Ticketgate
Well that got a bit out of hand, didn’t it.
I’ve re-read the original conversation Alan and I had, and I have no idea how we got here. It was a nice chat!
I suspect it may have sprung from a few poorly constructed and misconstrued tweets. Ain’t it always the way?
I think this one from me irked Alan a bit: James Adam: “I see @scotrubyconf have announced the ticket prices… with “Super Early-Bird” and “Early-Bird” prices. #slowclap interblah.net/early-bird-t…”
What I was expressing with the “#slowclap” was more disappointment than anything else, since I’d raised my hopes after the previous conversation, but I can see how it would’ve come across. Andrew Nesbit called me on it, but it didn’t click until too late:
Andrew Nesbitt: “@lazyatom passive aggressive much?”
While I really wasn’t annoyed earlier, I think this is one of those self-fulfilling prophesies, like when someone comes up to you and apropos of nothing says “Cheer up!”, and where they would’ve seen you as glum really you were just deep in thought and quite content, but now that you’ve been disturbed, yes, yes actually now I am upset. You know how it goes. Anyway, it’s something like that, innocent stuff really.
Honestly though, I wasn’t annoyed. I just got my hopes up a bit prematurely, that’s all.
… and I think that gave Alan the wrong impression. I don’t think he was really annoyed by it:
However, it’s clear later on that he thought I was accusing him (and/or Paul and Graeme) of being closed minded. What I was trying (and failing) to say is that I don’t mind what anybody chooses to do as long as they’re weighing up all the options and not being overly influenced by dogma. The very fact that we managed the previous conversation so well demonstrates he was, but I wasn’t clear and for that I absolutely apologise.
Alas, at the same time we’re also sparring a bit:
Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom I could try and talk you into offering RubyManor shirts because, in my experience, people feel cheated if they don’t get a shirt,” Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom And if you decided not to take my advice, and do what you wanted anyway, would it make sense for me to be annoyed about it?” James Adam: “@alancfrancis if more than a few people said they wanted a shirt, and could explain why (beyond saying they “expected” it), then sure.”
Oh, swag…
James Adam: “@alancfrancis I’ve never suggested that the Ruby Manor model is the only way to run a conference” James Adam: “@alancfrancis I’ve only suggested that we’re trying to abandon practices that many people don’t actually find valuable.” Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Well, no. You’ve in fact suggested that we should abandon practices that you don’t find valuable?”
… so that probably made things a bit more tense.
For the record, nobody’s ever asked me if we can do a Ruby Manor t-shirt. At the first event we actually joked about our t-shirt and laptop bag:
Equally, I’m sure nobody’s ever asked the Scottish Ruby Conference if they’ll abandon a part of their standard financial practice before. In retrospect, it’s clear that either suggestion could seem as alien and bizarre to the counterpart as Edward Longshanks asking William Wallace to put some trousers on.
Why did I think this could be discussed successfully over Twitter? I was such a fool.
To quote the protagonist from The Scottish Play:
I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
Onwards.
Are Early Bird tickets discounted?
(but of course as organisers you can set “full price” to be whatever makes sense for your event given the total amount of revenue you would like)
I’m deliberately avoiding any discussion of whether or not the tickets are good value or not - that’s subjective.
However, the idea of Early Bird tickets containing a “discount” is purely a matter of perspective. Given the total revenue for the conference is fixed (because each ticket type quantity is fixed) it’s just as valid to assert the Standard tickets contain a “late surcharge” as it is to assert that there is a “discount”.
The “discount” only exists if the ticket could have been sold for a higher price, but the very structure of the Scottish Ruby Conference 2011 ticket release dictated that tickets each had a fixed value and could never have been sold for anything else.
It’s totally valid to question confidence about whether or not your conference will sell out, or how quickly that might happen, and what effect ticket prices have on the rate of sales. For the purposes of this conversation, my belief is built on past experience of this specific event, along with consideration of the choice to release all tickets simultaneously for this event, and therefore limit Early Bird by quantity rather than time period.
I don’t know how to explain this in any other way, but if you’re convinced that I’m wrong I would dearly love to hear from you (via email perhaps). I just don’t see (given probable odds of selling all tickets, and an otherwise fixed total revenue) why the removal of Early Bird would require a conference increase that revenue cap, rather than make the “Full” price a little cheaper so that the total revenue remains the same. The conference organisers don’t lose out.
