Nice to see that the fund raising for Chris turned out good. Chris has now more or less received the $1250 he needed to be able to attend the Macromedia DevCon. (Check the initial posting if you are interested in the background for the fund raising)
Chris has promised that he will be making the speech available online. Either as just plain speakers notes, or perhaps published together with audio from the speech. I hope he decides to include audio recording from the speech – I am sure that would be a success.
To Macromedia: Please reconsider your policy for the DevCon conference in the future. It would be nice to feel that Macromedia as a company shows appreciation for the hard work put down by community people such as Chris.
I have received several e-mails from disgruntled Flash community members that either turned down a chance to speak at the DevCon conference or are attending the conference as speakers with less than good feelings about it. Some of the information in these e-mails have really shook me up more than the fact that Macromedia failure to pay the cost for the speakers to attend the conference (we are talking travel and stay here, nothing else). Unfortunately I am sworn to secrecy about who these people are and what they have told me.
But I must say I am amazed at the degree of abuse these speakers are willing to take to be speakers at the event. If anyone should boycott DevCon, I now think it should be the speakers. By allowing Macromedia to short-pay you as a speaker and treat you the way they are doing, you as speakers are really selling yourself short. I just hope that other big Flash conferences won’t see what Macromedia is doing as an opportunity to start treating their speakers bad.
Hi Jarle, nice to “see” you again. Last I heard the conference wasn’t priced to offer a return-on-investment… it’s priced to cover costs. Are you saying you’d attend if it cost more to cover speaker travel, lodging, and meals?
Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromedia Support
Welcome back from vacation/leave John, its nice to see you back :-)
DevCon is a $1000 plus event last time I checked. And conferences such as FlashForward, which cost considerably less to attend, DO provide for the speakers with hotel and travel. How do you explain that? I might live in a different world than Macromedia, but in my world I would have been able to pay the speakers travel and lodging expences for a lot less money than $1000 per ticket. Hell, if I were running Macromedia – I would have made sure that THAT was provided for them, even if it ended up costing the company a little money. After all, you can’t overpay for goodwill.
In this case I would say that if the expenses at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin resort that Macromedia have chosen as the place to hold the conference at this year is so high that Macromedia can’t afford to pay the travel and hotel expenses for their speakers, then perhaps the way to go would be to find a place that is less expensive? After all, the most important thing here is knowledge, not venue, right?
“How do you explain that?”
I don’t keep books on various conferences, sorry, and so can’t give you a line-item budget on one conference’s internal costs versus another’s.
Point still holds from my original post, though… last I heard, these DevCon affairs are not considered revenue generators, and are priced to maximize attendence while not generating costs to the company. Are you saying you yourself would pay more to cover all costs for all speakers? If so, how much? Thanks.
jd/mm
Let me first say that we are talking about a lot of money here. If there is 1000 attendants, that would make it 1 million dollars that comes in from the event. With 2500 attendants, you are talking 2.5 million dollars. (Easy math I know, but it seems easy to forget the numbers involved here).
I don’t ask for the item-by-item cost for each of the conferences, but since you bring it up. You wouldn’t by any chance have access to the budget for the DevCon conference and wouldn’t by any chance be willing to share that with us? I for one are very interested in seeing how Macromedia can make an event such as this one, with a ticket price of $1000 a “for cost” event. I’d love to see the cost that would make Macromedia have to charge MORE to be able to treat their speakers better.
As to if I would be willing to pay more. Well, to be honest with you. DevCon looks like an interesting and valuable conference, and might very well be worth more than the +$1000 dollars they are asking for it. But at the same time I can’t free myself from thinking that this is a conference about Macromedia products, held by Macromedia and that Macromedia probably would be better of making the prices lower than higher.
And yes, I do belive Macromedia would have been able to hold a conference for less money and STILL be able to take care of their speakers. After all, other conferences are able to do just that. Macromedia might even want to look into actually USING some money on the event to be able to offer a service to the developers that actually make the product successfull.
