That way, if 60 people do register, $30,000 will be brought in, thus netting a profit of $2,500. In which case, let”s hope there”s just the one organizer, instead of a triumvirate, or else they”re all looking at a darned small payday. Even a solo organizer is going to wonder if the $2,500 was worth the effort.

There’s a slight problem with that theory. You have already included regular income loss in the equation, so theoretically even if after the split each organiser gets $2, they’ll get their usual income + $2. Obviously it’s not as simple as this, but it’s definately not as bad as you have implied.

Personally, I don’t think this is a problem. Sure, it’s hard to make large amounts of profit from workshops, conferences or seminars. But if you work it out relatively well then you’re at least going to end up with the same paypacket you would have had if you just kept hacking away in a corner.

The only difference is, you’ve added value. And that’s all that matters.

I’d been meanining to write about some of these issues for a while – I started a comment here but it’s ended up as an article at my blog.

john

My difficulty with AEA is that the website presented what I felt was contradictory information. It did state “not for beginners,” but the topics of discussion all appeared to be geared towards entry-level: “you will learn how to… let user needs guide your site… separate structure from design… make pages that load twice as fast… [etc].”

This is why I wrote in with my question regarding the level of presentation. All I as looking for was confirmation of that same statement made on the website, that it was NOT for beginners. I expressed that the bullet points listed on the site closely resembled the back covers of the Meyer and Zeldman books on my shelf; thus I was concerned that AEA might only be a review of these same topics.

Bottom line is that I was a significantly interested customer who was turned away. Now, in reading the post-event comments, I am disappointed that I didn’t attend.

Maybe I was too critical. But isn’t the collective goal of our industry to find the best ways to communicate accurate information, and satisfy the user’s (customer’s) curiosity?

Its enough to make you wonder why that quarterly tax option looked good in the first place. :)

On a side note, if anyone is seriously interested in a deeper look at the “price as a signal” aspect I highly recommend taking a look at Influence by Dr. Cialdini. It will help you with price setting and help you avoid getting scammed…

“Price as Signal” (November 11, 2005)
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/11/18.html

“Camels and Rubber Duckies” (December 15, 2004)
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html

We did our best to make clear that we were aiming for a higher level on the AEA site, and tried to intelligently answer all those who wrote in with the same question you had. But it’s nearly impossible for me to say, with any authority, “This conference is right at the level you want”. How could I know that? Even if we administered a quiz to every potential attendee, we couldn’t be sure.

I mean, we’ve seen in our feedback a small but roughly equal measure of both “this was too advanced” and “this was too basic”. Just a few here and there; the vast majority thought it was the right level and mix. We’ve also seen a few people say “too little code” and a roughly equal number say “too much code”. That’s just the nature of the beast.

In the end, we’ve had to accept that we’ll have a few people attend who are at the wrong level of expertise, and we’ll have a few not attend who would fit in perfectly. I wish there were a way to eliminate that, but so far as I know it’s basically impossible to do so.

However, sponsorship is indeed a reasonable way to cover some of the cost. I don’t think it’s reasonable that they’d cover all the costs, but then I might just be thinking too small. In the case of AEA, we’re partly handicapped by not being buzzword-compliant. If we threw around terms like “Web 2.0″ and “AJAX” we’d probably stand a much better chance of getting sponsorships from people like Macrodobia. Of course, we’d then completely misrepresent the event, which I won’t do (unless, in the manner of J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, it’s for truly stupendous amounts of money).

Maaike: no, of course internet access isn’t truly necessary. It’s becoming expected, though, and in many cases it can be had for only a few hundred dollars. I expect that, in the next couple of years, it will be free. There are a lot of things that aren’t necessary, like providing food or covering attendee parking. We did them anyway, because to not do so makes the whole thing feel cheap.

The single biggest cost for us was, and will no doubt continue to be, provision of food. You might be willing to pack your own lunch or go grab something from a local eatery (assuming there are local eateries), but most people aren’t. And, having been at many different kinds of events, attendees seem a lot less grumpy if there’s food provided. The fact that having it there might have raised their registration cost by $50 – $100 doesn’t really seem to bother them.

Jeff: honestly, I don’t see podcasting (in the traditional audio-only sense) as being very useful for AEA. A good deal of what we do is visual; for example, my presentation on reworking the EPA’s markup would make almost no sense as audio-only. Listening to my WE05 podcasts, I kept thinking “too bad there’s no screenshot here” or “wow, that made no sense unless you were there”. This isn’t a dig at the WE05 crew; I think what they did was outstanding. I just don’t think that design talks work if there’s only audio.

Video is another story, as I wrote in an earlier comment.

Jeff W.: we ended up with just about 100 attendees. Before anyone makes the obvious assumption, though, let me make clear that the hypothetical costs in my posting are just that, as for that matter was the number of attendees. We were close to 100, but not exactly on it.

The past 4 conferences/seminars I’ve attended have found me desperately wanting for content that isn’t on a beginning or intermediate level, and hasn’t already been discussed to death in $30 books and on sites such as ALA. Being self-employed, I’m not nuts about the idea of spending thousands per year if I’m not among my peers.

With regards to AEA, I was extremely excited about coming when it was first announced, but in looking over the description of the event, I was concerned that it would be geared towards those who are still in the early-learning stages of this field. I wote in to the organizers to ask what they thought the level of presentation might be at; I received only one response, and it was somewhat vague: “At the very least, you’ll see how people like Zeldman and Meyer present their work.”

What I felt was missing from the advance promotion of AEA was a clearly written statement describing “who should attend,” specifically addressing the experience level of the attendee.

In other words, I’d LOVE to attend a few more conferences, and even $1,000 per day isn’t an extreme expense if it means learning something new — or simply being exposed to a level of content difficult to find anywhere else.

But in all honesty it’s hard to justify the cost when you have no idea what the level of discussion will be.

I like Jeff’s idea too: I can’t afford to go to SXSW but I would be willing to purchase a DVD (or CD of the podcasts).

You (AEA) have a fairly focused market, and if the topic matter ont he DVD’s sticks to the core stuff AEA is about rather than the latest trendy fashion thing like the Labradoodle (a dog breed I just heard about on the news last week) then yes, I think they would be fairly profitable. AS for $50 per DVD this too seems reasonable in that you figure the average tech book you buy (I just bought one on ASP.NET) lists for $49.95 minimum, and that just one book. Currently I am waiting for your new HOT on CSS Book due out soon.

So figure I average 8 books a year like this, so yeah, I think the DVD idea might be profitable, or atleast doing a web survey of the market to determine interest. Would I recommend it for your first event? No. But, if you told me I could spend $50 bucks for a DVD chock full of stuff from folks like you, Dave Shea, Doug Bowman, Jeffrey Zeldman etc… I’d definitely be interested… but that’s just me.

At the Carson workshop they were doing an audio podcast and I am wondering since podcasting is starting to gather a big audience do you personally see it as a viable future product for things like AEA events and other conferences?

Thanks for this thread though by the way as you did provide a lot of insight about what it takes to put a presentation together, for both the organizer and the presenter that I had never considered before…

Witht hat, I’ll be looking for you in my mailbox in the near futurte…

I once attended a full 3-day Flash Forward conference by being a volunteer, which was a great experience, and I really think every conference should work with volunteers like that. It enables students etc to come and it helps the organization cutting costs, as they have to hire fewer employees.

The current conference I’m working on is an e-Learning conference to be held in Lethbridge, Alberta in May.