Back to the twit-storm-shit-storm. Alan and Ric continue to banter a bit which shows that everything’s really fine, and nobody is feeling persecuted, but I think this short exchange has been useful in my final (for the moment) attempt at clarifying My PointTM.
My PointTM
Given fixed numbers of tickets for an established and successful event, with a high probability of selling many tickets quickly and ultimately selling out, I believe that Early Bird prices do more to make people feel like they “missed out on a deal” than they help drive early sales for cash-flow purposes.
And if that’s true, it’s not ideal.
The London Effect
A few other conversations came up that I found it hard to manage - notably this one about the differences between London and Edinburgh. Here’s the first tweet to whet your appetite:
My goal for Ruby Manor has never been to run a “local” conference. I’m starting to understand why it might be perceived that way, probably in part because it’s such a departure from the formula, in part because it’s not as big as Scottish Ruby Conference (only 150 attendees this time) and, lets be honest, because it’s so cheap many people must just assume that we’re not playing in the same league. I think we are.
While I personally believe it’s tangential to My PointTM as outlined above, I also genuinely do believe that Paul’s got a point which I had not considered, and which is definitely worth exploring (at some point, just please, please not now). Perhaps the specific way we are running Ruby Manor would only work well in large metropolises. I don’t know if that’s true, but it could be. I’m going to enjoy thinking about that more.
Now even if that’s the case, it doesn’t mean that only the formula will work in other places. I’m still convinced that many conferences could afford, and would indeed benefit, from deviating from the formula, even if they do so in radically different ways from Ruby Manor. It’s the calm but persistent questioning of the formula that I am arguing for, with an emphasis on experimenting by doing.
Regardless, apparently I’m a dick
But this is the thread that really fascinates me:
(not the first time I’ve heard this)
(probably for the best, Graeme)
Alan C Francis: “@bleything He does - its called RubyManor and it’s a different kind of beast.”
(Isn’t it weird when I’m being sort-of defended by the very people that I’m apparently attacking?)
Please allow me a brief digression. I really do appreciate that Alan is being very even handed here, but I can’t help but feel that labelling Ruby Manor as a “different kind of conference” has the inadvertent side-effect of isolating “real” conferences from the points we’re trying to make by running Ruby Manor. I don’t think it’s intentional, but it works against my goals and so I want to use the opportunity to hopefully redress that.
Certainly there are many aspects to Ruby Manor that are different to most conferences, but we believe that our essential “conferenceyness” is the same. It may seem that our size, our price and our lack of a CFP and big-name international speakers points to us being an alternative, or even somehow in a different (lesser) league to other regional conferences, but that is to be confronted so directly with the point as to miss it entirely. We believe that those afore-listed things are not the essential aspects of a conference, but instead distractions from the real kernel that makes a conference great. Each one of those things is ripe for revision.
Ruby Manor is not an Unconference. We seek to satisfy every single hunger and desire that any other conference does, and more so. Except your hunger for t-shirts, of course.
Anyway, back to the conversation:
So I think Ben is saying a couple of things:
- people shouldn’t complain about conferences; they should run their own if they are unhappy
- conferences shouldn’t complain about other conferences; however a conference decides to conduct itself is its own business.
I don’t particularly disagree with either of these points, but what I would point out is that there’s a difference between complaining and critiquing. I’ll deal with this below, but in the meantime we’ll finish the conversation. The next tweet is a doozy:
Woah.
I’ve got to apologise to Alan, because it’s clear now that one of my earlier tweets was perceived as personal, rather than general. I take responsibility for that, and I do (again) apologise.
I’m not attacking anyone. I’ve re-read the original conversation and it’s verging on the convivial. I don’t think at any point Alan was anything worse than bemused, and he was genuinely happy to introspect about the questions I was asking. I really, genuinely appreciated that, because a lot of the thinking that’s tied up with Ruby Manor is hard to communicate in a way that isn’t confrontational, both in expression and reception. It’s hard to suggest that things might be better if we all did a thing differently without upsetting those people who are responsible for delivering that thing.
But what you don’t see in that conversation is the other thing Ben wrote at 2am from his hotel room:
Now he cannot mean that literally. I’m convinced that Ben isn’t suggesting that he isn’t open to any kind of constructive criticism. There’s a magical window of opportunity between realising there’s something which you would appreciate if it were changed, and leaving through the door on the left, as Ben puts it, where in an ideal world you might actually have a meaningful and constructive exchange of ideas through which either or both parties might be convinced to modify their perspective for mutual benefit.
