Todd Whitesel <toddpw@best.com>  wrote:
 > And in 2000 there were just under 20 events, but how much did they cost on
 > average?
 > 
 > Guessing $4k, that's $80k a year.

For a point of reference, we did Usenix/Lisa in NewOrleans back in December 
(my company, not NetBSD) and with printing posters, renting booth, some
furniture, 1 hotel room, 3 plane tickets, we spent $13k CDN.  That's about
$8k US.  You don't really want any less than 2 people at the booth at any
one time.  3 is great.  Occasionally we had 5 people at the booth and all
5 of us were talking to different people about our product.

Standing at a booth is _not_ easy work.

 > Apparently FreeBSD still has one:
 > 	http://www.windriver.com/press/html/bsdi_faq.html
 > 
 > Near the bottom it talks about FreeBSD CD's continuing to go out and so on.

At Usenix/Lisa, the people manning the booth selling the FreeBSD CD's were
cluebies.  Androids who knew how to write up a receipt for a $39.95BSD CD.
At least, that was the case when I stopped by the booth.  The ones manning
the OpenBSD booth were amusing.  They used the show-supplied cardboard sign
that said "OpenBSD" on it, wrote the prices in blue ballpoint pen, about 
1/4" high, and stuck it on the front of the table.  We were just down the
corridor and I rarely saw anyone actually standing in front of that booth
for more than a few seconds.

That is _definitely_ not what we want.  What Charles was doing takes a lot
of work, planning, energy, and a lot of money.   If you're only going to do
a half-assed job of it, don't do it at all.