Simon Willison's Weblog: conference

Is it normal for conferences to charge a registration fee from selected authors?

2013-10-18T14:58:00+00:00

My answer to Is it normal for conferences to charge a registration fee from selected authors? on Quora

It depends very much on the type of conference. I believe charging speakers is quite common in academic conferences - presumably because there are plenty of niche academic conferences where almost all of the attendees are speaking or presenting a paper.

For-profit commercial conferences are usually free for speakers, and often pay them a stipend. If they won't, it's worth being a little suspicious - some will tell you that it's such great exposure for the speaker to present at such a prestigious event that they don't feel the need to provide the ticket for free, but the event had better be VERY prestigious for that to be convincing to you.

Tags: conferences, quora, conference

How can I successfully organize a conference?

2013-07-29T11:59:00+00:00

My answer to How can I successfully organize a conference? on Quora

PPK's conference organisers handbook is crammed with useful advice on running this kind of event: http://www.quirksmode.org/coh/

Tags: business, conferences, events, quora, conference

What tech conferences will be taking place in Seattle the summer of 2013?

2013-06-03T18:00:00+00:00

My answer to What tech conferences will be taking place in Seattle the summer of 2013? on Quora

We have a list of upcoming (mostly tech) professional events and conferences in Seattle here: Conferences in Seattle | Conferences & Events | Lanyrd

You can subscribe to iCal or RSS feeds of that page to stay up to date with new events.

Tags: conferences, events, software-engineering, technology, quora, conference

What should tech conferences, events and planners do to add diversity?

2013-06-01T10:17:00+00:00

My answer to What should tech conferences, events and planners do to add diversity? on Quora

JSConf did something very clever that helped them get 25% female speakers last year: Beating the Odds - How We got 25% Women Speakers for JSConf EU 2012

Their trick was to run an anonymous call for proposals, and then have a separate team go out and actively encourage people from under-represented groups to submit talks, and coach them to help them put together a great submission.

Read their article: it was a really successful strategy.

Tags: call-for-proposals, conferences, events, technology, quora, conference, diversity

What are some interesting and unusual tactics to draw people to your booth at a large conference or convention?

2013-04-23T15:47:00+00:00

My answer to What are some interesting and unusual tactics to draw people to your booth at a large conference or convention? on Quora

Make sure you have people on the stand who know their stuff - ideally people who built the thing you are promoting. Make it worthwhile for people to come and talk to you. Don't have booth babes who are there for their looks rather than their expertise.

Have really cool demos running. Ideally of your product, but if your product doesn't demo well you can improvise. I saw one trade show booth recently that had a 3D printer and camera-based computer vision system rigged up - it was only tangentially related to their product but it was super interesting and started loads of conversations.

Tags: conferences, marketing, quora, conference

Where can I find out about upcoming conferences, conventions, and trade shows in design, publishing, and elearning?

2013-03-23T18:32:00+00:00

My answer to Where can I find out about upcoming conferences, conventions, and trade shows in design, publishing, and elearning? on Quora

Our site, Lanyrd, is a crowdsourced directory of conferences and professional events. We're extremely strong in areas such as Mobile, Web Design and User Experience, but we also have listings for Publishing and E-Learning. Try these pages:

We also try to keep track of open calls for proposals: Calls for participation - but our data is only as good as the information that has been added by our community. We'll be working to make our calls for papers functionality more visible (and hence more populated) in the future.

If you sign in to the site with Twitter we'll show you events that the people you follow are attending or speaking at, which could work well as an alternative to just browsing our listings by topic.

Tags: conferences, design, quora, conference

How many women are raped each year at tech conferences?

2013-02-27T13:41:00+00:00

My answer to How many women are raped each year at tech conferences? on Quora

The geek feminism wiki maintains a comprehensive list of incidents at tech conferences: Timeline of incidents

Tags: conferences, quora, conference

Where can I find a calendar of tech events and conferences all over the world?

2013-01-25T09:51:00+00:00

My answer to Where can I find a calendar of tech events and conferences all over the world? on Quora

We have a comprehensive, crowdsourced calendar of conferences and professional events on our service, Lanyrd.

You can sign in with Twitter or LinkedIn to see event suggestions based on your contacts, or you can use our topic and place information to filter all of the events on the site. Here are a few examples:

Startup conferences and events - 61 upcoming (and 684 past) startup related events from all around the world
Startup conferences and events in the USA - the same, but just for the USA
Startup conferences and events in California - the same, just for California
Web Development conferences - 81 upcoming web development event-
Mobile conferences - 101 upcoming Mobile events
User Experience (UX) conferences and events - 63 upcoming UX events

We don't have every conference, but we have very strong listings in the tech/startup/development and we're getting more comprehensive every day.

You can also subscribe to weekly emails from us which will highlight new events that your contacts are attending or that match your preferred combination of topics and places.

Tags: conferences, startups, quora, conference

What are the top Apps/Mobile conferences & events for 2013?

2012-11-06T18:08:00+00:00

My answer to What are the top Apps/Mobile conferences & events for 2013? on Quora

The biggest is still Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February - tens of thousands of attendees and representatives from pretty much every mobile company.

In terms of app developer conferences there are dozens taking place around the world, so the best fit for you really depends on where you are based.

Tags: conferences, mobile, quora, conference

What Social Media, marketing events or conferences are taking place between December 24 and December 31 in New York City?

2011-12-17T18:31:00+00:00

My answer to What Social Media, marketing events or conferences are taking place between December 24 and December 31 in New York City? on Quora

The #140conf holiday party is on the 27th of December and is likely to attract a bunch of social media / marketing / entrepreneur types: http://www.meetup.com/140conf/ev...

Tags: conferences, quora, nyc, conference

What technical conferences or get togethers take place in London during the summer?

2011-07-05T13:01:00+00:00

My answer to What technical conferences or get togethers take place in London during the summer? on Quora

July and August are the quiet season for conferences (since many people are on holiday during those months - the larger events tend to stick to March to June or September to November).

That said, London is a big city and there's always something going on.

We have a pretty comprehensive list of techie (and not-so-techie) events on Lanyrd - just scroll through our London page and see if anything looks interesting: http://lanyrd.com/places/london/

Two that spring out at me:

There's the TechHub Summer Party on July 7th, if you want to meet some of London's entrepreneur scene: http://techhubbirthdayparty.even...

UXCampLondon is a very popular event on July 9th: http://lanyrd.com/2011/uxcamplon...

There's also a very strong collection of meetup communities in London - take a look through http://london.meetup.com/

Tags: conferences, london, quora, conference

Is there an online calendar for all the Ruby / Rails conferences to be held in 2011?

2011-01-16T12:34:00+00:00

My answer to Is there an online calendar for all the Ruby / Rails conferences to be held in 2011? on Quora

Have you tried both our Ruby and our Rails topic pages?

http://lanyrd.com/topics/ruby-on...
http://lanyrd.com/topics/ruby/

We've got a pretty good collection now. Of course, if there's any that we're missing you can add them yourself, or just leave a comment on this question.

Tags: rails, ruby, quora, conference