I was just looking over some of the upcoming conferences, and was a bit shocked at the DX3 pricing. $1,499 at the door!!! $1,099 early bird pricing. Wow. There’s also a $100 community pass which lets you into the expo hall, tech showcases and one night time event.
FlashForward, also put on by Lynda.com, has similar pricing. A full premium conference pass is $1,499. The minimum you are going to pay to get in is $899 early bird. Or you can pay $50 to go to the exhibits and Film Festival. What’s with this charging people to see exhibitors, which are just there to sell you stuff?
FiTC is far more reasonable. You’ll wind up paying between $275 and $975 Canadian, which seems to be about $230-830 USD. Interesting to note that FiTC also includes student pricing, which is pretty cool.
FiTC is historically a great quality conference. I haven’t been to a FlashForward in a while, but its reputation seems to be suffering in recent years, and DX3 is an unknown. I can’t see that charging up to $1,500 is going to help either one do well.
Flash on the Beach last December, probably the best conference I’ve been to, was £199-499, or about $260-660 USD. Rumor has it that the conference just about broke even, which is pretty awesome for a first time conference. And they gave out awesome schwag including laptop bags and tshirts to every attendee. They also paid speakers twice what FlashForward does, covered full expenses, and provided over the top speaker schwag. It makes you wonder what the $1,500 pays for.
Although both FlashForward and DX are in Boston this year, I have not been invited to speak (definitely won’t be now :)) and I’m probably not going to dish out that kind of cash for a conference. I can’t imagine that either one is going to be 2-3 times better than FOTB or FiTC. I guess a lot of people will get their companies to pay or write it off or whatever. Anyway, it will nice to have Flash friends in town, and I’m sure I’ll hang out with people at any parties that don’t require a badge to get in.
Of course, I could not fail to mention 360 Flex which is $100 for a 3-day conference. Now we are talking!
Advice to conference creators. Cut it back. Don’t worry about super fancy venues. We just need a place with decent sound, video, and above all, wireless. Forget about lavish conference-sponsored parties. They usually suck. Honestly. We can find clubs and restaurants on our own. The best times are when a group of people leave the main party and wander around, ending up someplace together, eating and drinking and talking.
People go to conferences for two reasons:
One, to see good speakers with good content, to learn and be inspired.
Two, most importantly, to network and meet friends, talk geeky Flash stuff over excessive amounts of food and alcohol til daybreak.
Make those two available, cheaply, and you’ve got a success.
Yeah, it’s all over the place. I’d just say that if it was easy to make money there would be more conferences.
I think your #1 and #2 are right on. Here are a couple more conferences that I’d recommend and which are reasonable:
Spring Break: http://www.sbconference.com/
Webvisions: http://www.webvisionsevent.com/
Yeah, I’m not saying it’s easy to make money at it. Takes some good organization skill, not just charging more money. I can’t imagine that 360 Flex is turning a profit. Seems like a great conference though. They probably could have charged 3-4 times what they are charging and still done well.
Don’t forget FlashBelt!
Good post Keith, conference pricing seems to be seriously getting out of hand — no offense to Lynda.com, they organize some great events but *really*
The main reason I find these days for attending events is networking, its not as if you’ll miss any important announcements if you hang out on MXNA. I was contemplating going to DX3 myself but I certainly won’t pay that amount for a conference ticket plus flight, accommodation and expenses.
FOTB and 360Flex are great examples of how you can make conference pricing reasonable. If John managed to break even on the first year, I’m sure it’ll be a profit maker in the coming years based on the great feedback that conference has been getting.
Its ridiculous! As I understand these conferences we’re originally setup to support the Flash community. They have now seen an opportunity to take people for as much money as they can.
I’d be interested to hear from someone at DX3 or FF explain why they are so much more expensive than other conferences? Maybe they could supply a list of what they offer for the money, over the others.
Also missing off the list is WebDU coming in at a reasonable $630 (although its in an expensive hotel ;)). Maybe i just aint posh enough. I want a bed, beer, people and the odd decent session of interested to me.
