[Info-vax] Why are VSI so focused on Sweden ?

[Camiel Vanderhoeven]

Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2024-10-25, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> Curious.
>>
>> Why the "wrong" side of Øresund?
>>
>> Because there are still VMS users in Sweden and not in Denmark?
>
> I am curious why VSI are so heavily focused on Sweden to the exclusion
> of other European countries.

It's certainly a curious discussion that has spun up here :-)

I fear the reasons to have the bootcamp in Malmö are a lot more mundane 
than some of the theories I came across here.

We just organized the first VMS bootcamp since 2017 in the US. For some 
reasons, we wanted it to be close to our office in Boston:

- easy access for our engineers to deliver presentations on various topics;
- easy access for our office staff who did a lot of the organizing, not 
just during the bootcamp, but also in the weeks leading up to it for 
preparations.

These same considerations play a role as we prepare for the first ever 
VMS bootcamp in Europe. While we have people all over Europe (including 
Germany, France, and yours truly in the Netherlands), we have offices 
with a VMS engineering team in three places: Copenhagen (Denmark), 
Yerevan (Armenia) and Athens (Greece). The team we have in Greece is 
just getting started, and Yerevan is a little bit more difficult to get 
to (fewer flights, often at inconvenient times).

That leaves Copenhagen. Unfortunately, organizing a conference in 
Copenhagen  would be very expensive, both for us and for attendees. 
Doing it in Malmö, we can probably cut the cost in half for both, and as 
Arne said, getting there from the airport takes only a few minutes longer.

That's about as poetic as I can make it :-)

Camiel