I've been busy since I came back from holiday working with the organisers of a conference trying to sort out travel and accommodation. It's been a bit of a nightmare, I'll not name the conference as I think it's unfair as I expect all conferences face the same problem - hence the title of this post. So, what's the problem? In short, it's money and the fact they, like most conferences I expect, don't have much of it. The venue is a 900 mile round trip from my home so my travel and accommodation costs are larger than the average speakers' who, I assume, are centered around the south of England.
Now, if the conference organisers could charge large per head fees for attending this conference then there'd be no problem. There'd be money for speaker's expenses and enough left over for the organisers to make a profit (or to re-invest if they are a not for profit outfit). But they can't charge what they like, people just wont pay it. We live in an age of DDD events, screencasts and online tutorials meaning that the expectation is that education should be provided free (or extremely low cost) at the point of consumption.
I'm not saying that is a bad thing necessarily, as a (spare time, unpaid) evangelist the more people I can demonstrate great technology to, the happier I am. But it shouldn't cost me money to do it. I believe that this means the days of large, central conferences are numbered. Conferences will become more local, focusing on the interests of the local tech. population, utilising speakers from the local area; and that is a pity as it means that the number of people that evangelists, such as myself, can reach will be diminished, and the circle of speakers that people can see will constrict to include only those within a reasonable traveling distance.
It's not just the price attendees are willing to pay to come to conferences either, there is another problem breaking conferences today and that is, unless you are a full time, paid evangelist then speaking at conferences, writing white papers etc has to fit in with your employer's needs, sometimes that's not a problem, and sometimes it is. Now me, for example, I work for a great consultancy who really support my evangelism work. However, my evangelism not only has to fit in with my employer's needs but also those of whichever client I am assigned to at the time. This means that the effort involved in just getting permission to take the time off can be quite high. I believe this must be the same for a lot of people and this will be putting them off getting into community events and the tech. evangelism scene and that is a pity, as we are always on the lookout for great new speakers.
So how can this be fixed? Should it even be fixed, or should conferences be allowed to die a natural death, to be replaced by targeted local seminars and online (read web 2.0 type) content?
Well, from a personal point of view, I can see two solutions. Firstly, I could go independent (a la Julie Lerman). That way I can decide when I work and when I evangelise, and I could write my travel and accommodation costs off against my tax, that way everyone's happy. The other solution is for big companies, like Microsoft, to step in and help out. Now, they could expand their evangelism team and suck up all the talent out there, but that may not be a good idea. Some attendees will always be members of the "tin foil hat brigade", thinking that speakers employed by big companies will only be speaking because they are paid to and not because they believe in the technology. No, perhaps the idea is for these companies to sponsor the speakers. The speakers would be evangelising the technology because they were passionate about it and the big companies would be picking up the tab because their technology would be getting show cased.
Well that's my ideas, what do you guys think? Can conferences be save? should they be saved? How can we save them?