It might be a good idea to remember that it is the developers and the community that have helped Macromedia build the market they have today. And that investments in the community and in the developers will make the Macromedia products grow in value.
Jarle,
I understand why the community would like for us to lower the cost of devcon, as well as pay for everyone’s expenses. In the same vein, the community would also like us to provide flash for a cheaper price, fund community sites directly, give away a constant stream of content, etc…
We have made it very clear to all of the speakers that we will not cover their costs (we have not covered speaker costs at past events). If the speakers have a problem with this, they can decline the invitation. Furthermore, the speakers are being compensated for free access to the conference. Now you may argue that is not enough, and that is fine, you are titled to your opinion, but apparently quite a few speakers feel that is is adequate compensation.
Furthermore, the conference is 4 days with access to speakers and macromedia employees. Given that, i think the price is comparable to other conferences (which are normally 2 or maybe 3 days). Again though, if you do not think the price is worth it, then you have the option of not attending.
>It might be a good idea to remember that it is the developers and the community that have helped Macromedia build the market they have today.
We do realize this, and we give a lot back to the community, and are very active in the community.
this is an argument that comes up quite a lot. But why don’t we reverse it, these developers have also made a lot of money using our tools to create content for their clients. So characterizing it as if it is a one way relationship is irresponsible and wrong.
The bottom line is, no matter what we do, anytime we charge for anything (a product, conference, etc…) people are going to complain about the price. But trying to turn that into some general statement that Macromedia is abusing the community is irresponsible.
mike chambers
[email protected]
>these developers have also made a lot of money using our tools to create content for their clients. So characterizing it as if it is a one way relationship is irresponsible and wrong
I know you didn’t mean that sentence the way I am reading it. Surely the majority of the developers have paid for the tools they are using from Macromedia. The products have become cheaper in the last MX release – but are still costing quite a few bucks. And I have a hard time buying into the notion that Macromedia is doing that to be nice to us all. (I am sorry, my naivity wanished a long time ago).
Sure – a lot of developers (myself included) have earned money from using Macromeidas products, and probably will in the future. But we have paid for our tools and use them to make something we (and hopefully our clients) think is good. AND we do a lot of marketing for you, by telling everyone else how good your products are.
You might want to take notice to what I am saying Mike – regarding how some of the speakers feel about DevCon. Because even speakers that are attending have told me that they didn’t like the setup. Why then would they participate? For many reasons, maybe because they feel they need the attention they presive they will get from being a speaker at the even, maybe because they feel they need to be on good foot with Macromedia and try to build goodwill (or try not go loose goodwill) by attending, some of them even have such love for the community as a whole – that they feel they owe it to the people attending the conference to be there. etc. All of which will make many speakers think twice about openly saying what they mean, and in some cases even taking action towards the way they feel about it.
I think its telling that the community memebers that have contacted me have asked for me not to reveal who they are. It shows how much they fear the possible reaction that might come from Macromedia if they speak up.
But as you and John have (I feel at least) communicated. Its up to us all if we attend the conference. And its up to the speakers that have been asked to speak if they want to attend as speakers. I just hope that Macromedia pay notice to the growling of some of the speakers and actually think about the way the conference is held.
Again, I am dumbfounded to what kind of expenses the conference must have to burn somewhere between 1 and 2.5 million dollars during 4 days. If the venue cost is 1/2 a million for each day, it would still leave 1 million for other expenses with 2500 visitors.
>AND we do a lot of marketing for you, by telling everyone else how good your products are.
right, but why do you do this? it is not to be nice to macromedia, but rather because it is in your interest to do so (i.e. the more popular flash is, the more client work you will have.). this doesn’t mean that macromedia doesn’t recognize the contribution of our developers. we do in fact, and spend a tremendous amount of time and resources giving back to the community and to our developers.
>Because even speakers that are attending have told me that they didn’t like the setup. Why then would they participate? For many reasons, maybe because they feel they need the attention they presive they will get from being a speaker at the even, maybe because they feel they need to be on good foot with Macromedia and try to build goodwill (or try not go loose goodwill) by attending, some of them even have such love for the community as a whole – that they feel they owe it to the people attending the conference to be there. etc.
sure they don’t want to pay for it. But they obviously think it is worth the time and expense or else they would not have agreed to speak at the conference.
