Comped scribblers the bane of conferences

[Tim May]

On Saturday, August 25, 2001, at 05:24 PM, Bill Stewart wrote:

> At 12:57 PM 08/25/2001 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>> On Sat, Aug 25, 2001 at 09:38:34AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
>> > Granted, the conference gets publicity. But, presumably, the 
>> magazine or
>> > other outlet gets readers and viewers. A two-way street, right?
>>
>> Maybe. But so far, market forces have prompted few conferences to try
>> to push journalists around and try to make this argument. I covered
>> PFF's Aspen conference this week. If I had to pay $800, I probably
>> wouldn't have gone.
>
> But PFF is also a Pundit-Con - it gets its value not only from the 
> speakers
> and attendees but also from the reporters who attend, and they're as 
> important a
> part of the business expenses of the conference as booze and rubber 
> chicken,
> and there'd probably be fewer paying attendees without them.
> Similarly, at PR-oriented computer conferences (Comdex et al.) that's 
> the case,
> while at academic conferences (Crypto in Santa Barbara, for instance),
> they're not, and obviously at journalism-oriented conferences they're
> the target paying audience so they're not comped.
>
> I suspect Tim's objection to paying high rates for conferences where
> journalists are comped is partly due to the content and style of the 
> conference...

Good points. And I'd say that _most_ conferences these days are a 
mixture of:

--pundits wanting to be quoted in the trade mags, meaning the 
conferences are like the Sunday talk shows on television

--a place to unveil official policy initiatives (at the last CFP I went 
to, I was amazed to see so many presentations by DOJ subofficials and 
DOD spokessoldiers)

--commercial and trade show activities.

--a junket, as Declan noted

I won't pay these rates for _any_ conference. Greg Broiles hit the nail 
on the head: the only ones worth paying for are the ones with short-term 
economic payoff. For CFP, this probably means law firms hoping to get 
some business, or hoping to recruit some lawyers.

The calculus changes if one's employer is paying. Other factors, plus a 
reduced subjective notion of price (viewed as a junket, a _negative_ 
price).

Believe me, I'm not pleading poverty. I just am not in the target 
attendance group for conferences like CFP, as I won't pay $600 or 
whatever it is these days to hear a Pentagon official deliver a canned 
speech (multiply by N for the other speakers).

The Conference's loss. They'd obviously rather charge high prices, comp 
a bunch of large number of journalists, and so on and so on. (No need to 
repeat my points.)

Even the "Privacy Enhancement Workshop" (or whatever) is likely to be 
mostly the same. Hell, some of us were deeply involved in the invention 
and outlining of this stuff. But the paper presenters will be the 
academics and government officials who have research grants to justify 
or policy positions to present.

Fuck that noise.


--Tim May