Ask HN: What are your best tips for organizing conferences?

4 points by osmnshkh 12 years ago | 4 comments

Getting speakers, finding cheaper venues, engaging attendees, etc.

Compiling a list for the startup I work for, BusyConf.

gus_massa 12 years ago |

Don’t use PayPal. Usually a conference involves more money than usual. Another problem is that conferences are a big risk, people don’t like speakers, too crowded, the sound or wifi is awful, the venue cancels at last minute and the alternative sucks, ... So there are too much chargebacks and PayPal usually frizzes the money until the chargeback period clears. (You can agree with them, you can disagree with them, but you can’t ignore that they have this informal “rule”.)

Some examples: https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=paypal...

osmnshkh 12 years ago | |

Wow, I can't imagine how much it must suck to have your event funds withheld when you need to pay for venues, travel, equipment etc.

This is one of the reasons why we don't let people use their own payment gateways.

Thanks for the tip.

redtexture 12 years ago |

There is a wealth of advice from Chris Williams, creator of JSConf --> http://jsconf.com/

About three-quarters of his posts have something useful for a conference organizer.

His blog: http://www.voodootikigod.com/

He's trying out something to share how its done, called "Ask A Tech Event Organizer" AATEO http://www.aateo.com/

osmnshkh 12 years ago | |

This is great, thanks for sharing.