When the shit hit the fan in 2008, it was right after our biggest SotR to date. But we made a 5 year plan:
2009: we would take the conference on tour across the UK and Europe as a series of one day events to keep delegate and sponsor costs low. 2010: do a 2 day conference at a real low cost venue and spend the budget on a couple of big name speakers and some good quality swag 2011-2013: head back to Edinburgh, at a great venue and keep ticket and sponsorship pricing the same as 2010. Tickets are priced between £50 and £199. because of tying in for 3 years we've managed to get an amazing deal from the hotel and we've also committed to covering all speaker hotel costs. We've sold 50% of the tickets since they went on sale two weeks ago. I love CFU. Been twice. But with conferences you need to adapt to what's going on around you and I think that's where CFU went wrong. There's no shame in scaling back, taking stock, and making plans to recover or indeed refocus slightly what with the emergence of the smaller, regional based events. But CFU will definitely be missed. Sent from my iPhone On 14 Jul 2010, at 18:15, Sean Corfield <seancorfi...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 6:32 AM, DURETTE, STEVEN J (ATTASIAIT) > <sd1...@att.com> wrote: >> So... Did anyone else get the email stating that this year would be >> the >> LAST CFUnited conference? > > Yup, and the blog posts and the flood of tweets :) > > Michael (Smith, TeraTech) explained that the reason is financial. They > lost a lot of money last year and can't afford to do it any more. Big > conferences cost a LOT of money to put on and it's almost impossible > to break even let alone make money on them. Most big conferences are > run by corporations as loss-leaders for marketing purposes. The pure > developer conferences need lots of sponsorship dollars and the > recession's made that difficult - and the recession has meant fewer > attendees as well which means less revenue for the conference (and > they have to commit to a venue well in advance so it's not like they > can suddenly say "Oh, we have half as many attendees this year, let's > find a smaller, cheaper venue!"). > -- > Sean A Corfield -- (904) 302-SEAN > Railo Technologies, Inc. -- http://getrailo.com/ > An Architect's View -- http://corfield.org/ > > "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." > -- Margaret Atwood > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:335386 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
