Rick has the courage of creative opinions, his points are worth considering.

I suggested some innovations to the SWfox organization team after last year's event, none of them were considered possible.

Conference attendance is decreasing everywhere, there must be some reason for that.

One of these reason I personally experienced as the first AtoutFox conference organizer is the balance between 'commercial' and 'technical' aspects of the conference; it appeared to me much more important to make new comers feel comfortable and get together with elder ones rather than having the 'highest possible grade' of sessions. What matters after the conference is the personal experience, the flavour you keep in your mouth rather than what you've learned, which you probably have forgotten after 1 week.

Special care should be taken for oversees attendees who do have a different culture and do have a pain speaking English.

Let's take advantage of this debate to move forward - apart from his religious bla-bla, Rick has the generosity of providing us great ideas, and allocating much time to share with us.

>It's the model we have in the material world (manufacturing physical things). The one we have taught in our schools. It's part of our inertial mindsets of centuries. It's only natural to initially think in those ways. But things have changed in the last 25 years, and specifically in the last 7 years. The old model doesn't work in the digital world because there are aspects of the digital world which are not present in the material world.
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>To put it another way:
>Were it possible to press the "Copy" button and produce a clean glass of water, a sandwich, some clothing or a blanket, would it still be acceptable to charge for those items when they already have the mechanisms in their possession to carry out the operation (they own the computer, they own the hard drives, they have an Internet connection they're already paying for)? To shut people out denying them food and clean water because they didn't or couldn't pay (when it costs the person pressing the copy button nothing additional)? No. It would be completely wrong.
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>This is what's happening with all kinds of digital information, and not just at your event. But at Harvard, and Columbia, and Yale and on and on. All of this daily information that could grow the entirety of man ... it's being hoarded, and for no good reason other than personal empire building.
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>Videos, white papers, access to knowledge through each of us learning, experimenting, being blessed to the point where some of us have been given the opportunity to work out the hard parts, to then divide the rest of society into the haves and have-nots by our choices, by saying that "unless you give me money for this thing that costs me no more to give to you than to not" ... really? A good idea? Certainly not! :-)
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>It's a mindset of seeking to fulfill self at the expense of others. It's a mindset of personal empire building. It's a literal mindset of hoarding.
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>It's a mindset of thinking that it's okay to deny some people unless they give you something in exchange. It's a mindset of thinking that the blessing you received to be able to know how to do this thing you've done (create this software) is somehow yours and yours alone to divvy up as you choose, and that you are not part of God's plan to grow the multitudes with that knowledge.
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>It's the mindset of the material world, and not the mindset of a digital world.
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>In the digital world we should be working for labor wages (someone needs something written, they hire us for contract to do that job), and not for continuing income off a prior one-time effort (creating a product and then selling it over and over while denying others from having that thing which now exists, was created, can be used by them were it not for this artificial barrier that's been erected personally by the hoarder).
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>>Rick, you really have lost it (or perhaps never had it).
>>Doug
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>If by it you mean the legacy baggage of an inertial material mindset affecting my reasoning abilities as to the fundamental base operations of the new digital world ... then yes, yes, oh yes and yes, I am so very glad to have lost it. And prayerfully completely.