And perhaps that’s what this all boils down to. Was my criticism constructive? Or was I just complaining? Or was I attacking Alan, Paul and Graeme?
Well, I feel like I’ve already said this, but in case there’s any doubt: Just because we think differently about what aspects of a conference are important, doesn’t mean that when I talk about it that I’m “attacking” them, or any other conference organiser. Yes, I believe in the points I’m making, but I totally respect their right to run Scottish Ruby Conference however they see fit. They don’t owe me any influence beyond that I’d hope they would give any other ticket-holding attendee. (Well, perhaps a bit more but only because I’m also Scottish. You understand.)
I think that Alan, Paul and Graeme are brilliant. They’re stars. They’re stellar.
They invest huge amounts of their time to put on a conference that loads of people enjoy. They do it because they care about the community. I know that each one of them is personally invested in making the programming world better. This is a rare thing, and that’s exactly the kind of passion that I want to flourish in our community, and beyond. If I’ve been in any way successful communicating why I’m involved in conference organisation in the first place, this should be easy to understand.
It is the people who do things, who will change the world for the better. And these are clearly people who do. The opportunity is all theirs. I am not attacking anyone.
But that doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t express their ideas.
It’s perfectly valid for a paying attendee to ask questions and make suggestions about the event that they are supporting. It’s perfectly valid for them to care passionately about it, and for them to try to persuade others of the merit in their point. If anything, I would encourage people to care that much.
Obviously, it’s ultimately up to the conference organisers to decide whether or not to implement the suggestion, and if the attendee is genuinely inconsolable in the latter case then I don’t doubt that any conference organiser would do their best to refund the ticket, and the attendee can run their own conference should they wish.
It’s happening as we speak
So, the key assumption that (for me) this whole conversation hinged on was whether or not the tickets were going to sell extremely quickly. So did they?
Alan C Francis: “Lordy thats ridiculous. The 180 VEB tickets sold out in about three minutes.”
A little under 2 hours after the tickets went on sale, there weren’t even many of the second class of tickets left:
… and less than 24 hours after the ticket sales started:
Alan C Francis: “Looks like all the VEB/EB tickets are gone. There are still PLENTY tickets.”
Would they have sold as quickly without the two cheaper tiers of ticket? We’ll never know. Perhaps this tiny storm helped drive sales where otherwise there wouldn’t have been? I doubt it, but it’s not impossible that there was some tiny influence.
I still believe that the Scottish Ruby Conference cash cushion would not have been adversely impacted by applying a single, average price (therefore also resulting in the same total revenue when it ultimately sells out), and I still believe that overall the attendees would’ve appreciated the simplicity of not worrying about whether or not they got the best deal. I can’t prove it conclusively, but perhaps we can try to test it next year? :)
Alan C Francis: “@paulanthonywils We may have to send @lazyatom a bunch of flowers and an apology.”
Obviously he’s kidding, but I enjoyed the joke.
Because I’m not a dick.
Do we need Early Bird tickets?
Have you ever missed an “early bird” ticket price? Ever wondered if they were really necessary?
(2011-11-25 Update: more information here)
(2011-11-22 Update! Scroll down!)
I had an interesting conversation via twitter with Alan Francis. We’ve had a few awkward exchanges in the past (almost certainly a result of my too-often brash demeanour), but I think this one was hopefully constructive and interesting.
To give you some context, I’m one of the organisers of Ruby Manor, a small conference with big ideas about what could be improved over the more typical conference experience. Alan is one of the organisers of the extremely successful Scottish Ruby Conference, which is very highly regarded in the Ruby world.
Anyway, back to the story. We begin with the announcement of the upcoming release of tickets for the 2012 Scottish Ruby Conference…
This intrigued me, because typically “Early-bird” means you bought a ticket a few days, weeks, or even months early. Conferences normally use it as a way to test demand, so they can alter plans (scaling up or down) appropriately.
So what’s the point if all the tickets become available on the same day? Scottish Ruby Conference has sold out completely, and quickly, for the last two years. Being “early” in this case just means being one of the lucky few who first click “YES YES ME ME” at the appointed time.
Hence my question:
James Adam: “@alancfrancis what’s the motivation for selling like that?”
Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom They won’t necessarily all sell at the same time, …”
Alan’s right, in that this is the normal reason - cashflow. But as soon as you start selling any tickets, you start to grow a “cash cushion”; the only reason for discounting some is to drive those first sales. Normally it’s because you’re really not sure how many tickets you will sell, but as I noted above, you can almost smell the frenzy for Scottish Ruby Conference tickets when they are released. So I wonder:
Now it sounds like the first time they ran the event, they hit some serious ticket problems:
Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom …tickets, which (rightly) irritated people who paid full price.”
Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom We run each conf at pretty much break-even, so start fresh each time.”
James Adam: “@alancfrancis understandably something you wouldn’t want to ever repeat! :)”
… I don’t envy that situation at all, and I probably would’ve done exactly the same things in that position.
That said, there are many plausible (and I’d argue likely) reasons why they hit problems. Principally, the conference had no reputation at all. Unfortunately, reputation is (I believe) the principal motivator when an attendee is deciding whether or not to buy a conference ticket. If they heard the conference was great last year, they are far more likely to buy a ticket this year. After all, none of us want to miss out, right?
It’s also possible that the tickets weren’t priced well enough for the first event, particularly given that the conference didn’t have the foundation of reputation to play upon.
The point is: even though they used the Early Bird mechanism, there were still problems, and that’s because Early Bird ticket prices frame a guess that the organisers are making about demand for the conference.
If you know demand is going to be high, then the reasons to make an Early Bird price available are far less compelling…
Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Why? What is it about cheaper tickets you don’t like?”
I go further into this in a bit, but it’s obvious that as an attendee, and from a quite rational (but unfortunately selfish) viewpoint, cheaper tickets are better tickets.
Perhaps I’m a stinking communist, but I think it’s worth considering more than just that.
Now: Ruby Manor was my hope for an antidote to lots of these conference tropes - expensive tickets, opaque CFP processes, keynote speakers with little-or-nothing to say - so it’s not surprising that I don’t much care for another big conference replicated wholesale, good aspects and bad.
I could be wrong, but I think lots of conferences now do these things. Perhaps Scottish Ruby Conference was the first?
Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom But who knows. What we’ve done so far is innovate, then consolidate.”
… but while it might help those people who need a cheaper ticket, in the envyable situation that Scottish Ruby Conference finds it self in - I am quite certain that it will sell out - it doesn’t help those who can’t buy on the spot.
Need to check with your boss if you can go? Sorry, tickets got more expensive. Need to rearrange some client work? Too late - “full” price for you. And what is the real meaning of “full” price anyway? Well, we’ll get there soon…
Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom How does it disadvantage attendees?”
(I could argue that you take a potential hit in revenue by not charging £1000 per ticket too, but I know that’s not quite whaht he means…)
So there you go. What really is full price? Well, it depends.
Say you want to sell 100 tickets. Normally the number of tickets you can sell is relatively fixed (by venue size), so lets assume that’s a constant. I’m also going to have to assume that you’re confident that there is enough demand for 100 tickets (and I’m basing that assumption on my assumption regarding Scottish Ruby Conference, just so we are clear).
As I said before - it’s sold out the past two years, it has a very strong following, and so unless something terrible happens, I think they’re going to sell out again.
So, back to our hypothetical conference. Lets also say you decide to price your tickets as follows:
- 50 x Early Bird tickets at £10
- 50 x Full Price tickets at £15
Your total possible revenue is (50 * £10) + (50 * £15) = £1250, which covers your costs nicely.
Now, if you decided that abandoning Early Bird meant that you were compelled to charge every ticket at full price, your total revenue is now (100 * £15) = £1500, or £250 more. But - and again, this is an assumption - you only really needed £1250.
Now, you could certainly make an argument that the extra £250 could be used to make the conference better (for some value of “better”), but equally, I think this points out the fallacy of “full price”. If you really only need £1250 to run the conference, an equally rational decision would be to reduce the “full” ticket price to achieve that:
£1250 / 100 tickets = £12.50 each.
So some people might be “worse” off in that they’re paying more than the would, but some people are also better off because their paying less. Depending on the ratio of “early bird” to “full price” tickets, more or less people might be better off too…
(While I don’t really want to dwell on the “what should conferences provide” aspect, since that really wasn’t what Alan and I were talking about, I think this reveals a relevant difference in thinking. My guess is that Alan sees every extra bit of revenue as something he can plough back into the conference. My position, on the other hand, is that every extra bit of revenue represents a ticket that was too expensive. Of course, I don’t think either of us are particularly hard-line about this - to argue against my own point, Ruby Manor has always had the spare money to put behind the bar after the conference - but I think the essence of my categorisation is probably fair. I’d rather conferences were simpler and cheaper.)
