Update 2: Tickets are now on sale and it is safe to say that I am not going. The opening price (which will go up after 50 sold tickets) is already too high for me and it is exactly what I was originally afraid of.

Update : I am sorry, I overreacted. As http://2014.djangocon.eu//news/ makes clear tickets will cover everything except getting there and I have full confidence they will be reasonably priced. Listed transport options for those from my neighborhood are still valid (unless somebody has better data which would be great).

I did not go to DjangoCon Europe in Warsaw this year, but I was certain I would go to the next one. Not anymore.

There is no good way of contacting organizers ^[1] and not much travel information either on the DjangoCon’s website or elsewhere. Most of what there is is in French which I don’t speak so my worries are hopefully unfounded, but what I found so far looks grim.

First transport. It is not organizer’s fault I live where I do (Ljubljana, Slovenia), but my options are plane (500+€; travel time 6 and 17 hours), train (EUR ??; travel time 14-24h in each direction) or car which would take about 9 hours in one direction and cost around 600€ total per car (180 for tolls, ~400 for fuel with hopefully free parking there).

It is really difficult to get a good idea of how much do hotels on the island cost, but judging by tripadvisor they are not cheap and in general cost 100+€ per day. Staying on the mainland can be done cheap er , but I think ferry costs at least 13€ per day so total cost will likely not be very low and you will not be around for any late events.

No idea yet about how easy it is to find suitable food if you are a vegetarian or a vegan or how much does it cost. I assume it can be worked out.

In total this looks significantly more than it did to attend EuroPython in Florence and that was FLORENCE!

I dislike criticizing efforts of others, especially when I know that involves a lot of volunteering and when I am not privy to inside knowledge and dilemmas. However as a regular conference goer it does look to me that there has been a shift happening from egalitarian accessibility of making community conferences cheap and easy enough for anyone to attend to a more stratified approach where money (or time) poor will have to do with video recordings/broadcasts while the rest will get ever flashier experience.

There is obviously a lot of value in meeting face to face (otherwise most of us would probably prefer to save the expense of it) which is why I would find this kind of development sad if it happened to major community gatherings like DjangoCon Europe. So I am hoping that it isn’t and it won’t.

1. I know there’s a Twitter account. I don’t find it a good channel for the kind of communication I want, but that is a different discussion. ↩