ticketgate

2011-11-25T11:48:00+00:00

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?”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Are you always this upset when people make choices that are different from yours?”

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.

James Adam: “(the curious paradox of annoyance caused solely from the suggestion that one is annoyed.)”

Honestly though, I wasn’t annoyed. I just got my hopes up a bit prematurely, that’s all.

James Adam: “@alancfrancis I don’t care what choices anyone makes, as long as they can explain why they made them and are generally open minded.”

… and I think that gave Alan the wrong impression. I don’t think he was really annoyed by it:

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom And I think I did explain, and I was open minded. We discussed it, and made a decision.”

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?

Ric Roberts: “@lazyatom @alancfrancis FWIW, I don’t like Early Bird tickets. I always miss out on them and then feel like a sucker for paying more.”

Alan C Francis: “@RicRoberts I can assure you you are no sucker. Full price is not higher because of early bird. If no EB, all tickets would be full price,”

(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)

Alan C Francis: “@RicRoberts So maybe you get a bargain, but even if not, we think it’s a pretty cheap conference for 2days/3tracks.”

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 Point^TM.

My Point^TM

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:

Paul Wilson: “Running a Ruby Conf in a city with 400k population and avg of 12 at user group is different than in a city with 10m and 100 at user group.”

You can read the rest here.

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 Point^TM 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:

Ben Bleything: “Completely blown away by this “argument” over @scotrubyconf ticket prices. Here’s an idea: if you don’t like it, run your own damn conf”

(not the first time I’ve heard this)

Glenn Gillen: “@bleything I was concerned they were leaving money on the table, and I want to see them rewarded to the max for their efforts. Turns out…”

Glenn Gillen: “@bleything was based on massively incorrect assumptions about previous ticket sales. And in James’ defence, he does run a conference.”

Graeme Mathieson: “@bleything To be fair to at least one of the protagonists, he does. I’m staying out of the argument (again).

(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:

Ben Bleything: “@alancfrancis: late night sarcasm failure on my part :( I know he runs his own conf, that was my point. /cc @glenngillen @mathie”

Glenn Gillen: “@bleything still some truth in it. I should shut up until I’m willing to put my money/time where my mouth is.”

Ben Bleything: “@alancfrancis: didn’t articulate it well, though. Fundamentally: one should not question another’s business model /cc @glenngillen @mathie”

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:

Ben Bleything: “@glenngillen: perhaps. Maybe I’m reacting primarily to his incredibly dickish approach.”

Woah.

Alan C Francis: “@bleything I think the questioning is fine, and its a valid enough question, but making our decision doesn’t make us closed-minded, I feel.”

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.

Ben Bleything: “@alancfrancis: yeah, that’s a good point. I just don’t like to see conf organizers being attacked for running their conf as they see fit.”

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:

Ben Bleything: “And I’ll say this now: if you don’t like how @veganstraightedge and I run @cascadiaruby, door’s to your left.”

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:

Graeme Mathieson: “Only 18 Early Bird tickets left, then it’s on to the full price tickets for the Scottish Ruby Conference, folks! #scotruby”

… 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.

early-bird-tickets

2011-11-22T23:24:00+00:00

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…

Alan C Francis: “In celebration of 48 Years of Doctor Who, @ScotRubyConf will be open for business at 3pm UK time, on Wednesday 23rd November.”

Alan C Francis: “We’re opening all the tickets at once, but there will three price tiers available to you depending on how quickly you buy.”

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 You mean all at once ? Stops us having to keep track of releasing chunks of tickets.”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Tickets are just on sale until they run out. First X get super early bird, next X get early bird, last X get full price.”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis apologies, I should clarify - I mean why bother with price tiers at all if they’re all going at the same time?”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom They won’t necessarily all sell at the same time, …”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom … and its the usual reasons for early bird - encourage people to buy now rather than delay, so we have a cash cushion for expenses”

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:

James Adam: “@alancfrancis Is there any research (beyond the anecdotal) about whether or not “early bird” prices really help with cash-flow?”

