Posted on: August 29, 2005 in Miscellany
The Tech Conference VS The Un-conference
I had a great time at O’Reilly’s OSCON bash in Portland earlier this month, but I think it’s interesting to look at the growing gulf between these large events and grassroots ‘un-conferences’ like Webzine 2005 and Podcast Hotel, to name just two.
For example, compare the registration fee for the European edition of OSCON ($1,367.64) to that of a weekend pass for either Podcast Hotel or Webzine ($20).
I think that in part, this is the inevitable changing of the guard, as exemplified by the recent foo/bar camp escapade. So what would I do if my half baked ideas held any sway with the O’Reilly media empire? How about if O’Reilly put on a series of smaller, more organic conferences targeted at specific niche markets. Micro Conferences, if you will.
August 30th, 2005 at 10:07 am
Why wait for O’Reilly to do it? We did it in 6 days. The answer isn’t to wait for the old guard to do the conferences for us, but to self-organize our own alternatives!
August 30th, 2005 at 10:20 am
Chris, I totally agree with you! I wasn’t suggesting that O’Reilly do this for my own benefit (I love the idea of organizing my own alternatives), but rather to stave off their own increasing irrelevance.
August 31st, 2005 at 9:45 am
Hey Colin, the only thing I was really referring to was this line:
It seemed like you were looking to them to change their model — leaving the responsibility with them to put on the alt-conferences. I think that O’Reilly’s model will continue to be relevant — and in fact I hope it will be. We need them to do all the hard footwork around promoting a conference so that when we promote our own unconferences it costs us next to nothing to spread the word, since we’ll be offering the free or low cost micro-alternative!
While I would love to have O’Reilly et al pitch in with our efforts and toss some scraps to the “kiddie table” events, we’re also fully capable of putting on our own worthwhile and relevant events. Hey, they all started somewhere — seems high time the Web2.0 Generation stepped up and got organized! ;)
September 19th, 2005 at 6:10 pm
As a small conference producer, we’ve tried to split the difference a bit. Our conference is a fairly small, targetted conference aimed at the hosting industry. Rather than charge attendees $1000 to attend as many conferences do, we do a full conference registration for $395 (cheaper with discount codes from sponsors/ads/etc.) and give breakfast/lunch all three days of the conference.
We’re a very small company and have always tried to keep in mind the needs of individuals and small companies. I’m curious as to your thoughts on the direction we’ve taken… sort of right down the middle of what you’re talking about.