Customer needs a small conference bridge for 6-15 users and doesn't want to spend $10k.
How hard is it to set just this up using SIP trunks? Anybody willing to do the programming for something this simple?

It wouldn't be hard to do, unless you want to integrate it with their current phone system. Perhaps they should look into a conference service?

DuVoice makes a great conference bridge for 12 or 16 users. Very inexpensice.

In asterisk, you could just create a dial-in conference with something like this:

---
; Remote conference for training
exten => 778,1,Authenticate(298)
exten => 778,n,meetme(778,d)
---

Basically, make then authenticate using pin number 298, if they get that right, throw them into conference number 778.

What you need to have working before that is useful is Asterisk installed and successfully connected to a SIP or T1 Carrier. Then you just point a DID to go there and you are done.

If you had to start from bare metal, it would probably take an hour by the time you messed with installing everything, testing a carrier, and throwing up some kind of simple IVR. If you already have a running system, it takes less time.