Now it sounds like the first time they ran the event, they hit some serious ticket problems:

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom The first year we ran we didn’t do early bird and were in real trouble. Force of habit I guess. Maybe we don’t need them now?”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis my guess would be that lack of established following probably played a part for the first event, yeah…”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom That year we ended up having to do ‘late bird’ discount coupons etc to get people to buy …”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom …tickets, which (rightly) irritated people who paid full price.”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Then lwe did a super-duper-earlybird form conf2010 where we sold 50 tickets at a 100 each as soon as conf2009 finished.”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom super cheap as we didn’t even have any speakers announced. Again, nice to have a cash cushion.”

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…

James Adam: “@alancfrancis I’d really love it if you broke the habit; and other conferences would see that they don’t need to follow a formula either.”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Why? What is it about cheaper tickets you don’t like?”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis I’m not sure that’s quite how I’d frame the question! I’ll try to summarise why I think we don’t need “early-bird”…”

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.

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom I understand that RubyManor is kind of a different beats, but “following a formula” was what we had in mind for SRC.”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom It’s RubyConf, but in Scotland. A fairly standard multi-track-multi-day-keynote-speakery conference.”

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.

James Adam: “@alancfrancis I think you have a great opportunity to be better than RubyConf! Why copy aspects that are unnecessary or could be improved?”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis … even if you explore improving the experience in different ways from @rubymanor, challenging the status quo is never bad.”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom We’ve chosen to differentiate around the conference, rather than inside it, I think. Party, charity day, assorted other stuff.”

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.”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Two years or SoR in Pollock, two years of SRC in RCPE. 2012 is an innovate year, so who knows what’ll happen :-)”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Tickets all at once and new ticketing provider is this years innovation at the “sales” end. Maybe we drop EB entirely next year?”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis Why wait? I deliberately haven’t asked you how much the tickets are to give you plenty of room to drop EB this year :)”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Because I am not yet convinced of your argument :-) And there are three of us.”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom And it doesn’t hurt us at all to do early bird, and it does help folks who might need a cheaper ticket.”

… 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 But I ask you again, what is it you don’t like about it? Seems a weird thing to argue against?”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom I’m glad you didn’t ask because I honestly can’t remember. Paul is the brains of the outfit. :-)”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis I think early-bird encourages a mad rush to buy tickets, and disadvantages as many attendees (if not more) than it helps”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom How does it disadvantage attendees?”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis when it’s very likely that you’ll sell out, it’s giving privilege to rapid clickers; if I’m in a meeting at 3pm, I miss out…”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis at least as many people pay over the average price than pay under the average, right?”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Well we don’t bump up any prices. We just discount some tickets for early sale. No early bird, means all full price tickets.”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom we take a hit in potential ticket revenue for the sake of some peace of mind.”

(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…)

James Adam: “@alancfrancis assuming you sell out* your average ticket price, when early bird is in play, is less than your “full” price, right?”

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).

James Adam: “@alancfrancis (*I’m not sure it’s very contentious or far-fetched to suggest that you’re going to sell out.)”

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…

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Of course, whatever we get in ticket revenue, we just spend on the conference. If we dropped EB, we might have, say, better food?”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis if you didn’t buy t-shirts you could get better food too, but that’s a tangent :)”

(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.)

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Exactly. So thats why we don’t mind EB. We choose to take less revenue, and buy less stuff, in exchange for some peace of mind.”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom And the side effect is, some buzz is created around launch day and some folks get a discount for helping us out by deciding early.”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis I think you’ll get plenty buzz without early bird, and you could charge a bit less for everyone without it. But…”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis … ultimately that’s just my hunch. We need some empirical evidence and I can’t run the experiment without you :) Or…”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis … ask the people. See if they really like early-bird, or if they’d prefer a single price until all tickets sell.”

All credit to Alan, he does exactly that:

“Straw Poll: is early bird a good thing or does it just annoy you. reply with just +1 or -1 and #earlybird?”

Lori M Olson: “@alancfrancis +1 #earlybird”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis -1 #earlybird”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom So far a grand total of +1 and -1”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis I suppose I’ll have to settle this with @wndxlori the old fashioned way. SWORDS.”

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 I’m still not seeing what we gain from dropping it. You’re telling me what you think we “won’t lose”.”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis if EB isn’t actually necessary, wouldn’t charging the average price (which is > EB) actually increase your cash cushion?”

Alan C Francis: “@lazyatom Yes, if we we took that risk and the tickets did sell.”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis isn’t it a nice to say “you don’t need to go into a frenzy or be lucky to get a ticket, and you’re all paying the same price”?”

