Web Directions North
by David Peralty on November 10th, 2006 
8 Comments
A shiney new conference is coming up in February in Canada called Web Directions North. That’s right, Canada, but don’t fear, you can also go skiing, and despite what you have heard, we don’t live in igloos (ice huts).
Web Directions North is being held in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia from February 6th through the 10th. The conference is around two full days days, with the other two days being available for skiing and snowboarding at Blackcomb Whistler.
The conference is being brought to Canada by Dave Shea, Derek Featherstone, Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp.
It is set to include some great names in web development and design including Douglas Bowman, Dan Cederholm, Andy Clarke, Joe Clark, Molly Holzschlag, Veerle Pieters, and Cameron Moll, just to name a few. These people have some of the most beautiful blogs in both coding and design, and they are all going to be speaking at Web Directions North.
How much is this all going to cost? Well early bird pricing, available until December 31 2006, is $895 CDN. After this, the full price is $995 CDN.
What do you get from your investment?
- Two full days of conference sessions with world leading speakers and experts
- A quality conference laptop bag full of goodies
- Lunch, morning and afternoon tea, fully catered each day
- The Web Directions Reception, with food, beer, wine and soft drink
- Free wifi at the conference venue
- A closing night party
Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So check out their site for more details if you are interested.
Anyone know what plugin they are using on the site for their schedule? or know of a similar plugin
@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.
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
No…I can’t afford to go that far for a conference. Looks like it’ll be a good time though. Hope you enjoy.
:)
*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…
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
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.