Noteworthy Upcoming Conferences

There are a bunch of conferences and summits in the next few months worth paying attention to, even if you are not attending:

One of my biggest pet peeves is the high cost of many of the above-mentioned conferences. For self-employed people like myself the cost of attending many of these conferences is completely prohibitive and out of the realm of possibility. It’s fascinating to me that conferences like SXSW can manage to be affordable at a few hundred bucks for 4 days of events, while others like PC Forum cost upwards of $4000. I’ve always found that the best conferences are the ones that actually engage the attendees. Typically, the best conferences are well-planned but also home-grown. I understand that all conferences have overhead and often enormous speaker fees but the pricing of a number of these is simply far too high for the self-employed or the small companies doing great work. Sure, Microsoft and Google can afford to send a dozen employees to the likes of PC Forum and Pop!Tech (which costs $1495), but what about the small fish?

On a related note, I will be at SXSW in Austin for one day only: March 15. Even though the conference fee is waived since I’m participating on a panel, the travel and hotel costs are still costing me nearly $700, and that’s after I got a cheap ticket from Priceline.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at February 22, 2005 04:02 PM

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