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 :-)”

James Adam: “@alancfrancis it’s because I think together we can change the conference world for the better :) I appreciate your time & patience.”

… 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…

“@paulanthonywils @Mathie Have you been following the convo with @lazyatom ? Should we just abandon Earlybird and have a single price?”

… 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:

Joe Wright: “@alancfrancis +1 it rewards the frequent attendees and gives the organisers money ahead of time”

(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)

Brian Swan: “@alancfrancis #earlybird +1 it’s a bargain anyway but the extra bargain of early bird is great”

Sara: “@alancfrancis as a… description? +1”

Oh, hangon…

”.@dotsara As a ticketing strategy. Does panic to get in early, and annoyance if you don’t, outweigh the chance of saving some cash.”

Sara: “@alancfrancis Oohhhh. Got it. So, revising. -1 (:”

Ah well. And now the people who are sympathetic to my argument:

Tom Stuart: “@alancfrancis So if I want a ticket, I’ll have to race to buy it to avoid feeling like a sucker? That’s a bit of a shame.”

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:

Matt Southerden: “@lazyatom @alancfrancis Just caught up on #ticketgate. While I agree with the EB ticket principle for scoping out initial interest in a…”

Matt Southerden: “@lazyatom @alancfrancis ..new venture before committing. I’m sure that SRC will sell out again, so having diff pricing on the same day..”

Matt Southerden: “@lazyatom @alancfrancis ..can create resentment amongst those trying/unable to buy tickets at/around rush hour. Much fairer overall..”

Matt Southerden: “@lazyatom @alancfrancis ..to have the averaged price for everyone. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to book a ‘meeting’ for 3pm next Wed. ;)”

Yeah Matt - you and Chris McGrath both:

Chris McGrath: “@alancfrancis I’m way more worried about you selling out in seconds before I get a chance to buy”

Anthony Green: “Siding with @lazyatom on the question of #earlybird and @scotrubyconf; but I do wonder if 2012 will be an austerity year for many.”

Even Joe O’Brien, conference keynoter extraordinaire, agrees with me:

Joe O’Brien: “@paulanthonywils FWIW I think @lazyatom has a great point. Average the price and nobody gets punished. History says you’ll sell out anyway.”

And then, earlier today I noticed that the prices were announced:

James Adam: “I see @scotrubyconf have announced the ticket prices… with “Super Early-Bird” and “Early-Bird” prices. #slowclap interblah.net/early-bird-t…”

£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.

James Adam: “@scotrubyconf are there any T&Cs for tickets (refunds, transferability, maximum purchase per person) that we can read before Wednesday?”

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:

Paul Wilson: “At @scotrubyconf we like to challenge the London-centric status-quo by being multi-track and having tiered pricing.”

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:

James Adam: “you know what: screw lawyers, I will buy every @scotrubyconf ticket that isn’t sold within a week if they drop Early Bird. That’s a promise.”

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

2011-11-03T23:35:01+00:00

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.

future-visions

2011-11-02T00:20:27+00:00

Future Visions

I don’t understand why technology companies feel compelled to demonstrate their “visions of the future”. I don’t understand who they are trying to reach, and what they are trying to convince those target people of.

If this is how companies demonstrate their commitment to innovation, I disagree, and I’ll present my thoughts about three such “future visions” here:

Instead, I think these videos are distractions. They are little traps for the mind, to reassure us that Microsoft, Blackberry, Ericsson and whoever else, that they have our future in hand. “Don’t worry about the future”, they say, “we’ve taken care of it, see? NOW BUY OUR SOULLESS WORD PROCESSING PACKAGE AND STOP COMPLAINING.”

Instead of cooing about some marketeer’s wet dream, lets figure out what the future holds by actually building it, yeah?

dear-eleanor

2011-08-10T14:46:44+01:00

Eleanor,

I read your blog post about conference speaking, and had a few thoughts. I hope you don’t mind if I jot them down.

Firstly, I’m sure everyone can sympathise with the desire to go to lots of conferences, and how financial constraints often limit our ability to indulge ourselves in this way.

It’s probably true that a good chunk of conference attendees have their conference travel subsidised to whatever extent by their employers. They’re pretty lucky to have employers who are willing to do that, since we all know (having blagged it as employees ourselves) that there’s very little value flowing back to the employer¹.

