When I was working at a "pro-audio" company a few years back I remember complaining that "no pro musician would ever want this feature; it's a gimmick". I decided to talk to the product manager about it.<p>He told me very few of our customers were pro-musicians. They were mostly people who liked the <i>idea</i> of being pro-musicians, but mostly dorked around with the stuff at home. And they liked gimmicks.<p>I suspect that's the same for this sort of conference. It's not for people <i>doing</i> lean startups, it's for people that like the <i>idea</i> of doing them, but are probably working at cushy jobs telling themselves that next year they'll really take the plunge.<p>And that's fine, really. There are a lot of markets that wouldn't be viable if they were limited to professional practitioners.
Ummm... yeah. That represents around seven months of infrastructure cost for us.<p>Maybe next year, if we can fit in an 'entertainment and networking' budget.
I don't question the value of this, but this price for a one day conference kind of limits it to mainly funded startup.<p>Most bootstrapped pre and early revenue would find this hard to justify.
We're looking to line up sponsors for scholarships, see here:
<a href="http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2010/03/startup-lessons-learned-conference.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2010/03/startup-lessons...</a><p>If anyone is able to sponsor, please get in touch.
If you learned just one thing at this conference that helped you optimize development by even a small percentage, this would be worth it.<p>Or if you met one person who you could ping for specific questions when you hit a roadblock, this would easily pay for itself.<p>I really encourage you to think about value, not cost.
Conferences are only worth it if you're going to network the hell out of them. It's kinda like business school, you're not going to learn a lot, but you will get pissed with some people who will become friends and help you later on in life. (Well, you can learn in b-school but that is debatable).<p>That being said, here's one thing that has worked for me, drop the conference organizer a note and ask them if they need volunteers, or help with organization (most conferences do) - the earlier you do it, the easier it is (obviously). Then you can get to attend for free.<p>Another way is to get a press pass. NY let's bloggers get one these days: <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/04/bloggers-eligible-press-passes/" rel="nofollow">http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/04/bloggers-eligible-...</a>
I'm in the same boat with Summit Series. The speaker line-up is amazing.. but there's no way I can find ~$3,000 to attend. :-(<p><a href="http://dc10.summitseries.com/" rel="nofollow">http://dc10.summitseries.com/</a>