“The more you speak, the better you get.”

“we have to homegrow speakers and seek out newcomers”

But the first applies to any speaker, new or old. While the second in no way means they’re bad, they’re just new.

So I guess in your mind new equates to lower quality? Because it doesn’t to me and looking over my post and comments, I don’t state that.

“Again I haven’t a clue what you mean by rock star speakers. To clarify you mean people who have been giving to the community for years, or are you trying to say they play some kind of instrument ;).”

That’s one way to see it. Lots of people have been giving back to the community for years, not just those that charge for appearances.

Im not saying that new speakers are not as good, those words came from you guys, and you went on to say they get better as they present more, which I concur with.

I’m not sure where you get the superstar stuff from. TBH I don’t know any superstar presenters, I know of people who have been committed to the community for years, who don’t feel they should spend their own money to share with other people, whilst another company makes money on the back of there work. I’m not sure why you would denote those as a superstar.

@ john

sorta? I stated that one has priority over the other. In no point did i mention it negates the other. tom then went on to concur you prioritize networking over speakers in his follow up post. In fact I even went on to say

“obviously each do there best to make up the ground on what they consider the less important point”

not that it negates the other point.

Again I haven’t a clue what you mean by rock star speakers. To clarify you mean people who have been giving to the community for years, or are you trying to say they play some kind of instrument ;).

We don’t see those as mutually exclusive.

Also I think it bodes very well for attendees. While the rock star speakers have their fanboy legions, most people enjoy getting new perspectives, on coding. Learning from some one with something new to say. Session surveys seem to support that idea.

Many people comment that while at times they may not know who a newcomer/homegrown speaker is, they are very impressed after seeing the person present. Yes, there’s an occasional one that’s new and doesn’t impress, but that happens with well known speakers even. Sometimes, speakers just have off days (or don’t show). That’s human life though.

Do we try to minimize that? Sure we do. We encourage each speaker to support their local Adobe User Group by doing a dry run of their presentation at a meeting. This allows us to help and promote the community, while giving the speaker a chance to practice the material. We encourage this for every speaker too, not just the new ones. Like I said and you quoted, “The more you speak, the better you get.”

Let’s turn the question around though. Say there’s a well-known superstar speaker at a show that pays all expenses for speakers. That speaker for whatever reason has an off day and just doesn’t deliver well and the session surveys state this fact (assuming there are session surveys provided to help gauge this). What then? Is the conference thrower justified in revoking all payment? Should the superstar on his/her own conscience refund the conference organizer all the money paid to them for presenting?

With this in mind though your own comments…

“The more you speak, the better you get.”

“we have to homegrow speakers and seek out newcomers”

… doesn’t bode that well for you paying attendees does it?

Yeah we think the split will be good for everyone. Having less of a need to be a marketing event, should be positive for attendees.

You’re right we’ll have to wait until ’09 to see if the split worked, but we’ve got high hopes for Liz and company!

Next year’s location and facilities addresses (almost) all of the complaints raised about this year’s location and facilities. CFUNITED is never going to be a “cheap” conference but CFUNITED 2009 should be much better value for money. We’ll have to wait and see how the session schedule pans out but the criticisms highlighted in my blog post have been very much taken to heart so I’m currently very optimistic about next year’s CFUNITED!

I think cf.Obective() 2009 will also be an excellent conference (I’m not leading the selection of speakers / topics this year, due to time constraints, but I think Nic Tunney is doing a great job).

And yeah I think us and John do our best to make up the difference in our priority as best we can.

However your assertion that one negates the other is flawed. We get some of the best speakers in the industry, often people, no one has heard about, yet. Sure we don’t pay the self described rock stars to speak, and that’s fine, it’s a free market, but I don’t agree at all that speakers at 360|Flex are in any way sub par or not industry leaders.

With very few exceptions are speakers are repeatedly highly rated in session surveys, and we’re well known for bringing the adv deep thought type sessions to the forefront of the conversation.

Priority is about an order of importance. If they were both just as important as each other, you’d cover the costs of both wouldn’t ya. For FOTB obviously one has more priority over the other, and 360Flex shows it prioritizes one over the other, although obviously each do there best to make up the ground on what they consider the less important point.

I’m sure Doug was comfy, especially in the knowledge that it wasn’t costing him an arm and a leg (i.e. he’d have been looking at around £1500 to get here and stay).