But bear in mind, they also have to put up with all the shit that comes with being an employee in order to get those perks. So it’s not all gravy.

Despite this, a surprising number of people pay their own way. Over the years I’ve personally paid hundreds if not thousands of pounds/dollars, just for hotels and flights to conferences, even when I was speaking. My own money. Money I could’ve spent on cake.

Conferences are an expensive habit, so I don’t really blame your audacious approach to satisfying it.

It’s all for a good cause

Years ago, a very generous person once gave me $50 for maintaining the engines plugin². I was delighted. It was totally unexpected, and I had to set up the donation mechanism because it had never occurred to me that people might reward development in that way.

I never earned anything from it beyond that Grant, except immeasurable experience and a nice email from DHH with the subject line: “I repent”.

Your turn. Did you know that people - strangers - have donated well over two thousand dollars to date towards your attendance of conferences. That’s pretty incredible.

Perhaps your situation isn’t as bad as you think?

Slide 1: “DO. NOT. BLINK.”

I’m also a bit confused about how you feel your presentation style relates to all this. You’re right - everyone takes time to find their voice and hone their style. The first presentations I gave were awful, and I’m not sure I’m that much better now.

However, it sounds like you’re saying that your presentations are not intended to be digested at the conference. Am I reading you right? What you’re actually aiming for is some kind of beat-poet stream of consciousness veering whimsically around while the slides perform a dissonant peripheral assault? I mean… really? Really?

But more than this, despite acknowledging that audiences find your style hard to engage with, and that your slides aren’t really designed for audiences to understand, you think that they should still donate money so that you can physically deliver your presentation mind-bomb in person? The presentation that’s too-hard-to-follow-at-a-conference-so-they-should-just-try-to-decipher-it-on-slideshare-instead?

My eyebrow, Ma’am, is significantly raised.

My suggestions

Forgive me if this seems impertinent, but I have some suggestions³.

Start practicing writing about your code - now. It’s cheaper than conferences, better for the environment, and will improve everyone’s experience of your work.
If you must sate your desire for an audience:
- talk at other user groups; it’s cheap and you’ll get to iterate faster
- do whatever you can to gain the favour of an employer who will be willing to stump up the requisite funds, and accept whatever constraints (practical, geographical, ideological) that they require in return for doing so.
Campaign for cheaper conferences where attendees have more input into the program. Obviously this is an idea I care about. If you believe that attendees value your presence, then urge conference organisers to give attendees a direct say in who talks, and influence on how their ticket price is put to work. Maybe if you can convince one to stop printing glossy brochures or tacky t-shirts, they can use the money to bring you over? We can but dream.
Oh - yes - don’t cram so much code into your slides.

On that last point: as both an audience member and a conference organiser⁴ I can assure you that while the performance is certainly memorable, I spent a considerable amount of time in the presentation trying to figure out what I should be paying attention to, and reading the slides afterwards without any context or obvious threading is - to be honest - worse than the live show.

You say in your post that you think this is providing more value, but it’s not. I don’t doubt that it’s the culmination of months of work and research, but part of your job as a presenter is to distill that into key insights and digestible chunks. Nobody gets refreshed by drinking from a firehose.

In other words: focus a little less on cementing your genius for posterity, and a little more into genuinely communicating with your audience.

And I’m sure many employers have lost employees who scouted out new jobs at conferences too.↩
Now in Rails 3.1! So, I can finally fire the pneumatic bolt through its brainstem.↩
Clearly I have opinions about conferences which inform my view.↩
Eleanor spoke about “Ruby Go Lightly” at Ruby Manor 2.↩

ruby-manor-thoughts

2011-11-02T00:41:49+00:00

As you might be aware, I’ve been involved in the running of a couple of Ruby conferences over the past few years. I wanted to try and codify some of my feelings about the conference’s goals, and how it might proceed in the future.

While Ruby Manor is by no means my thing¹, as one of the original instigators I had a few rough goals that I wanted to achieve. In a nutshell, I wanted to demonstrate that it is possible to run a conference which is equal to any of the “big” confs in terms of technical quality, usefulness and general atmosphere, but without the bloat which has become a typical part of the conference experience.

