[SGVLUG] SCALE Early Bird ticket sales held open!

[Jeff Carlson]

Dustin wrote:
> Too bad that it opens on the second Saturday of the month, which is rarely
> free for me.  However, I now know that my usual sailing event is moved to
> the third Saturday in Feb, which means I may be able to attend after
> all[1].

Can you help with the SGVLUG booth?  If you do your ticket is free.

> [1] Yes, even if the Sailing were on the 11th, I could attend the 12th.  
> However, SCALE doesn't appear to be selling one-day tickets, and it would 
> just toast my cookies to pay for two days when I can only attend one.

Think of it this way.  The ticket is good for one day.  If you go on 
Saturday, Sunday is automatically free.  Does Magic Mountain still do 
twickets?  So if you only made it Sunday, you only lost the free day.

Also, some of the speakers we're bringing you also speak at some of the 
larger conventions like LISA, which run thousands of dollars.  As a LUG 
member, your admission is only $25 for the whole weekend.  I've paid $20 
just to get into a club on a Saturday night.  Disneyland is over $50 for 
one day.  When you compare the value, SCALE stands out head and 
shoulders above the rest.

Why is this?  Mostly because SCALE is not a for-profit venture.  It 
makes enough money from the previous year to kick-start the next, and 
that's it.  We fly in -- and it used to be with our own money -- 
volunteers from across the country.  We are required by the city and 
county to have insurance, and specifically unionized contractors do the 
electrical and set up the booths.  The sponsors insist on prominently 
displayed advertising of specific sizes, so even the sponsorship budget 
gets spent on the sponsors themselves.  At the end of the day, the 
corporate exhibitors paid for the floor, including the free (LUG and 
other) exhibitors, and admissions paid to fly people in.  That's about 
it.  After that, we're broke.  Everyone who works on this here in Los 
Angeles is a volunteer.  We don't even get a free dinner out of it, but 
we pitch in to buy dinner for our speakers.

If you ask me, your $25 is the best deal your going to get on something 
like this anywhere in the country, possibly even the world.