Never Dive Alone conference - Manchester - photo by Full Circle Arts

Does charging for your conference affect who attends and ultimately the quality of your event?

I went along to the Breakfast with AudioBoo event at Marshall’s Mill in Leeds – part of Digital Week 09 [Twitter: #DW09] recently and was very impressed by the material presented and the discussion that followed. A thought has since occurred to me that I thought was worth discussing with others – readers and people that stumble across my site.

I have been to plenty of techy/digital/web/art/etc. conferences in the past year – many of them free events – and often find a number of things:

- lots of name badges never collected from the main desk

- large numbers of attendees with varying degrees of interest in the topics being discussed or presented

- jam packed venues with very short Q+A / discussion time after talks

From past experience I have found this leads to relatively poor questions and discussion in the conference space, meaning you have to go and seek out the speaker at the end of their talk if you have a particular point or question to ask them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes quite difficult when a) several other people have the same idea and b) everyone else is battling for the coffee and cakes in the short break time before the conference continues.

In contrast, the DW09 event I attended (Listed ticket price £10) seemed to have a slightly different feel to it:

- small amount of people (perhaps 10-15)

- relatively intimate presentation space with opportunity for audience to ask speaker questions throughout without disrupting the flow of the presentation

- relevant and interesting Q+A session that answered many of my questions as well as providing food for thought for those present.

Now, it is hasty to come to a conlclusion after one such event but it did get me thinking – does introducing a relatively small registration fee to conferences make a difference, and if so, how and why? Another priced event I attended was the Never Dive Alone conference organised by Full Circle Arts in Manchester – £50 per ticket, a bigger crowd of attendees this time, perhaps 100 or so – but still great discussions and degree of interest and knowledge shown by all.

There are plenty of free conferences that I have really enjoyed – including the ‘Art of Digital‘ series and I have gleaned plenty of valuable information from these as well as making a whole host of contacts to work with or whom I have kept in touch since. I will definitely be attending more free conferences next year but will also make the effort to go to more paid events to see how they compare.

What are your thoughts and experiences?