I’m talking about fluffy inspiration from the same pool of “big name” keynote speakers peddling keynotes without any real insight. I’m talking about low quality food and swag (t-shirts, lanyards, glossy schedules) that we’ve all inadvertently paid for in our ticket prices. I’m talking about cheaper tickets to boot - can it really cost hundreds of pounds per person to run these events?

So that’s what we tried to do in 2008, and again in 2009.

Some time later…

Hereafter I can only speak for myself. Everything that follows is my own rambling opinion, and I don’t speak for “Ruby Manor” as a thing when I say any of the following². I am on occasion vitriolic, but I hope that doesn’t distract from the fundamental points I’m trying to make.

So.

I know that a lot of people enjoyed the conferences we ran, and the praise is something I personally treasure. However, after the euphoria of the first event, and then the hard work of the repeat, I was left thinking about my original goals again.

We had imagined that, with a minimal amount of structure, the community could be inspired to come together and suggest, plan and refine the presentations and structure of the day. However, after the second event it was clear that it still required a significant injection of energy from the “organisers” to keep the process going. While a not-insubstantial portion of the attendees did participate in shaping the proposals, the majority of people engaged either in a minimal way (“yes that sounds interesting”), or not at all.

This left me wondering about some of these goals. I have a handful of hypotheses about why participation didn’t feel as strong as I hoped.

Hypothesis A: Confusion

Perhaps people we not sure or confident about how they could engage with the process. Admittedly, it was very free-form (a mailing-list), and so there was no apparent structure unless you read the introductory posts and some of the content to get your bearings.

We chose email because… well, everyone uses it, so the barrier to entry should be low. We hoped it would be the simplest way both for us to get something rolling quickly, and the simplest way for people to start engaging. It was also an easy way to keep people informed about progress and new developments.

However, perhaps the “blank page” of an email was more of a hurdle to jump than we imagined.

Hypothesis B: Laziness

My somewhat-pessimistic hypothesis is that people are generally lazy, and so it was easy to allow or assume that other people would contribute and drive the process.

Having seen the twitter hyperbole surrounding most conferences (ours included), I now suspect that a lot of people enjoy going to conferences partially because they can just buy a ticket and turn up without being required to invest much time or energy, and get the same conference “buzz” without expending much effort.

Of course, people are busy – we’ve all got jobs and deliverables, and volunteering becomes a good intention that is rapidly superseded by more tangible priorities.

Hypothesis C: The Quo is Good Enough

Perhaps people don’t really care about the presentation content, or the food, and are only going to be a part of the mild hysteria that sets in when you’re on a tech jolly³ away from home? They clearly don’t mind spending the money, as most established Ruby conferences continue to sell out⁴ with ticket prices of hundreds of dollars/pounds, often before they’ve even outlined the schedule or themes. I think that’s pretty strong evidence that people either:

don’t care about the talk content
are happy to delegate the nature and quality of the content entirely
some mixture of the two.

So if people don’t care about the price of the ticket, and they don’t really mind about the exact nature of the content, what is the point of running Ruby Manor in the way we do? Does it serve any purpose beyond being just another conference with a slightly quirky aspect?

A + B + C == ?

In reality I think there’s a bit of truth in all three hypotheses.

And it would be remiss not to suggest that perhaps the fault is my own - perhaps I didn’t do a good enough job of communicating these goals; you’re not psychic, after all.

But either way, the question I am asking myself now is this: what is my motivation for running the next Ruby Manor?

Ruby Manor has been misinterpreted as a “unconference”, a distinction which I personally believe is fairly meaningless beyond reinforcing traditional conference organisation as the status quo. Personally I think that “unconferences” are better at achieving the fundamental goals of a conference than these other ones are - meeting people and getting new ideas. Unconferences strongly encourage participation, whereas “real” conferences cater to consumers.

I had originally hoped our execution of our idea would act as a strong, definite statement both to potential attendees and existing “real” conference organisers that you don’t need t-shirts or lunch boxes, or the same speakers peddling the same presentations from conference to conference, pontificating from an altar.

I believed that the “real” conference world needed (and was ready) to be disrupted. I had hoped it catalyse active questioning by attendees about why tickets cost hundreds of pounds, and at the very least conferences should declare clearly whether or not they are for-profit, and if not then make the finances transparent. I hope hoped that conference attendees would demand a stronger influence on the content of the conferences themselves.

