On Nov 12, 2012, at 6:21 PM, joel jaeggli wrote: > On 11/11/12 3:59 AM, Abdussalam Baryun wrote: >> I don't think that thoes Canada and US participants are paying for >> the attendance, but their organisations, therefore, are we reducing >> the cost of other organisations, or we are interested to bring more >> participants. > Many participants, myself included are footing our own bill for attendance. And I'm guessing that this is much more common in the US than in Asia, and somewhat more common than in Europe. OTOH US companies tend to have bigger travel budgets. OTTH US companies tend to consider travel abroad as weird thing much more than European or Asian companies. My personal experience (which I think can be proven with some airfare site) is that travel to the US is considerably cheaper and easier than similar-length travel to other places. Airfare tends to be cheaper, because there are a lot more flights to the US than to pretty much anywhere else, with many more airlines competing. So a flight to Prague would be cheaper for me, but a flight to China, India or Japan would be much more expensive. The US has some expensive hotels, but it's also much easier to find cheaper hotels. We can (and have) meet a block away from Disneyland, and I can find a cheap motel less than 2 km away. This is considerably harder in Europe, and pretty much impossible for a non-local in Asia. Everyone's mileage varies, of course, and US immigration tends to be more bothersome than most, but I think a meeting in the US or Canada leaves the least amount of people not able to attend. Paris and Prague are a close second. I have no idea how easy it would be to find a reasonably-priced hotel in London, for example. Yoav