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What Do You Look For In a Conference?
Michael Lato writes "I've been a speaker at several Information Technology conferences and I know that I use conferences as both an opportunity to gain new skills and to network with my peers. In hopes of assisting others, I've started my own conference in order to boost the soft skills of computer professionals. However, we may need to cancel due to a lack of attendees. What are people looking for in a conference in the midst of this recession? Have we missed the mark in thinking topics like project management and remote team leadership will be well-received?"
For a non-academic conference, it needs to be
a: A good enough topic to convince the boss to pay...
b: Cheap enough to convince the boss to pay...
c: In a nice enough location that you want to go...
So a $100/person conference in Hawaii sounds about right to me.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Free stuff, free food and free beer. Only reasons I ever go.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Lots of good peering, accessibility to presenters, decent happy hours. Good stock content is a strong 2nd place, but definitely a 2nd place.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
My employer deals almost entirely with higher ed clients. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts, our customers basically *aren't* looking to go to conferences. Instead of our yearly training, which goes for 3 solid days, and costs over $1000, we're doing webcasts once a week for free. The end cost to us is about the same (we don't aim to profit off the conferences monetarily, so they break even, and WebEx is relatively cheap), they're getting the training they need, and our customers are happier.
So, to answer your question, I'd say they're either not looking for a conference, or for something really cheap. Try again when the economy picks up.
Pick any random 25 conference attendees. If at least one of them doesn't end up waking up in a ditch on the side of a highway 50 miles from your conference with no memory of the preceding three days except vague flashes involving tequila, three midgets, and a donkey, the conference is too lame for anyone to go to.
You're a self absorbed douchebag who got a taste of reality when nobody wanted to attend your coma inducing conference.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Booth babes!
This sort of thing only seems to happen at the political conferences, not the technical ones.
--
Copenhagen's city council in conjunction with Lord Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard sent postcards out to 160 Copenhagen hotels urging COP15 guests and delegates to 'Be sustainable - don't buy sex'.
"Dear hotel owner, we would like to urge you not to arrange contacts between hotel guests and prostitutes," the approach to hotels says.
Now, Copenhagen prostitutes are up in arms, saying that the council has no business meddling in their affairs. They have now offered free sex to anyone who can produce one of the offending postcards and their COP15 identity card, according to the Web site avisen.dk.
--
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,665182,00.html
What Do *I* Look For In a Conference?
The exit to the buffet / bar.
I run a biennial scientific conference. The first two times we had it, it sold out (we had to turn people away); there is every indication that the next session in 2010 will be the same.
What makes it a successful conference?
1. Fantastic location (we chose a Greek island).
2. It's a little hard to get there, and a little expensive -- so people are committed to being at the conference.
3. We serve lunch on-site -- so people have good opportunities to be engaged.
4. There are plenty of breaks -- so people have good opportunities to interact with the speakers.
5. We have lots of time for discussion after each talk, and good moderators. Also, the length of time for each talk is just long enough to present one idea in detail and depth.
6. All of the speakers are invited and meet three strict criteria: (a) they are widely recognized as experts in their field; (b) they give excellent presentations; (c) they are people you want to hang out with for a few days. You would be surprised at how many potential speakers fail at one or more of those criteria, especially the last two.
7. We have separate periods for social interactions (a welcoming reception, and a final banquet).
8. The morning of the third day of our four day conference has no formal presentations, to help avoid attendee fatigue.
9. We serve alcohol during the poster presentations in the evening.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Microsoft events involving free software are very well attended. Over the years I've acquired Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows 7 Ultimate, Visual Studio 2005/2008 Standard, SQL Server 2005/2008 Standard and Windows Server 2008 all for just showing up.
Of course it helped that the conferences themselves were also free.
Schnapple
This time last year, I had a job that would pay for all of its employees to go to about a conference per year within a certain budget. It would also give them paid time off to go.
Since then, that company cut many of its senior/expensive people (including me) and eliminated that benefit for those that remained. My new job doesn't have such a benefit and I'm not likely to attend a conference I have to pay for purely out of pocket and take vacation time for. Probably a lot of former conference attendees are in a similar boat.
The best way to organize a conference is to attend lots of them and pay attention to what works and what does not. Take the positive aspects and concentrate them. Make sure you don't nickel and dime your attendees. Have on-site food that is good, and serve alcohol with it. Have a single-track. Pick speakers very, very well. Pick a great location. Visit the location well beforehand (months) and talk to the people who run the facility. Get to know your vendors. Give attendees decent take-home items (pens, pads, etc.) that won't be thrown away immediately. Provide maps. Make sure the program is trivially easy to use. Make sure the conference site is trivially easy to find. Have a good web site that's easy to navigate. Make it easy for potentially interested attendees to contact you. Advertise. Promise the best experience ever, and follow through. Make sure your finances are well-planned so that if something goes wrong, you, and your attendees, aren't screwed. Ask for feedback, and take it to heart. Hire an A/V person and tell them that under no circumstances are they allowed to dim the lights (or promise a big bonus if that never happens), and that they should feel free to interrupt speakers to adjust microphones until such time as the speakers are clearly audible.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Have we missed the mark in thinking topics like project management and remote team leadership will be well-received?
