An Interesting Conundrum

27 April 05

This week has been rather interesting for me - a roller coaster ride, really. Lots of highs, lots of lows. Well, I'm here to talk about one bump in that roller coaster. Last night, I was honored to receive an email from Michael Wechner, the creator of Lenya, to meet with him, a representative from MIT that has been looking into Lenya, and possibly others to discuss Lenya and its use in colleges and universities.

As many of you know, I work for Hiram College, and we have been using Lenya since the launch of our new site back in September. We seem to be one of a very, very small number of colleges that took on the software for our content management needs. As a matter of fact, as far as I know, we happen to be the only college in the U.S. that has it fully operational. But even though this trip will be helpful for Hiram College in many ways, I think it will also be helpful to many of the current users of Lenya and those institutions that are looking into using Lenya for their content management needs.

So that's the high part of the bump. The low part is that due to various reasons, I won't be compensated for my travel expenses to Boston where the meeting is held. Rather than throw in the towel, I'd like to test the waters: I am wondering if those that enjoy my Lenya documentation would be willing to sponsor my trip to Boston. I have roughed out a cost of just $365 for everything (flight, hotel, car, and meals), going for the bargain-basement costs on the round-trip flight, hotel, and car.

I've setup a Dropcash Campaign where you can donate through Paypal. In the event that something should happen and the meeting is cancelled, I will send back to you the donations you had given to support this "campaign", or, if you so choose, have those funds donated to support the operations of the Computer Center at Hiram College. The flight leaves early in the morning on the 13th of May, but having the funds quickly will ensure a lower rate on my flight. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read through this and to those that are willing to help in whatever way possible. I promise to come back from the meeting with a full report and continue publishing documentation that people find helpful.

Boston Lenya trip campaign site

Comments?

Dave - Apr 29, 12:23pm

no offense, but you have a job and don’t have 365 bucks?

Jon Linczak - Apr 29, 1:45pm

I had a feeling that question would be asked, and it’s a valid one. Perhaps that’s the reason why I’ve only had one gift (thanks Greg!). Let me see if I can explain satisfactorily:

This meeting is being put together because of the work I have done at Hiram College. I’m not here to bash the College, but it’s not a secret that there are a lot of private institutions in this country (and specifically in the state of Ohio) that are having trouble with funds. The state of the educational system in this state is awful. With that said, the College will not be able to pay for my travel to Boston.

OK, so why can’t I pay for it myself? Two reasons: 1) the meeting was called because of the work I did at Hiram, not really for anything I have done outside of it, so I don’t think it’s fair that I have to pull the money from my own pocket for a meeting that will very likely benefit the College in several ways, and 2) to be honest, and it’s sad, I’m in a point where $365 is a luxury to me that I can’t afford right now. As sad as that is, that’s the unfortunate truth.

I graduated from college in late 2002, and as many people know, a lot of college students make mistakes with money. I was one of them. For the past year, I have been working to fix that, and I’m doing relatively well, but working in a small private college doesn’t afford me that much leeway.

And so, I post a campaign here because even though this meeting will help Hiram, it will also help me and readers of this site by coming up with better articles. Better articles only come about if you know the product intimately, and I think I’m capable of generating more knowledge of Lenya by speaking to other developers one-on-one. Those articles, in theory, will help even more people to use Lenya for their projects.

So I hope that makes some sense. Thanks, Dave, for being the brave soul and bringing that up. I hope it benefits you and others when deciding on the usefulness of this campaign.

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