All credit to Alan, he does exactly that:
Lori M Olson: “@alancfrancis +1 #earlybird”
James Adam: “@alancfrancis -1 #earlybird”
Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom So far a grand total of +1 and -1”
It’s you vs. me, Lori, in the Early Bird Thunderdome! Two people enter, one person leaves!
But between Alan and I, there’s still the quite valid question:
Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Yes, if we we took that risk and the tickets did sell.”
I think this is probably my best point so far, which may not be saying much given the overall set of really quite wooly and hand-wavey statements. (I am trying to improve my argument, but lots of it is, unfortunately, also anecdotal and intuitive.)
Alan is right that people are happy with Early Bird tickets, and it isn’t doing the conference or organisers any harm. But it may just be possible to construct a “message” (that’s marketing-speak, folks) that breaks through those expectations and appeals to a person’s (hopefully) innate sense of fairness and simplicity.
I believe that while Early Bird ticket sales can certainly serve a particular function in the conference world, that doesn’t mean that every conference needs to do it. Conferences have so many tropes and pseudo-traditions that are only really invoked because, well, other conferences do it.
And what compounds this is that conference attendees then learn to expect these aspects - the early bird tickets, the CFP, the t-shirts, the swag, the wifi-even-if-it-costs-the-earth - without really thinking about why.
I suspect that it’s a vicious circle, a loop of expectations and desire-to-satisfy between attendee and organiser, but I really want to believe that we can break out of it and make everyone’s conference experience a bit simpler, a bit cheaper and a bit better at the same time.
Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Still unsure why you care so much about our conf ticketing strategy :-)”
… and I really, really hope that’s true.
I struggle with this every time we think about Ruby Manor. Is there any point? I believe that there are some conference traditions that are unnecessary or often counter-productive, and that is why I help put Ruby Manor togther, but are we ever going to be able to impart that message clearly enough to people that they break out of the cycle themselves?
Early Bird tickets are just one aspect of the “conference formula”, and I don’t even really think it is the most in need of reform. I’ve written plenty about what I believe could be improved, which I won’t write again here. It could easily be that the approaches we are trying with Ruby Manor aren’t the best either, but that’s beside the point - I think there’s lots of opportunity to try out new ideas and push the envelope a bit more, and that is:
a) a valuable opportunity that conference organisers have b) something that I think conference attendees should care about, since it’s their money that’s funding it!
But.. maybe I’m wrong. Do people really care about improving these things, or am I obsessing with minutia, and they are quite correct to demand the tried-and-tested conference formula they know and love?
I don’t know…
… but this, at least, gives me hope.
Alan - thanks for taking the time to talk to me, and let me think through my ideas via our conversation.
I’d love to know what you think, and I’d love for you to start engaging with your local conference organiser to let them know what aspects of the conference you care about. You don’t need to just be an attendee, buying a ticket, turning up and tuning out. You can get involved, and make things better where you see room for improvement! You can even organise your own conference, after all. It’s not that hard - even I can do it!
Let’s make the conference world a bit better. I dare you.
Thanks for reading.
UPDATE 2011-11-22
After posting this, there were a few more interesting tweets that are worth collating. To give some context to later tweets, here was the response that Paul Wilson (another Scottish Ruby Conference organiser) gave to Alan’s tweet above:
Paul Wilson: “@alancfrancis @mathie @lazyatom No I haven’t. It’s a thought, though.”
It is a thought indeed. Unfortunately, we don’t know what the Scottish Ruby Conference organisers talked about regarding prices between that conversation on Friday and announcing the prices, but - spoiler alert - I don’t think it really had much affect.
Anyway, here’s a lovingly-selected set of tweets from people who don’t agree with me. These are actually pretty much all the @replies I can find:
(I don’t see how frequency of attendance is going to help grease your trigger finger, and the “all at once” aspect of this release defeats the second benefit Joe cites, but fair enough)
Sara: “@alancfrancis as a… description? +1”
Oh, hangon…
Sara: “@alancfrancis Oohhhh. Got it. So, revising. -1 (:”
Ah well. And now the people who are sympathetic to my argument:
It’s like the end part of The Crystal Maze, except there’s 500 people in the dome with you.
