and http://www.lugradio.org )
> has said that he is more than willing to come up to do a talk at some point
> during the year, as long as we cover his travel expenses (approx £75 for a
> return flight from Birmingham I reckon) and have the meeting on a weekend.
> Is this something that people would be interested in - it would probably
> mean having a 'special' meeting on a Saturday at some point (Kenny is this
> doable with Strathclyde?) and charging a nominal entrance fee?
>

I can't decide if offering to pay someones travel expenses is a slippery slope 
or only fair.

I think this idea raises a few issues.

I don't think it is something that can just happen for one speaker.  So how 
would we decide who gets travel expenses and who doesn't?

The example of £75 divided by turn out could involve charging over £5 per 
person depending on numbers that meeting which I'd describe as a lot more 
than "nominal".  What if there is a poor turn out what happens about any 
shortfall?  What about people that want to come to meetings but can't 
genuinely afford the entrance fee?  Would we want to charge an entrance for 
every meeting to try to build up funds to pay for other speakers?  I think 
attendance would be affected depending on who was speaking, greatly changing 
the dynamics of our meetings equating monetary worth to each speaker.  
Irrelevant of any amount charged I think that it would affect attendance and 
also attenders expectation of what the meetings would be like and also 
probably the offers of talks from members.

Historically ScotLUG has intentionally never charged for meetings or tried to 
collect money.  Managing the money would add a lot of work, responsibility  
and problems IMHO.  This would be a major change and not something to be 
taken lightly.

-- 

	Kenny