
MicroConf 2011: The Conference for Self-Funded Startups & Single Founders - gacba
http://www.microconf.com/
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edw519
This looks great. I have read many of the writings of Rob and Patrick and
would love to meet them and hear them speak.

But why are these things so often scheduled for weekdays?

Conference fee? I'm sure it will be fair.

Plane ticket? No problem.

Hotel room? No big deal. I'll just make it a vacation.

Monday and Tuesday? Deal killer. There will be too many phone calls, emails,
and support requests to miss.

I bet that most of the people who would best take advantage of this conference
don't work for large companies that will send them. They have to slip away
over the weekend and get back to the office Monday morning.

Startup School does it right. Fly from almost anywhere. Catch every event. And
make it back to the office before little problems have a chance to get too
big.

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rwalling
>>But why are these things so often scheduled for weekdays?

In our case, a couple reasons:

1\. We surveyed about a dozen people interested in attending and nearly all of
them said they couldn't do a weekend, but could make weekdays work. Obviously
12 people is a small sample size, but the response was overwhelming.

2\. Since we are trying to keep the ticket cost as low as possible, weekdays
are ideal since they are cheaper for the hotels we looked at.

But I certainly understand your point; for some people weekends would be
better. For others, weekdays.

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edw519
Interesting.

Monday support is a nightmare for me. OTOH I can just tell everyone I won't be
in the office on Monday and check the support logs on Wednesday. Why do I have
a feeling everything will be fine?

[Thanks for the quick response, Rob. I loved "Start Small, Stay Small." Still
one of my 6 "nightstand" books.]

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neillk
Rob Waller book is worth it "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to
Launching a Startup" & I imagine the conference will be valuable too,
especially for those on micro-budgets.

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DanielBMarkham
I don't do conferences. But this is one conference I am seriously considering
attending. I have a feeling I would regret it if I didn't go. This looks very
useful and immediately applicable to me. Great idea, guys!

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rwalling
>>This looks very useful and immediately applicable to me.

Awesome; that's the reason we decided to put it together. Hope to see you in
June...

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davidw
Wonder how much it'll cost.

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rwalling
We know most people will be paying out of pocket so we're doing our best to
keep the cost as low as possible. Price should be in the $700 range, but we
plan to offer pre-launch tix to people on the email list (as mentioned on
microconf.com) for around $500.

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fmavituna
(I just got this from email) and it sounds like a really bad idea to send
emails (or any kind of promotion) when there is no way to take an _actual_
action on the website yet.

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rwalling
If you're interested you can sign up to be notified when pre-launch tix are
available; that's the action available today.

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fmavituna
Sending me an email so I can go to the website and submit my email again so I
can get another email later on, it just seems a bit redundant :)

Since conference is quite soon anyway I thought it would be a better move to
just open the registration and then do the promotion, but hey I'm sure you
guys got something in your mind like defining the price based on interest, or
something like that.

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rwalling
Gotcha. Yeah, we aren't setup to start taking registrations today, but with
the conf only 3 months out we wanted to make the announcement. That's why we
ask for an email instead of selling tickets today. But we'll make them
available asap :-)

Oh, and we're not defining the price based on interest; the price is pretty
much set (see my comment on this thread about price).

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ianpurton
It's nice to see a conference targeted at self funded startups.

I'm in London so Vegas is a bit of a stretch, it's very tempting.

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dangravell
Ditto. For me, as a self funded startup also, it would be nice to at least
have an _idea_ of the price of tickets. That way I can plug 'em into my
cashflow projections and work out now whether it's worth dropping my email
address in.

As it is, I won't, because my perception of these events (I'm comparing it to
BoS here) is that while they are very useful they do cost a lot to attend.
That, plus the air ticket, = no sale.

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mtaber
The pricing is a bit in flux right now because the cost is going to be largely
based on the number of people who actually attend. Our target is to keep it
under $750 no matter what. So that's on the high end of the pricing scale.
Chances are really good it will be less.

The reason BOS is so expensive is because it's in Boston and they don't have
sponsors. Vegas is significantly less expensive to host a conference. We did
look into Boston and it was kind of ridiculous.

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StoneCypher
Sadly, Rob and Mike have been locking their blog down, editing comments to
remove criticism, and insisting that in posts entirely about math that the
math is not what matters. Access to the LinkedIn group they sell is being
locked down when it's used to make polite discussions of how to respond to
ethical problems with vendors, and commenting on their blog and linkedingroup,
for which they charge hundreds of dollars to access, has been shut off where
people politely disagree.

They suggest that they are merely removing rudeness, but what they remove
isn't rude, and they're leaving significant accusations in place while
disallowing response.

This community is gated to exclude people who politely point out errors in the
math.

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flemmings
Spending your time to try discrediting publicly two people that are working
hard to help others reaching their goals just for you to feel better with
yourself and feel superior is a terrible thing to do.

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BCKevin
Great to see a conference focused on self funded startups. Nice idea guys I
hope it is a success and better still if I can be there.

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marakas
Considering flying out from Japan to attend, that's if I can arrange some
vacation time.

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stevechol
I'm also in the UK and yes, Vegas is tempting .... :-)

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ianpurton
I think I'd need at least a week out there so I could acclimatize and drink in
the culture.

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davidw
If you really want tech and startups, you'd want to drive or fly over to the
Bay Area, which is a much nicer place than Vegas in any case - especially San
Francisco.

Las Vegas is its own weird little planet that isn't much like anything else in
the world, in a not entirely positive way. It is pretty good for conferences
though - lots of flights and not too expensive.

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netmau5
Sparkmuse will be there!

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rwalling
Sweet; see you there.

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asicboy
congrats, Rob & Mike! Awesome idea.

