>>That conferences also offer a chance to network is indeed useful although I have not attended many
>>myself. There are certainly people from this forum that I would enjoy to meet and share time with, share
>>a drink and a meal with, and get to know better and perhaps even call "real-life" friends one day but
>>time, distance, opportunity ... maybe one day :)
>
>I would enjoy that as well. I would not enjoy the prohibiting of the free exchange of digital information,
>nor of the presenters making a profit above expense.


I've been thinking about this. I think that such events should not be organized by a few people who profit from the endeavor, but it should be a community effort where the costs are shared by all, and the people show up to help setup tables do all of the things to make it happen, thereby not only sharing in the cost and labor, but also in the rewards, as a thing that they have contributed to in bringing forth.

It's like a community bee. Everybody brings a dish, helps setup, helps tear down, and the enjoyment and fulfillment is thereby increased for all. No one (or a few) individual(s) particularly gain, but rather the gain is more communal.

I believe in those sorts of things. I think the Liberty Software Foundation will sponsor Coding Bees or Community Bees which have a theme, where we get together expressly for those purposes, to meet up face-to-face, to have a communal exchange of information, sharing, growing, but that all of it will rest atop the solid foundation of having the entirety of the digital portion conveyed as close to real-time as is possible, free for all to download, copy, distribute, and like everything else LibSF will produce, there will be a donation mechanism for anyone who wishes to give something back beyond labor.