In reply to Scott.

As many participants manage millions of dollars of budget already, some even tens of millions, they probably aren't looking for remuneration. It's probably better to think of it like a friendly lunch between folks trying to learn from each other in ways that will help their business, not take away from it.

I agree that WordPress is too hard, and can be too expensive to set up for many folks. That's what the entire project is trying to be better at with every release. We've come a long way -- to develop WordPress from scratch would cost tens of millions of dollars in development time, something every person who downloads WP gets for free. (That's why some of the largest sites and media are adopting WordPress every day.)