Dear Technical Conference Organizer
I am a conference junkie. I love attending them, organizing them, speaking at them, planning to attend them, seeing my friends at conferences, making friends with the nice (but often stressed) people who run conferences and so on. I even like eating the (often bad) food - kvetching about it builds a sense of camaraderie with the other participants.
Given how much time and money I spend on conferences already, it might be hard for you to be able to get more money directly out of me. However, here is one small tip on a way that you might be able to do this.
When you send me email about upcoming events, send me links to useful feed as well. Many of you are technologists who run technology conferences for other technologists. For Zarquon's sake, use the common pieces of technology that many of us use.
What would such feeds look like? Well, to answer my own rhetorical question …
Each conference would have several feeds.
One feed would be suitable for use with calendars and would include items for when the call for participation opens and closes, when special offers for travel and accommodations end, when the event starts and ends and so on.
Entries in the calendar feed should include meaningful descriptions that have embedded links to relevant pages (like the CfP link for the CfP opens entry), links to maps (for the conference venue, local airport, conference hotel, etc) and key contact numbers and addresses.
Another feed would be for feed readers and would include all the news about the event. Keep the news short, sharp and meaningful. I want information that saves me attention/time/money, that tells me when to get off my ass to do key tasks or that helps me decide whether or not I should go to your event.
Further, the various families of events run by one organizer should have a shared feed, as should all of the events that an organizer runs.
Help me save time and attention, and I'll give you more money.
Best regards,
–zak
ps. I'm tagging this with eZ, Mozilla, MySQL, PHP, etc. so that all of my conference junkie friends who read the various associated planets may decide to begin chewing on your ass as well. :)
pps. Yes, I know that - as a conference organizer - I am the pot calling the kettle black. I'll be better next time as well.
ppps. Expectnationists and Confabbers take note - you can save conference organizers from themselves by baking this into your services.
Tags: Call for Participation, Confabb.com, conference, Events, eZ, Mozilla, MySQL, PHP, Speaking, travel, UncategorizedRelated posts
Posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 8:37
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September 2nd, 2007 at 9:12
I second that emotion :)
October 1st, 2007 at 1:04
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