I was supposed to speaking on Tuesday at Agile but due to a bit (ok, a lot) of confusion I not anymore. Common practice from my experience speaking places and knowing those who do more than I is that when you speak you get comp’ed a registration to the conference (and if you are a keynote or doing a tutorial there is also some monetary compensation). That applies to Agile as well if your talk is not a 30m one. Guess how long my talk was to be? Yes, 30m. Which means I would be expected to shell out between $1399 to $1999 for the privilege of speaking. Something that was only brought to my attention yesterday (4 days before the conference). Thanks, but the value of the conference is not that high to me. (Perhaps I have been spoiled by events like CAST and other LAWST-style events the last couple years.)

All is not lost though as you can (or should) learn from every experience. (I’m looking at you Ben for planning next year’s CAST with this list)

  • The submissions system is really, really slick. It is drupal based and I think should be the model of how conferences make their schedule.
  • If you have different levels of benefit to speakers, make sure that they are in obvious place. It is clearly listed that you do not get a free registration with a 30m talk, but that page is not linked to from within the new topic flow nor the call for speakers. At least in a non-obvious manner
  • If you have outsourced your conference logistics, make sure that people will actually respond to emails or the phone. I think I first saw this point made by Danny that you should call any of the phone numbers on the systems you are testing but this is the first time I’ve experienced the failure condition to it.
  • Do not wait until 2 weeks before the conference to have speakers register for conference. And if you do, make sure you have the previous point covered.
  • Backups are a good idea not just for computers, but for conference speakers as well.

I’m disappointed that I cannot confer (remember, the root word of conference is confer) with the people I know are coming into town at the conference I only work 10 minutes from the conference site and if you want to have lunch, email (adam_goucher@hotmail.com) or call me (905 995 5035 is my cell).