Simon Willison’s Weblog

Why are tech conferences so expensive to attend?

27th September 2010

My answer to Why are tech conferences so expensive to attend? on Quora

Large conferences with big name speakers are expensive to organise. They are also priced to what the market will bear.

If you don’t want to spend the money, look in to BarCamps. They are free to attend and usually have extremely high quality talks. I’ve been to over a dozen in the past few years and I’ve learnt just as much at them as some big budget events.

http://barcamp.org/ is the official site for the BarCamp movement, and you may also find our list on http://lanyrd.com/topics/barcamp/ useful.