8 Responses

1. Jim

   November 11th, 2006 at 11:44 pm

   1

   Anyone know what plugin they are using on the site for their schedule? or know of a similar plugin

2. Pronet Advertising

   November 13th, 2006 at 10:29 am

   2

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3. Justin

   November 13th, 2006 at 4:23 pm

   3

   @Dave:

   You going to be at the conference? I booked my flight(s) today and I will be there, handy and ready. Let me know if you’re going.. or if you want to go.

4. Jim

   November 13th, 2006 at 4:34 pm

   4

   Pronet Ad,
   Yes, I actually caught your link to your blog on Digg today and was going through it earlier.
   Lots of good info to digest

5. David

   November 13th, 2006 at 9:24 pm

   5

   No…I can’t afford to go that far for a conference. Looks like it’ll be a good time though. Hope you enjoy.

   

6. Chris

   November 13th, 2006 at 11:19 pm

   6

   *lurk*

   Holy smokes! As much as this is something in my backyard and I do have a faint interest to see what would be going done, dropping that much coin? Not for the average guy…

7. John Allsopp

   November 17th, 2006 at 5:55 pm

   7

   Thanks for the mention guys, and glad you like the look of the conference.

   To Chris. I agree it’s not chickenfeed. But a few things to contextualize the pricing.

   Firstly, by world standards, it’s cheap. For this calibre of speaker list (and keeping in mind the conference is fully catered, plus a reception an closing night party with open bar, food etc, and hopefully some more things to be announced), you will typically pay a lot more.
   We also like to remunerate our speakers considerably better than most conferences will.
   To get a speaker list like this anywhere, and in particular anywhere outside San Francisco, you need to gfly speakers from all over the world, and put them up in nice accomodation for several days. We have people coming from Europe, all over North America, an Australia to speak.

   This will be the fourth conference that I have been associated with - and believe me, you generally don’t get to swill French Champagne and drive sports cars on the proceeds. Unless you an get several thousand people at $3500 per seat that is. Then aforesaid Champagne and cars might be on the agenda

   In an ideal world we’d love to make the conferences even more affordable, but the risk is already pretty huge (you typically pay large non refundable deposits months in advance to venues, so the best you are going to do if it doesn’t come off is lose tens of thousands of dollars.)

   In terms of the cost to attendees, while it is a significant anount, I like to think of the value it provides in two ways

   1. the professional benefit, in my experience (I speak at, organize, and attend conference a fair bit) is really significant - we’ve found in Australia people who attended the conference have got great jobs, started companies, and more, on the stengths of the relationships they build at the conferences. It’s also a real crash course in ideas and techniques, you won’t get any other way. If it weren’t, we honestly wouldn’t keep putting them on. We genuinely do it because we think it is wothwhile to our attendees.
   2. While $795 - $995 looks like a lot of money, it’s not much more than a cup of coffee a day over a year, if that. So breaking it down, for the benefits, I do think we are offering people a great deal.

   But, that’s not to critcize you, as I said, we do appreciate it’s not cheap. But we do believe it’s great value.

   Also, keep an eye on the site, as we wil be looking for a small number of interns, so that might be a way to get along.

   Thanks again

   john

8. Justin Shattuck

   January 26th, 2007 at 2:49 pm

   8

   I’m totally going to be at WDN for the conference, and I have a hotel booked at the location of the conference from Feb 5-Feb10 if anyone is interested, I can discuss splitting the charge up a bit if you want to room and you’re going.

   I’m flying in from Oklahoma, USA the 5th and will be leaving the afternoon fo the 10th.

   justinshattuck (at) gmail , hit me up.