In a previous post , an anonymous commenter recently asked John this question: “Why is this post specific to CFUnited when there are so many other conferences that charge the same, if not more (i.e. Max)?”
It was actually my post, not John’s. Therefore, I’ll answer the question as to why CFU since John covered the why not MAX part.
If you glance back at the post, you’ll see this as the opener: “Based on some info on this post by Sean Corfield, the ticket sales from the last CFUnited event equals the total cost of all 5 360|Flex shows and all 3 CF.Objective() shows.”
This post was continuing the conversation on a topic chosen by Sean Corfield on his blog. I didn’t “single out” CFUnited (CFU), but rather picked up on a point presented by Sean. If you read the “Final Math” section of Sean’s post, you’ll see that Sean was simply stating that he didn’t see the value of CFU and felt that CF.Objective (CFO) was a better show for the money in 2008. That got me to thinking about how many CFO shows could be produced with roughly the same sales figures from CFU. So I asked Jared for his rough numbers, in chatting with him I gave him our rough numbers (though our numbers are wide open, I didn’t expect Jared to know them off the top of his head). At that point, we realized that all of our shows were covered by roughly the sales figure from the latest CFU. Like John says, we’re in the conference business so we can make a good guess based on numbers, costs, etc. Yes, we believe in transparency and believe everyone else in business should too. (I think not being transparent is sad, scary, and destructive i.e. look at the recent $700B bailout for financial businesses not being transparent and therefore, sadly, not honest.)
I am NOT insinuating that Liz and company are dishonest in any way by not being transparent. Liz sounds like a great person and Michael was a very nice guy last time I hung out with him at MAX. I can only assume their lack of openness is because they feel their numbers are an integral part of their business (a competitive edge) OR they’re afraid of how their customers would react to seeing the numbers without knowing the facts behind them. I’ll assume it’s the former since many businesses do hold that belief and thus I can’t blame them for holding such a belief. John and I don’t agree with that mode of thinking though, because to us the magic in a service oriented business is not in costs as those are primarily fixed. Sure, you might be able to pay $3 for a soda vs $3.25 but really, it’s still expensive as heck. Rather, to us, the secret sauce is customer service and attitudes towards what is important. I.e. Flash on the Beach (FOTB) thinks lunch is unnecessary and spends the money that would’ve gone on food to cover speaker costs. We think lunch is important as a network opp, which prevents us from getting some speakers who only speak if all costs are covered. Is FOTB right and us wrong? Or vice-versa? I can’t say, only customers can. However, because some speakers decline to speak at our show due to us not paying all expenses, that means we have to homegrow speakers and seek out newcomers to the “speaking circuit”. I think everyone benefits from this. The popular speakers travel less and more speakers move into the spotlight. These new speakers then become available to all shows (i.e. look at Doug McCune. I had to convince him to present at 360|Flex Seattle despite his “What would I present on?” attitude and last month he spoke at FOTB. I’m not saying I “made” Doug into the great programmer and speaker he is, but I did help nudge and bring him into the speaking scene.)
There are many topics (and shows) we talk about internally, but didn’t pertain to the topic that Sean brought up. If you read our blog, you’ll see we talk about many shows in their own respective posts. I was merely going to post a comment on Sean’s post, but instead it turned out much too wordy for a comment and thus I wrote the post. (Much like this was going to be a comment to the Anonymous comment, but again I got all wordy.) If you look at Sean’s comments, I’m second to last. The last one being Sean who was very interested in my insider’s perspective on an issue he brought up. An insider’s perspective that Liz could’ve commented on and cleared the air about at that time.
Fast forward to October 10th and you see the announcement from CFU about the formation of Stellr. Fast forward to the 15th and you see Sean being glad CFU listened and CFU being glad that Sean noticed they listened. Now, is the whole Stellr thing due in part to the discussion had by Sean and I? Or was Stellr in the works for years and it just coincidentally launched after a “poor” show in 2008? Is Stellr going to gear CFU to target some of CFOs attendees in an attempt to win back market share? Will Stellr borrow concepts from the lower cost shows in an attempt to win back the hearts of it’s detractors?
I don’t know, but I applaud their efforts. I’m eager to see what Stellr has to offer and, if need be, competing with them for customers. Any time a company begins to listen to it’s customers, only good things can follow. Competition, good competition, makes for a better product for customers. Is that something you agree with Anonymous? (Also, why comment anonymously? Really, do you think we’re gonna track you down and start spamming you with hate email or something? LOL)
“Flash on the Beach (FOTB) thinks lunch is unnecessary and spends the money that would’ve gone on food to cover speaker costs. We think lunch is important as a network opp, which prevents us from getting some speakers who only speak if all costs are covered. Is FOTB right and us wrong? Or vice-versa?”
I guess this is a simple matter of priorities. Is the main priority of the conference to provide networking facilities, or have quality sessions/speakers.
I recommended getting Doug over to FOTB, not because of any previous speaking he had done, but because the quality of the work he had been doing with Flex.
I’d agree with you, Tink. I think it is a matter of priority. And for us, the networking is just as important as the sessions, hence why we spend money on it.
I also didn’t mean to suggest that Doug would have never become a speaker without our exposure. However, I’m willing to bet Doug was a lot more comfy at FOTB because he spoke at 2 of our shows though. The more you speak, the better you get. I’m just saying we tend to seek out and find quite a few of those first timers, that then go on to speak at other shows.
