Conferences, payoffs and advising
My views on new kinds of conferences and paying bloggers to blog are well known, so I thought I weigh in on the notion of advisory boards - which have been ‘outed’ recently.
I’ve been asked to be on a few advisor boards in my day - ranging from paid gigs to completely show meaningless lists of names. Sometimes they’re formed to reassure investors that ’smart people’ are helping - but I really think most investors know that’s a sham.
Unless you’re getting paid - nothing ever really happens.
I’ve seen advisor boards formed to help startups poltiically and marketing wise and I’ve even been involved in a formal board of directors - where the entire reason for me being there - was to scam the B-list investors the company had tracking it.
This all segues very nicely into the state of conferences as well.
Here’s one interesting story I heard recently “from a birdy” about Etech.
So Etech tickets are going for $2,500 a piece and this birdy calls up and says “I got three people coming - what sort of deal can you cut me?”
What he came away with was:
- a $10,000 sponsorship deal
- a speaking slot on some panel
- 3 attendees
- name on program as sponsor
- and a booth
- all for $10k
Clearly Etech is all about emerging technology - right? The important issues - that’s for sure.
I’m really getting tired of that scene. If you see me there it’s cause one of our clients is paying for me to be there. Not out of choice.
February 14th, 2006 at 6:19 am
[…] Marc Canter explains that speaking slot at ETech costs $10,000. […]
February 14th, 2006 at 8:52 am
This is my idea of a deal. Just as soon as they cut me check for $10 K, I’ll start writing my speech and figuring out the three lucky guys who will join me at eTech.
February 14th, 2006 at 9:35 am
I went to E-tech once and actually had the great opportunity to meet a bunch of cool people (danah, Liz, Judith, YOU!) and it has served me very well in my journey to help guide the American Cancer Society through the maze of social networking mediascape. I sure hope that I got there (2004) before this practice began.
As far as advisory boards – I think that if an agency like ours asks for your help it is because we really want to hear what you have to say. I think it is rude and inconsiderate to ask for someone to be an advisor just to put their name down on a piece of paper!
February 14th, 2006 at 10:32 am
For $60,000 you get a keynote. It’s spelled out in their sponsor’s prospectus.
February 14th, 2006 at 11:12 am
This is why unconferences are so cool - all the smart, thoughtfully engaged people participate just because they want to engage in real human conversation with other smart people - not because they are seeking power or money or celebrity. I have had direct conversations with each of the 4 Patrons who have donated cash to our upcoming BrainJams in Berkeley, and each feel the same way - the promotional value is secondary to their genuine support of the purpose for getting together - to encourage others to share insights and connect people with resources (paraphrasing).
So I am curious as to your opinions on the right way to handle the matter in the unconference space (other than being transparent and not doing it the way etech has). I don’t want to go over the top with pushing the contributors who are paying for the space, lunch etc… but at the same time I feel very strongly that they deserve recognition for their support and generosity. At the moment, I blog about the support and generally treat them as an event sponsor is treated (logos on the site, event signage, in printed materials etc…) but no one gets special consideration for presenting or being a keynoter. That said, they, like any other participant have an equal opportunity to present in the open space sessions.
Any suggestions/ideas/rants would be appreciated…
February 14th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Well, I really enjoyed eTech last year and expect to do so again this year although it doesn’t surprise me if this kind of thing has been happening. Clearly the A-List and those with the $$ are getting selected for those reasons at least some of the time– effects like this happen all the time in all kinds of conferences in other areas (such as Education, where I am most familiar) despite their open calls for participation. Is it sad that I am so used to it? Probably.
February 14th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Huh? eTech tickets are $1095, assuming you don’t qualify for one of O’Reilly’s many discounts. If you have 3 people from your company, that’s 10%, but you can get discounts up to 65%. So, I don’t think it’s a smart idea to sponsor just to get a deal on tickets.
There are a lot of people doing interesting things who speak because they’re doing interesting things. There are also some larger companies that pay to speak, but all those talks are in the “Products and Services” (i.e. sponsor) track. So, attendees can clearly opt-out of these sessions if they don’t think they’re going to be interesting.
However, if you’re going to pay five figures to market to this audience, you’re not very smart if you give a boring sales pitch. What you really need to do is show something of interest, or you’re wasting your money. And I say this as someone who convinced my company, eBay, to sponsor eTech.
Now, you can quibble about whether O’Reilly should try and make money on their conferences or if they should act as a non-profit, but the fact of the matter is that they’re a business and conferences of this size (1000-1500 people) are surprisingly expensive.
At the end of the day, if people don’t want to come, they don’t want to come, and O’Reilly will need to shift the conference to an alternative model. Unless, of course, peoples’ clients force them to come.
February 14th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Well, I must be ripping them off, because I’m giving a keynote and I didn’t pay anything.
Also — tickets are $1000, not $2500.
February 15th, 2006 at 12:55 am
See you there, Marc. You know you’ll be there
February 15th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
[…] Here’s the evidence that Joel was here. […]
March 10th, 2006 at 7:00 am
[…] Since O’Reilly is OK with whoring out speaking spots (not to put too fine a point on it– I do love O’Reilly and etech, but that kind of thing really bugs me), how about turning a few hours over to lightning sessions with a gong-show style audience-voting mechanism? In fact, this would be preferred for most vendor presentations if I had my way. And, clearly, anyone who was paid for (or rewarded with) a speaking spot should be clearly identified in the program just as vendors and services already are. […]
March 13th, 2006 at 9:33 am
Sponsors are part of most conferences now. It’s important to keep them out of the main tent if they don’t have the speakers and content to deserve the time. Giving them a 45-minute breakout attendees can go to if they want is always fine.
The O’Reilly conference is very inexpensive compared to others like PC Forum and I still think it is one of the best for getting some techology input and networking. I agree they have to work harder on the next one though or they could lose their audience.
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