But now I’m not sure if that’s what people really care about.

Now before I lose myself in pure ranting, it’s obviously true that people can do whatever they want, and in reality there is room in the world for lots of different kinds of conference. My point is, I suppose, this: surely this cannot be as good as it gets?

What next?

For the best part of two years I’ve been mulling this over.

I think we’re going to run another Ruby Manor, but I would really love it if more people were thinking about how to make these days better, simpler, and more useful.

As I said at the start, Ruby Manor does not belong to me, but as long as I am involved, I’m always going to push this agenda. Perhaps not everyone is ready to leave the safe world of traditional conferences, but some people are, and those are the people that I think can help us figure out what might be better than the status quo.

Conclusion

I want to explore the Space of Possible Conferences, and every aspect should be challenged, every pointless indulgence stripped away. I want it to be simpler, more honest, and less prone to hyperbole, so that the community actually becomes stronger, not just increasingly bloated, flabby and self-congratulatory.

And I would love to know what you think.

Given the absence of commenting on interblah, but more particularly in the spirit of this essay, I hope that you use whatever motivation or momentum that might be available to you to blog or tweet what you think.

Ruby Manor is organised by a group, and it’s very much owned by the community. I would be delighted if people in the community wanted to take it forward.↩
I cannot make this clear enough - these are only my own, sightly-raw feelings about how the events went, and how the community is at the moment.↩
Apparently plenty of people are happy to pay thousands of pounds to go to conferences on tropical islands, full of leisure activities like photo walks and so on. cough BizConf cough. I don’t begrudge anyone a holiday, but it’s fairly indulgent as a conference.↩
The Scottish Ruby Conference has sold out incredibly quickly for two years running now; even Ruby Manor 2 sold out incredibly quickly, before we really had a chance to get momentum behind the community organisation of it.↩

timmy-redux

2011-11-02T00:41:49+00:00

I took Timmy Printface offline today, after a week of valiant service.

While in many respects I would’ve loved to have kept our little printer running indefinitely, I think it’s important not to become too attached to these things. It was a hack, after all (read more on the free range blog you haven’t already).

To commemorate the project, I gathered the timelapse video that had been quietly accumulating, and wrapped it up into a little video package to remind us of all the good times we had:

After tweeting that Timmy was going to sleep, it took me about an hour to actually work up the determination to unplug him.

I replaced the live webcam image with the video above on both his home page and the blog post, and disconnected the camera that was pointing at him, but I was struggling to finally shut down the processes and pull out the wires that would actually stop any further messages from being printed.

Timmy had been involved in conversations with people from all over the world; friends and strangers, all sending him messages on their phone like they would to anyone else they knew. In an emergent and collaborative act of anthropomorphism, Timmy had acquired a personality, and a life of his own.

All good things…

Eventually I got over it, disconnected everything, put the wires and chips back in their right places, and turned off the software brain that was Timmy himself, but not before carefully archiving everything, gathering up the software, libraries, images and movies that summed up his existence. They’re all in a folder on my computer now, a static description of both the system and it’s operation during one week in April 2011.

This is the last message that Timmy received:

Thankfully, Timmy hasn’t been eaten by a grue. He’s sat up on our shelf, waiting to be called upon again. I’m sure this isn’t the last we’ll see of Timmy Printface, and I find that notion comforting.

timmy-printface

2011-11-02T00:41:49+00:00

In case you didn’t see already, we’ve been having a little fun with the #blue API at FreeRange:

See Timmy working live, and read more on the Free Range blog…

twitter-and-the-federated-web

2011-11-02T00:41:49+00:00

Twitter and the Federated Web

While the language is convoluted, and the meaning obscured, it would seem that Twitter’s new position on clients that provide the ‘core twitter experience’ - in other words, most of the software that people use to access and update their twitter stream - marks the beginning of the end of the flourishing and diverse ecosystem for its platform.

Twitter will provide the primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets, trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets.

(snip)

As we point out above, we need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way. This is already happening organically - the number and market share of consumer client apps that are not owned or operated by Twitter has been shrinking. According to our data, 90% of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis.

