I’ve been creating/producing/hosting conferences since 1996. Over the years I learned a lot about the conference business and was fortunate to develop the event platform that helped popularize VoIP (Voice over IP) around the world.
One area that everyone in the conference business fights with themselves is the pricing of their events. We never know if we are charging the right amount for access to our events until it is too late.
Something Fred WIlson shared in a blog post titled Conferences back in May has been resonating in my mind the last few weeks of the year.
It turns out that Fred is “…not a big fan of attending conferences.” With regard to event pricing Fred wrote: “The most interesting people you can meet are the outsiders, the up and comers, and the hackers who can’t afford to lay out $4000 to attend an event and are never going to get an invite to an event where you have to know somebody or “be somebody” to get in. So I avoid those most of all.”
And Fred’s right about this. The way I compensated over the years to open my doors to students and to offer discounts to startups. But I’m sure this policy didn’t do enough to bring as many outsiders as I could.
During 2009 I introduced a new conference, the 140 Characters Conference (#140conf) whose scope was a lot wider and deeper than any conference I was associated with in the past. During the course of the year I was fortunate to be able to bring together together a worldwide community of people in: New York City, Los Angeles, London and Tel Aviv while nurturing a much larger community of people online. Along the way I learned a thing or two about viral marketing in 2009 and how to produce these four events without spending any money on advertising or marketing. And with this all said, I also knew that I needed to try something different with regard to the costs to attend future #140conf events.
And Fred’s words got me thinking about the conference business in general and how to best approach the pricing of #140conf events in 2010. I decided to try something which is quite disruptive to the way I approached event pricing since 1996 because I like to be on the disruptive side of industries as my own history has shown.
My new approach is to offer “social pricing” to conferences which will (hopefully) cover my own incremental per-person costs and be at a level that I hope would also naturally attract the “outsiders, the up and comers, and the hackers” who can’t afford to lay out the kind of money I was asking for in the past.
Starting with #140conf NYC ‘10, the ticket prices will be more reflective of the cost to attend the theater and/or a music concert in New York City than a typical tech event.
From today thru March 6, 2010 the cost to attend the entire 2 days of #140conf NYC ’10 is: $100. Afterwards the price goes to: $140. This translates to a cost of $50 to $70 a day for this conference which I hope is affordable to anyone who has wants to be a part of the #140conf experience. For people who want to attend and have a budget for something extra, I am also offering “VIP” tickets at $395 for the two days for people who would benefit from: the ability to network with the speakers backstage in the speakers lounge, access to preferred seating and an invite to the planned VIP/Speaker party as well as other perks to be added leading up to the event.
The formal “Call for Speakers” for #140conf NYC ’10 will be going out next week. In the meanwhile, if you would like to reserve your seat at the next #140conf NYC, please visit: http://140conf.com/register today.
— Jeff Pulver
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