$60,000 gets you a keynote
Dave has just pointed this out. In the O’Reilly prospectus it’s clear: “$60,000 buys you a :15 keynote”
I wonder where that puts Linda Stone or danah boyd?
Would they replace them for a paid speaker or maybe Linda is using some of that Microsoft money to buy her way in?
February 15th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Just to clarify some facts here, I’m the sales manager for O’Reilly Conferences and have a few comments to be some this in perspective. It is my job to secure sponsorships, in order to help us fund our conferences. For ETech, we allocated two, 15 minute slots for Diamond Sponsors to speak, however what Dave left out when he quotes the prospectus is our caveat: “subject to availability, O’Reilly consultation and approval of speaker and content”. Our program chair has made it clear, after less than stellar sponsored keynotes in the past, that in no way will any sponsor be allowed so speak without the content being vetted in the same manner as our other talks (proper content, speaker, etc). So not every company who would like to be a Diamond Sponsor necessarily gets to speak, and this year, we have only one Diamond Sponsor, IBM, and after consultation, we agreed to having Rod Smith, their VP of Emerging Technologies speak, and are happy to have his insight at the event. That is the only keynote this year tied to a sponsorship. With regards to our products and services track sessions which are provided to sponsors, they are indeed clearly marked in the program, on signs outside the door, and make up roughly 20% of the program. With over 600 submissions for talks this year, and less than 100 spots, there are inevitably great speakers who are left out of the program., and this gives sponsors a shot a speaking in the event their talk is not selected. We are a for-profit business, and have created a business model that works for us and we think for our attendees (which is proved by the steady growth of attendees). I welcome any questions or comments about our sponsorships, you can email me at andrewc (at) oreilly dot com.
February 15th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
As a speaker at ETech I have been very impressed with the “separation of church and state” policy I experienced dealing with Rael Dornfest, the program chair. I was offered one of those 15 minutes keynote slots and while I was also made aware that there are sponsorship opportunities (something I cannot afford at this point as a self-funded start-up) it was made very clear to me that one was in no way tied to the other. In fact to top it off somebody within the “O’Reilly Network” has even been working on a project that may be competitive with my new venture, yet even that did not deter them from offering me prominent participation… no strings attached.
Far too many conferences make getting a speaker slot contingent on becomming a sponsor. This was NOT at all what happened in my dealings with ETech. As one datapoint; I have nothing but praise for how ETech has handled my invitation/participation.
February 15th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Well, this explains the Nokia speaker at ETech 04 who was so bad that people were getting up and leaving the room during his talk.
And it does seem a little ironic that this year’s ETech theme is Attention, and they are selling the paying audience’s attention.
i would have been a little less eager to pay my 1K if I had known this.
May 28th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Perfect pages… tnx
May 28th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
I love this site. Good work…