Comments on: Most Profitable Web 2.0 Business: Conferences

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve never understood this either. SXSW/interactive is a whopping $225 for the entire weekend. I’ve been there two years straight, and people rave about how great it is, but it’s rare to find another conference even under $1000.

Do they think the Web2.0 Summit 12 times better than SXSW/i? Is there something I’m missing here?

By: Matt Jankowski

Matt Jankowski — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If this involves Gisele and Jobs meditating about iPods in space in a plane flown by Branson, I will gladly attend your F100GF2K7 event!

By: Royal

Royal — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If we could merger my Laetitia Casta web 3.0 2007 event and have some really sweet badges I would be willing to partner.

By: Dave S.

Dave S. — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

@Mark – “SXSW/interactive is a whopping $225 for the entire weekend. I’ve been there two years straight, and people rave about how great it is, but it’s rare to find another conference even under $1000.”

SXSW is $225, but a) they don’t pay their panelists or cover their expenses (presumably a different story for keynote speakers), and b) people often complain say the networking is more important than the content at that event. Think there might be a connection? You pay for what you get, and once you start commissioning speakers to deliver new material for an event and covering their flights/accomodation, your costs jump. $1000 ain’t that much, from an organizer’s perspective.

Though, having been on the organizational side of a conference myself, I’m guessing at $3000 the organizers of this one aren’t exactly living off of Wonderbread.

By: Don

Don — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

What a hoot (er). Talk about not talking about what is obvious …

why we like her?

Gisele has graced a great amount of magazine covers and fashion shows. She is young, yet remains realistic about the modeling profession and its limited life, which makes her an excellent choice for us.

Let’s face it that isn’t why we like her. And you wouldn’t much care what she says at dinner … I suspect.

People Magazine ran a bit on what it costs to get celebs to your event or club … other than Kevin Federline, it ain’t cheap, so you may need $3000+ per attendee to get your GiseleFest going.

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Don: Well here’s the thing — All it takes is one well-placed connection and I’m sure I can get Gisele to show up. Let’s say we pay $20,000 to cover her expenses and what-not. Then, we basically dole out 5 spots to each Fortune 100 company and they can send whoever they’d like… at $20,000 a head. That’s 500 attendees at $20,000 apiece which is a cool $10 million. If the event is as big of a hit as I think it will be, maybe we expand it to the entire Fortune 500 the following year and raise our revenue to $50 million.

Who’s with me?

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

And this is why I have 8 hours of CSS to code in 3 hours.

haha- keep it up. BTW, I totally agree.

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I think the whole web conference thing is a joke. Just by reading the blogger reviews of these events, they seem to be 10% content, 90% ‘who i saw’, ‘who i drank with’, ‘check out my totally awesome flickr photoset of the conference’. I am not interested in attending popularity contests, where designers/developers are treated like celebrities, complete with a MediaTemple VIP ‘lounge’.

However, it is becoming obvious that pitching services at fellow web designers/developers is much more profitable than designing/developing.

I am going to hold on to my hard-earned money until these conferences mature a bit. However, if my company wants to pay my way, I’ll happily get s-faced with you all :)

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

True, most of what I hear is all the “this is who i met and got drunk with, look at my pictures.” After that, you can get all the panelist information from blog reviews and podcasts and whatnot for free, so why throw away the cash?

By: motherduce

motherduce — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m with Adam! I haven’t been able to make a SXSW yet, but plan to next year, and only because it’s relatively inexpensive. $3000 for a web conference is a bit ridiculous. I went to FlashForward last year, and it was only $800 and strictly focused on Flash development.

Most of the web conferences are too wide open – they need to be more focused on one topic or another, and much cheaper! But like Mike said, if they can make the money, they will.

By: Rob Goodlatte

Rob Goodlatte — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I completely agree. Especially when the conference is heavily focused on small businesses, an exorbitant price is really inappropriate. By setting the price so high they limit the conference to business owners with VC to burn, corporate higher-ups, millionaires with money to burn, and the select blogging “elite” who are invited.

TechCrunch 20 is no better though. They charge $2,000 pre-order, $2,500 after September. They do let 20 companies in for free, but for everybody else the price is a crime. TechCrunch in particular seems like it would be focused on what works / doesn’t work for small businesses and would be a great learning and networking opportunity for small business owners, but again the $2K price doesn’t really work for that audience.

One thing I love about SXSW is they offer a student discount. These conferences are always good learning experiences and a great place to network for a future job.

By: Michael Moncur

Michael Moncur — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always had the same problem. SXSW is $225 and every other conference seems ridiculous by comparison.

Sure, SXSW isn’t perfect. Web 2.0 might be better. It might even be twice as good, or three times as good. But if I pay $3000 it had better be 15 times as good — and I don’t think anyone can reasonably make that claim.

We need more SXSW-like conferences. A small business conference with the same kind of independent spirit would be amazing, even if it cost me $400…

By: TÃ©a

Gosh, and here was me thinking that I could make a living designing websites.

I am starting to think that the phat cash is in conferences that just talk about it.

Ka-ching!

By: David Collantes

David Collantes — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

One week trip anywhere in the world (with a decent budget!)

If you can do that with $3000 let me know. If you try you will soon realize it isn’t possible, with the current dollar value. Unless, of course, you travel to Tanzania, Ethiopia or equivalent.

I agree with your post, otherwise :)

By: Andy Borgmann

Andy Borgmann — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If you can do that with $3000 let me know. If you try you will soon realize it isn't possible, with the current dollar value.

I did Australia for under this. Actually traveling to Tanzania and Ehiopia is harder in my opinion than Europe or Australia becuase the airfare to African nations from America is a KILLER. I was suppose to go to Nigeria this summer to do some humanitarian work with AIDS patience and Orphans and the airfare alone was $2500.

As for me, Iâ€™d rather spend that $3k on any of the following

When you consider 3,000,000,000 (that's 3 Billion) people live on less than $730 a year and according to Global Rich List making $3,000 puts you in the richest 18% of people in this world, sometimes spending as much as we do on stuff seams to lose perspective. I am not trying to guilt anybody (as I myself will spend $3,000 on things I view as necessary to my job, i.e. my MacBook Pro), but I think sometimes we lose perspective in the world on what things should cost.