These people previously asked Dessalines and me to participate in one of their conferences, and expected us to pay the full ticket price. I think its really outrageous to charge so much money for setting up some video calls, considering that most people who run the Fediverse don’t get any money at all. There are also no recordings published afterwards, which goes completely against the spirit of openness of the Fediverse.
“Give us $40 USD to talk about the thing you made.”
Bold strategy, how’d that work out?
Removed by mod
From the title, I had a question and found the answer in the FAQ:
What’s an unconference?
An unconference is a conference in which the participants – rather than the organizers – decide which sessions happen each day and on which topics. In the many years we have been organizing unconferences, we have found that for complex subjects like the Fediverse, attendees get more value (and fun!) out of unconferences than from traditional conferences. Sounds disorganized? It did to us, too, until we actually experienced our first one. So don’t worry, it will be fine :-)
Here are some suggestions for how to prepare for an unconference.
Interesting
What does the money go towards, since it’s all online?
The answer is one click away in their FAQ:
Why do you charge for attendance?
Several reasons:
- Organizing conferences costs time and money, like many other things in the Fediverse. We believe the sooner the Fediverse finds a way to pay for itself that doesn’t depend on the heroic efforts of a small number of individuals, the better. We want to build something that is sustainable, and to do that, it needs to know how to pay for itself.
- It aligns the objectives between organizers and attendees, and keeps us organizers focused on what you want out of the conference; as opposed to us pushing an agenda, or letting a sponsor undule influence the agenda.
- In our long experience organizing conferences we have learned that people who pay for an event are much more likely to actually attend. Free-of-charge conferences often have more no-show’s then actual attendees.
Thank you, I didn’t look carefully enough :)
TBF, I only found the FAQ link way down the page. It isn’t well advertised 🙂
Interesting