Matt Southerden feels pretty much the same as I do - if you’re releasing all of the tickets at the same time, rather than staggered over time, then Early Bird prices are probably worse for most people:
Yeah Matt - you and Chris McGrath both:
Even Joe O’Brien, conference keynoter extraordinaire, agrees with me:
And then, earlier today I noticed that the prices were announced:
£180 “Very Early Bird”, £205 “Early Bird” and £245 “Standard” tickets. So if you aren’t fast and/or lucky, you’re going to pay £65 more for buying the same thing, on the same day (maybe even in the same hour) as Joe Schmoe sitting across the desk.
Recap: My Hypothesis
Let me just be super-clear again, because this is a really long post and it’s getting quite convoluted:
Fact A: Early Bird tickets are a mechanism that may help conferences generate some early cashflow while they need to bootstrap things, and help them plan when they aren’t sure how many tickets are going to go on sale.
Fact B: Scottish Ruby Conference sold out quickly in 2009 and 2010.
Assertion 1: Scottish Ruby Conference 2011 is going to sell out, and sell out pretty quickly.
Assertion 2: if a conference is likely to sell out, Early Bird tickets have little value in terms of planning.
Assertion 3: if a conference is likely to sell out quickly, Early Bird tickets create a rush to buy tickets that disadvantages those who don’t buy quickly, or who need to juggle other priorities before committing to the expense.
Assertion 4: if a conference sells out quickly, Early Bird tickets play no role in generating an initial cash “cushion” in this case, since the total revenue is fixed and received quickly.
So, for… erm… no particular reason, I wanted to know if there were any conditions associated with buying a ticket that we might be able to read before the rush to buy.
Like, for example, can they be transferred, or returned? How many can people buy in a single purchase? That sort of thing.
Scottish Ruby Conf: “@lazyatom Sure, we can do those for you. As you asked.”
Cool.
But then:
Now, I spoke to Paul quite a bit after Ru3y Manor to try and make sure that he didn’t perceive the things I’ve said as being any kind of attack, and to hopefully get across that all I’m hoping to achieve is to make conference attendees engage more with what a conference really is. I thought we were cool. I even bought him a beer!
So I’m trying not to interpret this tweet as being passive-aggressive.
….
…. nnnnnngh ….
……… NNNNNNGGGGGHGHGNHGHNNNHGGHHHHH ………
Phew. That was close.
But you know what? I’m happy to put my money where my mouth is:
It’s pretty clear that the opportunity to do this has passed, now that the clamouring hordes have it in their minds that they can score a bargain for £180 (“Ha-ha! Too slow, you £245-payin’ suckers!”). As Paul says:
Paul Wilson: “@objo @lazyatom Alea jacta est.”
(“The die has been cast”)
But just so it’s clear: I’m quite serious. I was semi-serious when Alan first jokingly suggested it (scroll up), but I’m really serious now.
If enough of you want ruin decades of careful saving on my part, now’s your chance to do it! I am prepared to place a tens-of-thousands-of-pounds bet that they’re going to sell out, and this whole “Early Bird but all the tickets are one sale at once” probably wasn’t required, if the lovely, adorable, most-excellent Scottish Ruby Conference organisers are willing to help me test my hypothesis. But I guess we’ll never know.
Conclusion
I want Scottish Ruby Conference 2011 to be great. I really do. I want them to sell out and give attendees a great couple of days. I’m sure they will.
I just think that they don’t need to stick to the formula, that’s all.
You’re bored of this now, I can tell. I’m a bit bored of it too, but apparently I’m stubborn enough to want to make this post something approaching comprehensive.
Actual, Genuine, Properly-Final Conclusion, or: A Personal Appeal From Unhinged Conference Pedant James Adam
Hey you!
Yes, you!
No, not the person behind you - I’m talking to you.
You go to conferences, right? You buy the ticket, yes? You have the power here. If you think that a conference can be improved (in any way at all, not just Early Bird tickets or whatever I happen to be ranting about), then you can tell the conference organisers!
If there’s something - anything - that you’d like out of your conference, then let them know.
And guess what! They will probably listen. Because you are the customer, and you are the person paying for the whole thing to happen. You are buying their product.
I know you’re busy. It’s hard enough to carve out time for all the things that need to get done, let alone spending extra time talking about conference organisation, of all things. But think about it like a public service. Your idea could make the conference experience a little bit better for hundreds of people, and maybe thousands if other conferences pick up on it too. Wouldn’t that be amazing?