Ignoring the validity (or otherwise) of the arguments presented, it does very much seem like we’ve entered ‘step two’ in Twitter’s inevitable struggle towards becoming a profitable business.

Open alternatives?

As companies try to retain more control over their platforms (iOS, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), more discussion of the “open” alternatives springs up: HTML5 via the Web, instead of iOS; perhaps Diaspora, instead of Facebook; perhaps Identica instead of Twitter, and so on.

HTML5 may very well be a viable alternative to iOS, because the infrastructure to support it is already widespread. The Web, like email, or even IRC, is federated. Nobody really ‘controls’ it, and it’s very unlikely that any single company or organisation ever will. Web, email and IRC servers are federated by design - by necessity - and that’s why they make viable alternatives to controlled platforms.

As a developer, I love the idea of distributed systems, both technically and philosophically. This makes projects like Diaspora and Identica very interesting to me; both are federated, meaning that anyone can run and control their own ‘node’ within the larger system. But I’m a developer, and we haven’t been directing the evolution of the internet for almost 20 years. Now it’s businesses and users.

Follow the money

Businesses require profit, and users are so accustomed to the infrastructure of the internet being free, the only way for these “platform” services believe they can makea profit without charging for access is to lock down and advertise. Hence restricting access to the “core twitter experience” and the introduction of the “dick bar”.

When Twitter says that it wants to control the “core experience”, it means it doesn’t want other clients to be able to circumvent this advertising (or worse, provide advertising of their own). Why should they offer a free service, wide open for other people to profit on?

So, rather than suffer the controlling grasp of a company looking for any way to profit from it’s efforts, shall we all flee to greener, more-open pastures?

Federation isn’t a feature users care about

It’s very hard to replace an entrenched, centralised platform with a federated one. Facebook has over 600 million users, most of whom don’t care about the fact that Facebook ultimately controls how they use the platform. Twitter handles 140 million tweets every day, and most of the people tweeting don’t care what client they use, as long as it doesn’t severely impede their ability to tweet.

In a nutshell, most people don’t (yet?) care about the nature of the platforms they use, as long as their user experience is preserved. The tightrope Twitter must walk, now they are entrenched, is to advertise without making the user experience so bad that people consider alternatives. Given how much advertising we tolerate on more established platforms like television, as long as they turn the heat up sufficiently slowly most people will hardly notice a thing.

postal-internet

2011-11-02T00:41:49+00:00

Postal Inter.net

We at FreeRange have decided that, now we’ve settled into a reasonable groove, 2011 is going to be the Year Of Shipping Ideas. Instead of just musing about fun things and then letting them fester on untouched mental todo lists, lets just get stuff built and move on to new things. Leila Johnston says it pretty well.

With that in mind, I had a whimsical idea the other day, but rather than just feel privately smug for a few minutes (like I normally do), I knocked it up and threw the mewling infant out into the world to fend for itself.

It’s called postal inter.net. I don’t want to say much more about it, since part of it’s charm is for you folk to explore what it is. All you need to join in is some paper, envelopes, and a few stamps.

We’ve already got one established connection in progress, but it would be great to have more. I know it takes an extra bit of effort to do things in the “real world”, than just clicking a link, but hopefully a few of you will join in our little jape.

ticketgate

ticketgate

Are Early Bird tickets discounted?

My PointTM

The London Effect

Regardless, apparently I’m a dick

It’s happening as we speak

early-bird-tickets

UPDATE 2011-11-22

Recap: My Hypothesis

Conclusion

Actual, Genuine, Properly-Final Conclusion, or: A Personal Appeal From Unhinged Conference Pedant James Adam

ruby-manor-is-not-an-unconference

Ruby Manor is not an “Unconference”

Unconferences: better than conferences?

Who cares?

future-visions

Future Visions

dear-eleanor

It’s all for a good cause

Slide 1: “DO. NOT. BLINK.”

My suggestions

ruby-manor-thoughts

Some time later…

Hypothesis A: Confusion

Hypothesis B: Laziness

Hypothesis C: The Quo is Good Enough

A + B + C == ?

What next?

Conclusion

timmy-redux

All good things…

timmy-printface

twitter-and-the-federated-web

Twitter and the Federated Web

Open alternatives?

Follow the money

Federation isn’t a feature users care about

postal-internet

Postal Inter.net

My Point^TM