{"id":424,"date":"2008-05-01T17:34:58","date_gmt":"2008-05-02T01:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sapien.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/01\/user-group-meeting-better-conference\/"},"modified":"2008-05-01T17:34:58","modified_gmt":"2008-05-02T01:34:58","slug":"user-group-meeting-better-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/01\/user-group-meeting-better-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"User Group + Meeting = Better Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just got back (well, last week) from Mark Minasi’s forums meeting<\/a> (affectionally known as the Minasipalooza), and I have to say – if you’ve not considered going, keep it in mind for next year. Originally conceived as a way for his discussion forums’ regulars to get together, chat, and share info, it’s become a mini-conference in its own right. For about $500 plus travel (to Virginia Beach, which is muy inexpensive), folks were treated to a bunch of timely sessions on current technologies, both by forums veterans and by industry professionals like myself, Greg Shields, Jeremy Moskowitz, and The Mark himself. If you’re tired of paying $2000 for commercial conferences (who spend a lot of your dough paying off the money-grubbing hotels and conference venues), give a long, hard thought to Mark’s 2009 meeting. You’ll get much of the same high-quality content, mingle with a great group of folks (attendance is small enough that you really get to know everyone), and spend a lot more time *discussing* technology (e.g., getting your questions answered) than just getting shuffled from room to room and fed bland chicken (sorry, too many conference lunches for Don this Spring). <\/p>\n

Mark treated everyone to a great dinner at the Pungo Grill, including bus transportation from the conference host hotel. A couple of "on your own" dinners provided great socializing options, and Va Beach is honestly a beautiful place to visit (biased; I grew up there), and there are bunches of other things to do if you want to come early or stay a day late. <\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong, commercial conferences have their place. I speak at TechMentor<\/a>, and in addition to 5-6 tracks of content to choose from you get a small vendor expo, swag for the kids and\/or pets to chew on, and probably a more swank hotel and\/or location (San Fran, Orlando, New York, Vegas, etc). But those conferences do come at a cost. <\/p>\n

Mark’s per-person cost will likely creep upward a bit. Right now, the speakers are not only speaking for free, they’re picking up their own travel expenses, which isn’t sustainable. But helping speakers with the modest Va Beach-level travel expenses won’t drive per-person costs up much if the number of attendees can grow a bit – so give it some thought. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just got back (well, last week) from Mark Minasi’s forums meeting (affectionally known as the Minasipalooza), and I have to say – if you’ve not considered going, keep it in mind for next year. Originally conceived as a way for his discussion forums’ regulars to get together, chat, and share info, it’s become a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,22],"tags":[105,48],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-training","category-events","tag-conference","tag-training"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}