There are a bunch of conferences and summits in the next few months worth paying attention to, even if you are not attending:
February 23-25: Web Based Communities 2005, Algarve, PortugalFebruary 22-26: Technology Entertainment Design, Monterey, CAFebruary 24: Web Spam Squashing Summit, Sunnyvale, CAFebruary 26-27: Free and Open Source Software Developer’s European Meeting (FOSDEM), Brussels, BelgiumFebruary 26: Drupal Conference (Part of FOSDEM), Brussels, BelgiumFebruary 27-March 2: NVHA Innovations Conference on Social Network Media, Atlanta, GAMarch 3-7: ASIS&T IA Summit, Atlanta, GAMarch 8: CScout TrendDay: Blogging, Munich, GermanyMarch 9: 106 Miles, Silicon Valley, CAMarch 10-11: Politics Online Conference 2005, Washington D.C.March 11-15: SXSW Interactive, Austin TexasMarch 14-17: Emerging Technology Conference, San Diego, CAMarch 20-22: PC Forum, Scottsdale, AZ- March 30-31: Freedom to Connect, Washington D.C.
- April 2-7: CHI 2005: Technology, Safety, Community, Portland, OR
- April 5-6: Open Source Business Conference, San Francisco, CA
- April 7: Who Owns Culture?, New York, NY
- April 8: Media and the Law 2005, Lawrence, KS
- April 28-29: GEL 2005, New York, NY
- May 5-7: BlogNashville, Nashville, TN
- May 10-13: Digital ID World Conference 2005, San Francisco, CA
- May 10-14: International WWW Conference, Chiba, Japan
- May 16: Personal Democracy Forum, New York, NY
- May 19-21: BlogTalk Down Under, Sydney, Australia
- June 6-10: WWDC 2005, San Francisco, CA
- June 13-15: Innovate Europe, Zaragoza, Spain
- June 20-22: Supernova 2005, San Francisco, CA
- August 1-5: O’Reilly Open Source Convention, Portland, OR
- October 19-20: BlogOn Summit 2005, New York City, NY
- October 19-22: Pop!Tech, Camden, Maine
- Date TBD: Montreal Social Software Conference, Montreal, Canada
- Date TBD: Blogging Conference, Melbourne, Australia
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