360Flex Atlanta Speaker List is on fire!

It may be getting chilly around the country, but the speaker list for 360|Flex Atlanta is on friggin' fire. In less than two weeks (including the Thanksgiving Holiday), we received and have accepted over 30 speakers for Atlanta.

Some are the returning from the first show (Jesse Warden, Anatole Tartakovsky, Joe Berkovitz, etc.); Some are alumni of the second show (Doug McCune, James Echmalian, Juan Sanchez, etc.); Some are tried and true going 3 for 3 (Ben Forta, Ben Stucki, Renaun Erickson, etc.); Last, but certainly not least, are newcomers to the 360Flex family (Rich Tretola, Michael Labriola, Ben Clinkinbeard, etc.)

It's looking like Atlanta is going to be an awesome show. If you were waiting to see the speaker list before you registered, there's a sampling. The current list is up on the site with even more on the way.

For those of you who have not heard back from us (should be none, hopefully) or are waiting to get your session topics in to us, we're coming down to the wire. Submissions have been so strong that we've officially started a waiting list. We're working out the schedule and seeing how many slots we have left in which tracks. Our plan is to fill the holes from the waiting list. We hope to have our schedule of sessions and final speaker list out by mid December.

Tickets are nearly 10% sold out. Register now before this bad boy sells out. If it does, there's always 360Flex Europe! :)

360Flex Badges (1 for speakers, 1 for the show)

We ain't the world's greatest designers. We're coders and we know it. Therefore, we're grateful that those in the community have some creative talent.

Considering the next US 360Flex is in Atlanta, Georgia, we had our de facto conference badge maker (Doug McCune) whip us up a little peach ditty that you see here. Click the image to download the zip of badges for you to use. He also has an alternative badge that I love, but we'll leave for him to display.


Another thing we like is getting the locals involved. Polygeek, a local to the Seattle Show, whipped us this ditty last time. Now, we have local Atlantian Dave Tucker whipping up this locally flavored badge. It's based on a local restaurant called The Varsity. John and I will hit it up during our onsite visit and will post our review.

It's people like these that make 360Flex so fun. They care not only to come as attendees and speakers, but to also participate in fun side activities like this.

Register now and join the fun!

Flex Camp Boston

We'd also like to make sure everyone knows about FlexCamp Boston

Brian Rinaldi is putting this event on, so if you're in or near Boston, or have some Frequent Flier miles to burn, go for it! Ther's only 86 tickets left, so hurry up and register for Flex Camp Boston!

FlexCamps are a good way to get some great info and meet active folks in the Flex Community!

Plus, 1 lucky attendee will win a free pass to 360Flex Atlanta! Don't let this hold you back from registering for the conference though. If you're already registered and you win, we'll just refund your money. :) So, register for 360Flex Atlanta now!

360Flex Euro and Atlanta call for papers plus registration is open!

I really hate that phrase, but it seems to be the standard. What it means is: we're accepting speakers for 360|Flex Atlanta on February 25 to 27, 2008. As you can see on the site, a few speakers have already signed up. :)

That other part of the title, you should be able to figure out :) We've had about 500+ people hit the registration page already, before it was even live. If one of them wasn't you, you'd better get on it :) Clearly Atlanta is the place to be for the best Flex conference in the world, at least until April :)

On the other side of the pond? Speak at 360|Flex Europe. It's 7 to 9 April 2008. (That's Euro style date format. 360Conferences has global smarts!).

360|Flex has 4 tracks;

1. Application Development
2. Integration (with back ends like Java, CF, .NET, PHP, Rails, you name it)
3. Custom Components (creation, use cases, etc)
4. Hands-on Training
   

You may or may not know that we've revamped how we handle speakers. We cover your hotel stay for 3 nights.

Pricing is a bit different, The survey helped us figure a few things out, and pricing was one of them. We're still very inexpensive, and we never do that early bird crap. Register now, register later, we don't think the price should change.

Here's the new cost breakdown for Atlanta:

1. Single registration: $480.00 (still very affordable.)
2. Team ticket is still available for $1,500.00. That's 4 registrations, almost an entire ticket off in price.
   

We've got the hotel all set up for reservations, call OMNI Hotels: 800-843-6664
Ask for the Atlanta location, give them your dates, and the code: '360Flex'

That'll get you the group rate of $189.00. Our block of rooms ain't big, so dilly dally at your own risk.