You’d agree or you do agree?
Priority is about an order of importance. If they were both just as important as each other, you’d cover the costs of both wouldn’t ya. For FOTB obviously one has more priority over the other, and 360Flex shows it prioritizes one over the other, although obviously each do there best to make up the ground on what they consider the less important point.
I’m sure Doug was comfy, especially in the knowledge that it wasn’t costing him an arm and a leg (i.e. he’d have been looking at around £1500 to get here and stay).
I assume he meant ‘do agree’ :) since yeah for us community and networking are slightly more important than paying all expenses.
And yeah I think us and John do our best to make up the difference in our priority as best we can.
However your assertion that one negates the other is flawed. We get some of the best speakers in the industry, often people, no one has heard about, yet. Sure we don’t pay the self described rock stars to speak, and that’s fine, it’s a free market, but I don’t agree at all that speakers at 360|Flex are in any way sub par or not industry leaders.
With very few exceptions are speakers are repeatedly highly rated in session surveys, and we’re well known for bringing the adv deep thought type sessions to the forefront of the conversation.
Liz (and Nafisa) probably don’t read as many blogs as you and I – since they are not developers, they just organize the conference. However, the split of Stellr from TeraTech means Liz and her team have much more control over CFUNITED 2009 and can therefore avoid some of the… er… issues that caused some of the problems with CFUNITED 2008.
Next year’s location and facilities addresses (almost) all of the complaints raised about this year’s location and facilities. CFUNITED is never going to be a “cheap” conference but CFUNITED 2009 should be much better value for money. We’ll have to wait and see how the session schedule pans out but the criticisms highlighted in my blog post have been very much taken to heart so I’m currently very optimistic about next year’s CFUNITED!
I think cf.Obective() 2009 will also be an excellent conference (I’m not leading the selection of speakers / topics this year, due to time constraints, but I think Nic Tunney is doing a great job).
@Sean,
Yeah we think the split will be good for everyone. Having less of a need to be a marketing event, should be positive for attendees.
You’re right we’ll have to wait until ’09 to see if the split worked, but we’ve got high hopes for Liz and company!
I never made any assertion in my comments that because your priority is networking it negates the fact you get decent speakers. In fact I stated that “obviously each do there best to make up the ground on what they consider the less important point”.
With this in mind though your own comments…
“The more you speak, the better you get.”
“we have to homegrow speakers and seek out newcomers”
… doesn’t bode that well for you paying attendees does it?
@Tink It actually does though.
Many people comment that while at times they may not know who a newcomer/homegrown speaker is, they are very impressed after seeing the person present. Yes, there’s an occasional one that’s new and doesn’t impress, but that happens with well known speakers even. Sometimes, speakers just have off days (or don’t show). That’s human life though.
Do we try to minimize that? Sure we do. We encourage each speaker to support their local Adobe User Group by doing a dry run of their presentation at a meeting. This allows us to help and promote the community, while giving the speaker a chance to practice the material. We encourage this for every speaker too, not just the new ones. Like I said and you quoted, “The more you speak, the better you get.”
Let’s turn the question around though. Say there’s a well-known superstar speaker at a show that pays all expenses for speakers. That speaker for whatever reason has an off day and just doesn’t deliver well and the session surveys state this fact (assuming there are session surveys provided to help gauge this). What then? Is the conference thrower justified in revoking all payment? Should the superstar on his/her own conscience refund the conference organizer all the money paid to them for presenting?
@Tink, you sorta did in your first comment
“I guess this is a simple matter of priorities. Is the main priority of the conference to provide networking facilities, or have quality sessions/speakers.”
We don’t see those as mutually exclusive.
Also I think it bodes very well for attendees. While the rock star speakers have their fanboy legions, most people enjoy getting new perspectives, on coding. Learning from some one with something new to say. Session surveys seem to support that idea.
@tink I guess I'm lost. I never said our speakers aren't as good. I guess you're refering to these quotes:"The more you speak, the better you get.""we have to homegrow speakers and seek out newcomers"But the first applies to any speaker, new or old. While the second in no way means they're bad, they're just new.So I guess in your mind new equates to lower quality? Because it doesn't to me and looking over my post and comments, I don't state that.
@ tom
Im not saying that new speakers are not as good, those words came from you guys, and you went on to say they get better as they present more, which I concur with.
I’m not sure where you get the superstar stuff from. TBH I don’t know any superstar presenters, I know of people who have been committed to the community for years, who don’t feel they should spend their own money to share with other people, whilst another company makes money on the back of there work. I’m not sure why you would denote those as a superstar.
@ john
sorta? I stated that one has priority over the other. In no point did i mention it negates the other. tom then went on to concur you prioritize networking over speakers in his follow up post. In fact I even went on to say
“obviously each do there best to make up the ground on what they consider the less important point”
not that it negates the other point.
Again I haven’t a clue what you mean by rock star speakers. To clarify you mean people who have been giving to the community for years, or are you trying to say they play some kind of instrument ;).
@Tink
“Again I haven’t a clue what you mean by rock star speakers. To clarify you mean people who have been giving to the community for years, or are you trying to say they play some kind of instrument ;).”
That’s one way to see it. Lots of people have been giving back to the community for years, not just those that charge for appearances.