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✅ good line up ✅ community vibes ✅ ticket programs for students and underrepresented folks ❌ having no code of conduct ❌ sponsor talks ❌ no women or people of color in the line up ❌ expensive confs: not paying speakers or staff, or not serving lunch ^ went to one event with 3/4 of these at once 😬

100% agree! TIL that there are confs with no CoC 😅. It does seem like sponsor talks are becoming more frequent these days because that’s the only way to get sponsorship. We’ve easily lost over 50K EUR in sponsor money cause we don’t accept paid talks at @zurichjs.com.

On the topic of speaker experience, it definitely doesn’t feel great when the ticket prices cost more than that they’re willing to reimburse flight wise. I’ve never been paid to speak at a conf and often ended up paying partially out of pocket to go, lucky that I can but it’s not sustainable

I once had to sit through a 40 minute talk from FOUR people on the same stage giving the most boring talk about hostinger. I’ll never get that time back and I’ll never forgive hostinger, hahah. A booth usually gets much more goodwill from attendees

🙆‍♂️ - Thought provoking. Great for sparking professional curiosity - Meet & chat with industry titans - 3rd place for broad socialising 🙅‍♂️ - Eye-watering ticket prices - Tutorial workshops that end up being glorified presentations - High profile names listed as keynotes and attending virtually

Thank you for sharing! Completely agree! What do you consider to be an eye watering price?

Anything over £200, tbh. React summit is ~£700 this year (early bird)! Glastonbury is something like £350 for an entire weekend. That’s apples and oranges to a degree, but still… My guess is that tickets are priced in on the assumption that most attendees have access to some form of L&D budget.

I want to meet new people I can ask the hard questions. For all the simple stuff there is enough content on the internet. But when you reach some level of experience the questions get more special and the material more rare. I hope to visit some conference in the next year...

Thank you for sharing! Completely agree! I do feel like there’s a limited amount you can learn in 30 min talks but you can be inspired to think differently, which will lead you down the road to learn new things. Beyond that, a golden hallway track is make or break. What confs are going to?