360Flex Europe is €360 per attendee. It's pricing was in effect before the survey, so it'll be the last show at the 360 price point. Due to it still being 360, there is no team discount for 360Flex Europe.

Hotel rates for Europe are €140 per night. Utilize this form to get the group rate.

If you're interested in speaking at any of the above shows, drop us a line at info@360flex.com We're not crazy formal so an email with a track and a session idea will suffice as your "Paper".

Don't think you're speaker material? Don't know what you'd talk about? Some of our best speakers told us that. In case you need some ideas (like them), here you go: Share what you're working on (ala eyejot and buzzword). Share what you've learned (ala Ben Stucki and Doug Schmidt). Built some cool components (ala Doug McCune and Brendan Meutzner)? Yap about that.

Still not speaker material? Just want to learn from all the pros and the guys in the trenches. No worries, come as an attendee and learn from the speakers.

Come one, come all! Come to one or two. We'll be at both. :) Register now!
360Flex Atlanta
360Flex Italy

360Flex Twitter Account

In the US, we always have Twitter up either on monitors at the conference or on our mobiles during the planning. We'll be bringing that tradition to 360Flex Europe.

Twitter allows us and everyone at the conference to talk to one another in a relatively easy fashion. Think of it as an electronic message board. If you're interested in following along with the conference going ons, definitely get hooked up with Twitter.

If you want to see the tweets (that's what the messages are called), sign up for a Twitter account. Then add 360Flex as someone you follow.

360Flex Survey Results are in!

The People (all 139 of them) have spoken.

If you missed the survey, sorry, but feel free to comment and let us know. Here's the result, and here's what we're doing in response.

One note. I'm unbelievably surprised by the answers, and that there were no "Landslides". I have a post about some of those thoughts at our company blog here.

Question 1: There are basically three choices in front of us for handling speakers and food/beverage. Select the scenario that you think makes the most sense and would still be an event you'd attend.

Results:

• 28.8% wanted to leave 360|flex as it was. Speakers get their registration comped, but must pay for their own airfare and hotel. Food and drink flow freely.
• 36.7% are ok with lunch only and giving a little something to the speakers. In our case that'll have to be Hotel. (I'll explain at the end).
• 34.5% wanted no food at all. 100% of speaker expenses covered, everyone eats and drinks on their own.
  

So why are we only covering Hotel? 1) Partial comping was the (barely) winner. 2) Hotel is something we can manage, and the price is the same for each speaker. We don't have the man power or bandwidth to manage airfare from every corner of the globe. Also, how would/should we answer, "Can I just get a check, I'm driving myself", Then what about local speakers? Do they get nothing or a made up number for fake airfare? This way even if they're local, they can enjoy a few days out of the house.

Question 2: Location, location, location. Metro/downtown areas cost quite a bit more than areas near the airport or in the suburbs. How important is it to you that the conference be in a downtown area? The thing to keep in mind: the farther from downtowns, the more affordable it is and we can do more with what we bring in.

Results:

• 44.6% want to keep the event as close to 'downtown' as possible.
• 34.5% were ok with moving farther from the downtown areas into the suburbs.
  
• 20.9% were ok with us holding 360|flex at airport venues. IE. still nice places, I've seen many, but not near anything else, attendees would be effectively trapped on site.

Tom and I watched this one with interest, since location is a HUGE factor on price. Airports and suburbs are obviously cheaper. I personally like Hub cities less than an hour from the airport. I hate connecting flights. I'd rather not make our attendees endure them if at all possible, unless they fly Southwest and then they get what they deserve :)

Question 3: We really like the whole 360 price point as it matches our name. However, if we raise the price by 1/3 we can keep things as they are and still give some money to speakers.

Results:

• 46.8% wanted us to keep the price at $360.00
• 53.2% were ok with raising the price. Not a lot, but under $500.00

What impressed me with this question's answers. People could have really put the screws to Tom and I. "Keep it $360, pay speakers a bit, keep food." that combination would probably have shut us down. I'm very impressed with our attendees that honestly said, "under $500? That's still a great deal." To which, we agree and say thank you for giving us room to move.

We also got 41 open ended answers to "what else" You can read those here.

I go into detail on my thoughts on pricing on our company blog, so I won't here.

We're also (in the next week) going to announce East Coast. Stay tuned. It's gonna be cool and a ton of fun! We've got some new ideas to try out, that we're pretty sure will appeal to everyone.

See you in Milan or ! :D