Here are some of the waiting times in India right now for US visa appointments.
It is safe to say, those of us in India who don’t already hold a valid US visa, have no chance of attending the conference in Boston this time.
@Ali I had no idea the wait times would be that long!
I think I’ll do this now. If the calendar is correct, the appointment should be some time early next year.
2 Likes
I know! Our country’s cool but our bureaucracy is not. 
Good idea. I will book an appointment as soon as possible. I see that there’s a fair bit of admin to complete before @keith and I can book an appointment, as well as a booking fee (although I can’t see how much it is. @keithgg Do you know?). Is it ok for us to each create a ticket for this time, as well as pay the appointment fee?
The CFP is live here: Open edX Conference - 2023: Call for Proposals @ Sessionize.com and closes on 1/23/23. We’re hoping to spend no more than two weeks reviewing proposals and coming to final decisions.
2 Likes
Yes, anyone in this situation who is a core contributor and/or is planning to submit a talk can do that, using the conference account and the Con 2023 epic – @gabriel can you make sure everyone who could be in this situation is aware of it? That could actually be part of the ticket to prepare the talk proposals – when are you planning to schedule those?
Maybe still give it a try if you want to submit a talk? There is probably a lot of backlog now due to post-covid traveling, but it might eventually lower?
1 Like
My understanding was that we rotated the responsibility for organizing our attendance at the conference, and we haven’t discussed who was handling it this year. Therefore, I had not planned on scheduling the tickets you mentioned. I don’t mind taking this over as part of the admin role (+ I was already quite involved last year), so I’ll schedule to take over the epic next week and start scheduling tasks.
1 Like
@gabriel Oh, my bad then – I thought we had discussed it, though it was more in the context of having the coworking week in Montreal, and we probably hadn’t reached a definitive conclusion. If you’d rather have it handled by someone else, no worries at all! Though I’m also glad if you take it on 
Thanks for confirming. I’ll get on this ASAP.
Here’s a bit of an ordeal: one needs to buy a conference ticket in order to receive the visa sponsorship letter from MIT, which is very useful (if not necessary) to obtain a visa (for certain countries – correct?). Should we buy tickets right away for people who are likely facing a complicated/lengthy visa process @antoviaque? If they can’t make it to the conference, we can get the tickets refunded.
Also, @antoviaque – your replies make it sound like it’s optional for team members to submit a talk proposal. In previous years, this was mandatory. However, given that we’re only sending a few team members this year, and that some of us won’t be able to obtain a visa in time, can we say that submitting talk proposals is done on a voluntary basis this year? People should still do their best to submit a proposal and come to the conference
1 Like
I’ll be in Thailand for vacation during the OpenEdX conference so I guess we can already save a bit of money on my ticket.
@gabriel applied for my visa appointment on Friday and there was no mention of needing a visa sponsorship letter (nor any proof of conference attendance), so maybe it’s not necessary. I will email the embassy to find out for sure, and let you know.
Update: @gabriel
The US embassy in South Africa says that additional documents may be requested as evidence of the purpose of your trip and your ability to pay all costs of the trip, but it’s not on the official list of requirements. Perhaps a letter from OpenCraft stating the purpose of the trip would be sufficient, then we might not need to involve MIT at all.
Thanks for the clarification, @Ali! I can prepare letters if needed, like I did last year. And best of luck.
1 Like
@antoviaque a friendly ping on my comment above
Also, I’ve done some further research for the coworking week, and Mexico City would be ~€5k more expensive in total than Bogotá, the main reasons being slightly higher flight and accommodation prices.
I also noted that flight prices have increased overall, by ~30% since last time I had checked! Accommodations haven’t increased (yet), but we can reasonably expect all prices to keep going up over time. So the earlier we book everything, the better, I guess.
Sorry @gabriel I missed your message above.
If we can get them reimbursed afterwards, sounds good to do this for those in that situation, and who will be submitting a talk. 
Thanks for thinking of this.
Yes, this year since we can’t bring everyone to the conference, the idea would be to only mandate to submit talks for the core contributors, and optional for the rest of the team – only those who want to try to come to the conference would submit a talk proposal. Does that make sense?
Interesting, when I had checked a few weeks ago it was the other way around, at least for the flights. It looks like there are some cheaper options for flying to Bogota now. Both destinations are great, so picking the cheaper option works for me! Bogota it is then?
Beware of demand pricing – sometimes flight prices rise temporarily, especially a few months before when everyone plans their vacation. :) But yes it wouldn’t hurt to book now, at least for the accomodation.
Btw it could be worth checking the coliving spaces there too – not sure they are going to be cheaper, but if it is similar prices it could be a nice way to experience that as a team
1 Like
@gabriel Just a heads up that some of us (or maybe it’s just Africans) would need to apply for a separate visa for Colombia, whereas Mexico accepts South Africans with a US visa.
Thanks for the clarification, @antoviaque
I’ll create tasks for Core Contributors to prepare and submit a talk proposal, and we can discuss optional submissions and topics in a forum thread as usual. I’ll get started on this next week/sprint.
Looks like it! 
Yes, that would be fantastic! I’ll definitely include this in my search. And since we’re going to Bogotá, I’ll ask our friends from eduNEXT for pointers – we’ll have local fixers!
edit: @Ali I just saw your reply while writing this. Let me check, but it’s something to consider indeed.
3 Likes
@gabriel I just took a quick look, and it seems it is super easy to get a Colombian visa; it looks like it’s an online application. 
2 Likes
In my previous conference budget calculations, I hadn’t factored in the time spent preparing talks (1.5h + 30h) nor providing in-kind help as a form of sponsorship. The numbers have gone up drastically since then.
Based on updated numbers, and since @antoviaque confirmed that the 50k budget cap is a hard one, it looks like we’ll need to cancel the coworking week in 2023, or at least until we can afford it. This is not a final decision, but right now I don’t see how we can make it work from a budget standpoint.
The only way we could attend the conference (6 ppl) + coworking week is by:
- Severely cutting down on the number of people who can attend the coworking week – but that wouldn’t make sense since we want the full team present.
- Cut down on the expenses covered by OpenCraft – which doesn’t make sense IMO, since this is a work trip. Even if people were willing to cover their flight ticket (which is the biggest expense) out of pocket, we’d still be 10k over budget.
If we cancel the coworking week, we can also send an additional team member to the conference, taking the total to 7.
@gabriel What about reducing the presence further at the conference? That’s the bigger budget item per person?