Short answer: Yes
Long answer:
I personally wouldn't want to attend such conferences. Why? I'm not a project manager nor do I plan to be, and thus team leadership is another thing I generally don't need. Now, when I look at any team of IT pros, I see ONE person in that position, with several underlings to do the dirty work. I don't know about you, but in any of the companies I've worked at, there are AT MOST 2 managers for Information Technology and Services. One will generally handle all the in-house software and bug requests while the other one will handle everything else.
There are more people NOT in that position then there are IN that position. If you were to cover things that applied to my job specifically, like expected coding practices, I might be more inclined to attend.
And those Managers who ARE in those positions are usually too busy to attend a conference, they're on Call 24/7 in case a server goes down or Exchange goes nuts.
However, what REALLY draws the crowds is something new. New Technology, new methodology, new something. If you have something they haven't seen before, they want to check it out. Once you hook them into going, you can continue upon whatever you dang well please. If I book the time off for a conference about the advantages of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 working together, and you happen to spend half the conference talking about Management, I'll feel obligated to stick around till you get to the good stuff.
The problem with google is that it is both time-consuming and difficult to filter out the crap. The good thing about conferences and lectures (at least those I have attended) is that most of the crap has already been filtered by someone who knows about the subject. A good lecture usually get me thinking in new directions, talking about best practices and giving good advice - usually things that drowns in a flood of useless/amateur advice when using google.
Depending on your ambitions for booking targets, of course, but there are some very good people out in the industry who are very well known but still aren't rich. You might be able to entice them to speak for a cut of the gate. Go after a luminary and ask them.
Given your interest in the "soft skills" I'd suggest going after someone like Pamela Jones, Richard Stallman, Randall Munroe, Cory Doctorow, Rob Malda, or Simon Travaglia. People who would drive geeks through the door, just for the opportunity to meet them. Give them an hour to talk and let them sell their own merchandise.
I've only ever set up one conference myself, but I've seen they can be just as big an opportunity for the presenters as the audience. Overall, I believe it's a good thing to do.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I've had my share of security cons in my life. Invariably, whether I liked them or not boils down to a few simple points:
1) Interesting talks from interesting people. I don't want to hear about something I knew since 2 years ago from someone who was just accepted because nobody would willingly come. Have a lineup of people presenting something new and I'm there.
2) Spare the ad blitz. Concerning point 1, spare the corporate sponsored talks that peddle some of their latest crap and give little to no information. First, they're boring and second, the people who attend the cons I attend don't make the sales decisions anyway. I actually remember one talk by a certain poor fellow from a certain security company that I will not mention to protect the guilty who couldn't get his presentation done because everyone just started chattering amongst themselves without listening. And nobody was bothered by it. It was one of those "mandatory attendence" talks, so we were there. And made the best out of the situation. It was really embarrassing for the poor guy and him talking through a microphone kinda interfered with our conversation...
3) Make sure your guests feel welcome. Hire local students if you need cheap labour, but I want to get my registration done speedily and I want to have someone to ask organisational questions whenever I have one. It's kinda bugging me when I stand there and would like to know my way around and there's nobody to ask. Yes, signs help but not always. Also make sure the hotel bar has enough Vodka if you invite people from east/northeast Europe! GOOD VODKA! I can't stress it enough.
4) Don't put the most interesting talks at 9am. That Vodka needs time to settle, ya know...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The good thing about conferences and lectures (at least those I have attended) is that most of the crap has already been filtered by someone who knows about the subject. A good lecture usually get me thinking in new directions, talking about best practices and giving good advice - usually things that drowns in a flood of useless/amateur advice when using google.
Filtering out the crap and giving you zero substance.
Conferences are you sitting down and listening to some schlub talk for an hour or two in vague generalities about a topic barely related to your work.
Thinking about stuff is great, but at the end of the conference you've got nothing implemented. At best, you've got some scrappy notes about things you might want to look into.
People talking at conferences see ego boosters and paychecks.
People sending you to conferences expect you to somehow come back on Monday and make everything faster, cheaper, and more buzz-wordy by Friday.
People willingly attending conferences for anything other than a break from work with free food and swag or a chance to meet someone who will give them a better job are inept.
At the end of the day, you've got to get down to brass tacks and do the WORK. Tech work involves looking stuff up in boring documentation and then looking up the fixes for shit doesn't work as it's supposed to.
No amount of talks, lectures, or other such fluffery will get anything done. In the end, the time spent on the conference is time you could have spent getting some framework and test cases/demos up and running for whatever newfangled thing you're trying to get going.
How much is that?
All of it?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Without more detail, the conference you started sounds suspiciously like every other "professional" conference I've ever heard of. You know, the ones middle managers dream up and attend to make it look and sound like they're busier and more important than they really are.
You don't say who your target audience is exactly, but if you're looking to attract the Slashdot crowd, you have to have:
Running a con is hard. I was on a conference committee once and while my job was comparatively easy, many other organizers (especially the conchair) spent an entire year of their free time all for the sake of one great weekend. If you really want to figure out what makes a con tick, get involved with another con before diving into one of your own, no matter how great you think your event planning skills are. There are a few cons with a relatively open planning process, one in particular that I can recommend is Penguicon.