> But if I could choose between employing someone full-time for a month (especially somewhere with low cost of living like India or Eastern Europe) and buying f

> But if I could choose between employing someone full-time for a month (especially somewhere with low cost of living like India or Eastern Europe) and buying flights and a hotel room for a weekend, I think I'd choose the former. A month's worth of a bad programmer's time might be worth a lot less than meeting motivated good software engineers at a conference and potentially turning one or two into contributors.