So don’t just sit back passively. If you have an inkling that you care about this stuff, then give yourself some credit. Your ideas are almost certainly great.
Cheers,
James
(2011-11-25 Update: more information here) (This content was originally posted via storify)
Ruby Manor is not an Unconference
It was great to see Tom’s brilliant presentation mentioned today:
The striking slidedeck from ‘Programming With Nothing’, a talk given by Tom Stuart at last week’s Ruby Manor unconference. It demonstrates how to implement FizzBuzz solely by creating and calling Proc objects, all thanks to the lambda calculus. (from Ruby Weekly 66)
I don’t want to distract from the sentiment – Peter is absolutely right to draw attention to this presentation, and I really can’t wait to get the video out there – but attaching the word “unconference” to Ruby Manor makes me itch, and I’d like to scratch with two slightly different but ultimately complimentary points.
Ruby Manor is not an “Unconference”
Ruby Manor is a conference. We may not get hundreds of attendees like RubyConf, we may not cost hundreds of pounds or dollars like RailsConf, and we may not have parties sponsored by Engine Yard or GitHub like pretty much every other conference you hear about, but we’re every bit as “conference” as any of them.
Ruby Manor is a conference that is trying to explore what being a conference really means, by stripping away all of the cruft that’s become part of the “experience”. Do we really need:
- t-shirts
- lanyards
- glossy brochures
- sponsors
- disappointing lunchboxes
- keynote speakers touring the same ideas everywhere
- opaque call-for-proposal processes
… or is this just what we’ve come to expect from a conference?
Ruby Manor is an effort to strip away anything that doesn’t actually improve the conference, and try to improve the other aspects. That’s why we don’t provide food, or swag. That’s why we plan our conference program completely transparently, and encourage all the attendees to engage directly with the proposals and presenters.
And it turns out that when you don’t need to hire a huge conference venue and deal with their catering, or fly in big-name speakers, or print a bunch of schedules and badges, then you don’t actually need to charge a huge amount of money.
Unconferences: better than conferences?
It could be that we’re too late, and conferences will always be the grand, multi-track swag-fests that they have become. I suspect this might be true. And if it is true, then I’m not interested in conferences.
At least “unconferences” are pushing boundaries, exploring structures that deliver really great and valuable experiences for attendees without any need to pay homage to the pomp and ceremony of “real” conferences. They’re trying to turn attendees into participants, making the whole experience more valuable for everyone.
Maybe people think that any event which only costs £14 can’t be a conference. And maybe people think that any event where the attendees can directly shape the content, well, that can’t be a conference either. If conferences will always be, in people’s minds, expensive festivals to which they can simply buy a ticket and turn up to consume, rather than participate, then by all means keep going. But I’m not interested.
However, there’s a growing bunch of smart, turned on people who are becoming less and less satisfied with that experience.
Who cares?
We started Ruby Manor with a manifesto, but I think this hasn’t really stuck in people’s minds as much as I’d hoped. Some people do get it though; Ben Griffiths summed it up nicely in his motivations entry on vestibule:
Once upon a time, I guess, before the internet, conferences were one of the best ways to spread ideas. Not sure that holds any more.
Now there are keynotes from famous folk who’ll talk down to you or try to rally you or blame you for something or just bore the hell out of you. Can do without those.
Or the dreaded sponsor-talk.
Or that odd speakers-lounge separation between speakers and the mere mortals.
And you’ve paid hundreds of pounds to be in this faceless hotel with shitty wifi, before travel costs.
And you need the wifi because the information coming at you is only occupying 10% of your brain because the slides are very nice but say nothing, shoutily.
And you’re just not taken in by that racket any more…
I love Ruby Manor for being different from all these - engaging, haphazard, quirky, honest, cheap and near to home and organised by friends.
I like unconferences – they are great – but the reason why I am involved in Ruby Manor is that I’m trying to make a point about conferences. Not unconferences. Conferences.
I’m really keen that Ruby Manor be understood as delivering just as good an experience as any other “conference” that you might attend. It’s just that we believe that it’s possible to make conferences simpler and better and cheaper at the same time.
By demonstrating that it’s possible, I hope Ruby Manor encourages more people to start thinking a bit more about their conference experience, and start asking the organisers to get out of the tired rut of swag, pointless expense and closed processes.
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