>It shows how much they fear the possible reaction that might come from Macromedia if they speak up.
what retaliation? we had a number of speakers tell us they weren’t interested in the arrangement. We didn’t retaliate, but rather tried to find another speaker.
>Again, I am dumbfounded to what kind of expenses the conference must have to burn somewhere between 1 and 2.5 million dollars during 4 days. If the venue cost is 1/2 a million for each day, it would still leave 1 million for other expenses with 2500 visitors.
jarle, something that i think gets lost in these conversations is this:
macromedia is a company. our goal is to generate revenue. We are not holding devcon to just break even. surely you must understand this, especially in this economic climate.
mike chambers
[email protected]
>right, but why do you do this? it is not to be nice to macromedia, but rather because it is in your interest to do so
And you go on. Lets just for a short second examin what makes me recommend a product. Since I obvisouly can’t talk for everybody else. I recommend products that I think will benifit the people that need to perform a spesific task. When I recommend a product its usualy because I have found that it does the job that its supposed to do better than other products on the market. And since I don’t have stock in Macromedia, or are tied up in just doing Flash work – it doesn’t matter to me (in the money department) if there is 10 or 10 million Flash developers.
>macromedia is a company. our goal is to generate revenue.
Fair enough. I understand (to some degree) the life of a stock company such as Macromedia. And understand that the first goal is to make money.
>We are not holding devcon to just break even. surely you must understand this, especially in this economic climate.
Mike, thats news to me. Especially since John stated: “Last I heard the conference wasn’t priced to offer a return-on-investment… it’s priced to cover costs”. So now it is a for-profit conference. Fair enough. But if its for profit – how can Macromedia rely on people paying to work for you? I get that its a good deal for Macromedia, but is it good taste?
>Mike, thats news to me. Especially since John stated: “Last I heard the conference wasn’t priced to offer a return-on-investment… it’s priced to cover costs”.
well, john has been on sabbatical for the past 6 weeks, but i could be wrong. however, again, we are a publicly held company our our ultimate mission is to provide a return to our stock holders (which means generating a profit). I am not sure why anyone would be surprised by this.
>Macromedia rely on people paying to work for you?
we ask people to speak, and tell them they have to cover their cost. those people then balance the cost of getting to the conference, vs the benefits that they will receive (free access to the conference, close access to macromedia employees, meeting other community members, greater recognition, etc…). If the benefits outweigh the costs, then they agree to speak, if they do not, they turn it down.
I think part of the problem is that you are only focusing on monetary compensation, but that is not the only form of compensation, and may not be the most important form of compensation for some speakers (in fact it should be clear that it is not).
mike chambers
[email protected]
“we do in fact, and spend a tremendous amount of time and resources giving back to the community and to our developers.”
i thought i’d get involved in this because it seems a very 1 sided arguement. i am a very small flash developer and in no way up to the standard of you guys.
i live in London, UK
my question is “what have u ever given back to me or the community in my area?”
seems to me that the peeps that are giving back to the community (from my experience) are all independent and not making any money for the help they are giving.
I think i been invited to a couple of conferences by Macromedia. The first I attended, it was free. The whole conference was a marketing ploy for Flash MX. No learning or giving back involved, it was all about Macromedia marketing. At that confernce it was asked how many people would be interested in attending conferences/training about ationscript etc. Sure enough a couple of months later I was invited to the conference. training but the price was extortionate.
I’m not a big one to moan about stuff but I can’t believe that independent people who are willing to satnd and give up their time aren’t even paid buy Macromedia let alone get their costs covered.
Please inform me in what way have Macromedia ever given anything back to me and my immediate community?
cheers
Steve
Guys, I suppose it’s at times like this that being contractually obliged to stick to the company link makes you look like assholes..
Must be frustrating.