MicroConf 2011: The Conference for Self-Funded Startups & Single Founders | Hacker News Reader

MicroConf 2011: The Conference for Self-Funded Startups & Single Founders

microconf.com

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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.

>>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.

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.]

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.

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!

>>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...

Wonder how much it'll cost.

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.

(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.

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

We've also arranged a deal with the hotel so rooms are cheap ($79/night). Hope you can make it :-)

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

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.

Better make it two, because after you drink in too much culture, you're going to need to un-acclimatize. :)

Sparkmuse will be there!

Sweet; see you there.

congrats, Rob & Mike! Awesome idea.

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