One more question:
What's the registration fee and when is it due?

The registration fee is normally $1000 or so. It is one of the most expensive. If you are a student you can get it for substantially less - book while you are still a student ;-)

Getting to Anguilla is also expensive because Feb is high season for the Caribbean. Book well in advance, or use air miles. From Europe, check out flights to SXM (AF or KLM but there are others) or SJU is the American hub. The actual airport is AXA but do your flights research to the major hubs.

Also, budget for accomodation. I'm out of date on local conditions, ask Ray to research the cheap spots.

Unless my employer pays a substantial part, it's pretty much hopeless for me to attend. But it's by no means off the table. It'll be actually a good test whether he is willing to live up to the recruiting pitch. :-)

Yes, we are all in the same boat. This has always been an aspect of that conference - in that only academics and corporates on travel and conference budgets could easily afford it.

I generally budgetted $3k per person if travelling. Implementers and startups have to justify it as their one annual holiday; it's a curious thing that there are always some interesting people that would turn up and not be able to pay for the entrance, so they just turned up for the social efforts.

This was one of the motivations for EFCE - cheap for implementors if you presented, and closer to cheap flight zones. We didn't get it as cheap as WTH for example, as Edinburgh wasn't that cheap, but we tried!