Glad to know I’m not the only one thinking this way. I would be interested in an explanation of the costs as well.
As stale as FF has been the last few years, it is surprising that the price would shoot up like this. Maybe they are basing the increase on the success of the comparably priced MAX conference.
I’ll definitely be looking to attend FITC/FOTB instead this year (360Flex is sold out). Would like to check out SXSW Interactive next month, but my wife would kill me if I left her home with our newborn. 😉
I too wanted to go to SXSW and the O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference next month, but with a baby due in two weeks, that isn’t happening.
I recently found the OFFF Festival in Barcelona!
3-day Festival including a lot of amazing Speakers for 42€! That’s a short Holiday in Spain+Festival+Flight+Acommodation for the price of a FlashForward-Ticket. Nice.
http://www.offf.ws/bcn/
My two favorites are FOTB and OFF. OFFF is a different kind of conference though – primarily for inspiration, not learning tech. AND Barcelona is just awesome!
J
So I could pretty much cover the costs of my flight to the UK, accomodations, and conference for Flash on the Beach for what I would pay to only get a full pass for FlashForward? Sounds like a no brainer which one I would go to.
What I find is that most of the attendee’s get educational discounts so they really stick it to the professionals. If it wasn’t in Boston and my company wasn’t paying for it, I’d probably skip FF.
I agree completely
I spoke at FF in Austin and thought the conference was quite a step up from the previous couple FF’s I had been to, but I did not understand the cost of the conference. I think one of the major reasons the
FF con was more expensive than previous ones was that the venue was so much nicer. As much fun as the new yorker and herbst theater were, things were crowded, the internet never worked, and accommodations were only ok. The venue at Austin Hilton was much better with internet that worked and tables for laptops, but I don’t think that is worth the extra 800 dollars they are charging.
I can also say that as a speaker we did get treated well. A nice welcoming dinner and free sushi and redbull every day in the speaker room. Can’t complain about that.
I am going to be heading out to London this year for flash on the beach. I am interested to go after hearing all the praise it got. I am also happy to hear that FITC should be hitting hollywood again this year.
Hey I just wanted to say that I didn’t mean to say “hey, just let’s see YOU put on a conference if you think it’s so easy”. I didn’t mean that. Only that, yeah, I totally agree some conferences are out of hand but I personally wouldn’t diss them because I imagine they’re hard to produce.
I should also add that a conference like MAX which is expensive and they don’t accept proposals and they don’t pay the speakers is actually a really good conference and actually a VALUE (provided you can drink enough beer). Seriously, there’s just lots of variables.
One of the conferences listed about stiffed me for my travel expenses… don’t want to say publicly because they otherwise have a good reputation. Oh, it WAS NOT: FF or FITC or FOTB or spring break or webvisions or flashbelt or dx3 or 360 flex or webDU or SXSW or Web 2.0
Sorry it took Chuck’s post to get me to this post, but I wanted to sorta pipe up a bit. I agree whole heartedly with you. Conference pricing is out of controls. We here you and look for more 360Goodness to come your way in the future. We got plans, baby. If not to conquer the world, then to at least change it towards the better. We already have seen some conferences starting to drop their price to “compete” and we’re hoping to do that across the board. We’re watching out for y’all. Or more specifically, your wallets! =)
Not usre how I missed this, or how Tom could not tell me about it :).
TO add to the chorus, I agree, as is evidenced by our 360Flex conferences.
What little insight I have into the world of conferences so far is that it’s more about profit than anything else. We can’t comp flights or pay speakers, they get a free ticket of course and we’re working on more/better swchwag, our margins don’t support it. What bewilders me, the conferences that do do that, and still (i believe) come way with incredibly bulgy bank accounts when it’s all said and done. To me that’s not benefiting the coomunity at all. cut the profit to a reasonable amount, offer more interesting topics, more interesting conferences in general.
I think, again my own observations, Lynda.com was resting on laurals. There was no hype around DX3, not much blogging, not much press. nothing. As if they assumed that by virtue of if being a Lynda event people would flock in droves to the door to drop 1500 duckets. Not gonna happen, and it didn’t happen.