Comments on: Virtual Worlds Forum Europe 2007

By: Wecebialalp

Wecebialalp — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 12:40:45 +0000

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/3410/clipboard01og2.th.jpg

The 263-171 vote was the second in a week, following its shock rejection of an earlier version on Monday.

The package is aimed at buying up the bad debts of failing financial institutions on Wall Street.

US President George W Bush praised lawmakers for their “spirit of co-operation” before signing the bill into law later on Friday.

The House adopted the new version after the Senate added about $100bn in new tax breaks to win Republican votes.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average had been buoyant ahead of the vote, surging up 250 points, but those gains were pared back amid profit taking and continued uncertainty, and it closed down 1.5%.

By: Ordinal Malaprop

Ordinal Malaprop — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 11:19:25 +0000

Just to finish that thought off, it may be that the less sharp divide between different groups of user in SL compared to a lot of other tech areas (you might have artists, teachers and commercial data analysts all interested in the exact same talks) means that a broader range of convention and conference styles will arise to match that. One conference isn’t going to be right for everyone, and nobody would expect it to.

I wonder whether meetings of the open-source community, which also has a mix of people interested in the same things with entirely different reasons and backgrounds, might provide some hints.

By: Ordinal Malaprop

Ordinal Malaprop — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:58:49 +0000

Sasha – I can understand that it is priced at an appropriate level for outside corporations and branding/ad agencies, and that SL consultancies will find it worth their while to pay that because, well, the opportunity to interact with the former very directly affects their livelihood. Any UK or European consultancy would be daft not to go quite frankly.

It really is a bit much for me as an independent though. Direct contact with corporations and agencies isn’t that important for independents as we are less likely to get work and leads specifically through that route. Don’t get me wrong, it would still be (at the very least) educational and informative, and certainly a positive and useful experience – but it wouldn’t pay for itself. I would mostly be interested in the speakers as it sounds like the lineup is excellent, but again, that doesn’t pay for itself either, and lectures and presentations can be viewed without actually being at the conference concerned.

I hope that you see my point here and that I am not coming across as hostile; I appreciate that there are different sorts of conference around, it’s just that I really don’t want to see a situation where they are reserved for those able to pay a certain price. (I may actually be able to pay here but I would need to check my budget quite carefully.) The amateur or pro-am developer, incidentally, really _isn’t_ going to be paying over six hundred quid minimum, and there are a lot more of those in SL than in many other technical fields.

By: Sasha

Sasha — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:18:46 +0000

Delighted you guys like the event. We’ve kept the prices as low as we can, and because the event is largely aimed at corporates and brands, as well as virtual worlds, development companies and agencies, it’s actually – strange for you to hear – priced pretty low. Other corporate events are in the �1200 – �2000 bracket. I know it’s a bit of a reach for independent developers, but if you sign up with the early bird before August 1, it’s as cheap as it gets.

By: Ordinal Malaprop

Ordinal Malaprop — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:52:25 +0000

Perhaps I can work at the bar, and slip people my card 😉

By: Roo

Roo — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:46:29 +0000

Interesting point Ordinal. I wonder if the conference organizers are watching this and care to comment?

By: Ordinal Malaprop

Ordinal Malaprop — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:33:58 +0000

Have you seen the _prices_ for that particular conference? It isn’t as if I don’t have experience with attending conferences for people working in long-established fields, where one can earn such an admission price with a couple of days of contract work – but even _they_ were cheaper. (And even then, multinationals balked at the costs of sending more than a few people.)

The message I get from this is “independent developers, nein danke”.