Why Do People Have Conferences in London?
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Prestige
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
Prestige
What's prestigious about bad planning?
People think it's a fancy city/good tourism place whether it actually is or not.
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@scottalanmiller it makes the org look good. And most of the people going are getting their costs covered by their company, so they don't give a crap how much it costs. You get to make a vacation out of it on the company dime. SpiceWorld Skegness just doesn't have the same cachet
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@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller it makes the org look good. And most of the people going are getting their costs covered by their company, so they don't give a crap how much it costs. You get to make a vacation out of it on the company dime. SpiceWorld Skegness just doesn't have the same cachet
Spiceworks Paris?
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
Prestige
What's prestigious about bad planning?
People think it's a fancy city/good tourism place whether it actually is or not.
Maybe it's because I worked in banking, but I was completely unaware that London had a fancy city vibe. It's so often famous for having to "overcome" the bad feelings about it and actually surprises people by being a little fancy.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller it makes the org look good. And most of the people going are getting their costs covered by their company, so they don't give a crap how much it costs. You get to make a vacation out of it on the company dime. SpiceWorld Skegness just doesn't have the same cachet
Spiceworks Paris?
The cheap and interesting places are the warm, waterfront ones. Like Malaga, the "Costa del Sol".
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I guess that the UK location has a lot to do with the fact the SW has an office there... only guessing
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@Minion-Queen said:
Ok figuring out my costs and it really is crazy expensive just to get from the airport to my hotel alone is going to cost almost $100!!
Where are you flying into? The airport express train to Gatwick and Heathrow is about $30 one-way or $50 return, I think.
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@scottalanmiller said:
- London is not a very touristy city. It's a huge city so has stuff, but for tourists it's anything but ideal.
- Doing anything "extra" is so much logistical overhead that London is one of the worst possible options for sightseeing "on the side" at a conference.
- It's so expensive that doing anything like that is pretty costly unless you just want to walk around.
- If you are doing a conference in English, who would attend that hasn't been stuck working in London already? So it's not a tourist destination but just "more of that big city I have to go work in."
- People from the UK and Ireland will do just about anything to head to Spain, Portugal, Italy, Croatia, etc.
Not touristy? What are you on about? It's one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world! World class museums, architecture, history, restaurants...
A perfect day for me is an IT seminar in the morning followed by an afternoon in the The National Gallery. Well, a better day would be a morning and afternoon in The National Gallery but my work won't pay for that. And it's free! Without doubt one of the best things you can do for free in the world.
London is expensive, but I haven't found a massive difference between London and Rome or Paris or Zurich or Copenhagen or many other capital cities. Madrid and Lisbon are cheaper for sure.
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Anyway, to answer the OP question, I'm assuming you're talking referring to Spiceworks? I assume their conferences are one of their major revenue streams so I'm sure they've thought things through.
I don't know how popular the Spiceworks software is in mainland Europe, but the majority of European posters on the forums appear to be British and London is always going to be the best location for any conference that is dominated by Brits for two basic reasons:
- Transport links. All roads lead to London, as they say... You can get to London and back in a few hours from most of England. Getting to other cities can be a ball-ache. Birmingham is also good, and that's why so many conferences at the NEC there. But there's a bigger choice of venues in London.
- The majority of British IT is based in London and the South East, so it's local.
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@nadnerB said:
I guess that the UK location has a lot to do with the fact the SW has an office there... only guessing
In that particular case, the conference came before the office, I believe.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Minion-Queen said:
Ok figuring out my costs and it really is crazy expensive just to get from the airport to my hotel alone is going to cost almost $100!!
Where are you flying into? The airport express train to Gatwick and Heathrow is about $30 one-way or $50 return, I think.
She is going into Heathrow.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
- London is not a very touristy city. It's a huge city so has stuff, but for tourists it's anything but ideal.
- Doing anything "extra" is so much logistical overhead that London is one of the worst possible options for sightseeing "on the side" at a conference.
- It's so expensive that doing anything like that is pretty costly unless you just want to walk around.
- If you are doing a conference in English, who would attend that hasn't been stuck working in London already? So it's not a tourist destination but just "more of that big city I have to go work in."
- People from the UK and Ireland will do just about anything to head to Spain, Portugal, Italy, Croatia, etc.
Not touristy? What are you on about? It's one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world! World class museums, architecture, history, restaurants...
A perfect day for me is an IT seminar in the morning followed by an afternoon in the The National Gallery. Well, a better day would be a morning and afternoon in The National Gallery but my work won't pay for that. And it's free! Without doubt one of the best things you can do for free in the world.
London is expensive, but I haven't found a massive difference between London and Rome or Paris or Zurich or Copenhagen or many other capital cities. Madrid and Lisbon are cheaper for sure.
That's why I listed several of those as also bad choices. Just like you don't do conferences in NYC or Washington, D.C. in the US. Some do, and tons of people avoid them because they are so costly to attend.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Anyway, to answer the OP question, I'm assuming you're talking referring to Spiceworks? I assume their conferences are one of their major revenue streams so I'm sure they've thought things through.
I don't know how popular the Spiceworks software is in mainland Europe, but the majority of European posters on the forums appear to be British and London is always going to be the best location for any conference that is dominated by Brits for two basic reasons:
- Transport links. All roads lead to London, as they say... You can get to London and back in a few hours from most of England. Getting to other cities can be a ball-ache. Birmingham is also good, and that's why so many conferences at the NEC there. But there's a bigger choice of venues in London.
- The majority of British IT is based in London and the South East, so it's local.
Odd that they take the opposite tack as in the US. In the US they chose a low cost, non-IT, small, easy logistics city to make the conference cheap, easy and low stress. In the UK they do the opposite. In the US they make "everyone" travel to the place, in the UK half the people are local, I assume. Completely different approaches. I wonder why, when the one formula was so successful, they immediately abandoned it.
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Surely let's ask the Spiceworks guys why?
But more to the point, would an organisation like NTG not come because it's in London? What made you come in previous years, why are you still coming now.
If tickets keep getting sold and if the people still come, then for the texas office, there is no "reason" to change the model Perhaps they need a few reasons?
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@scottalanmiller said:
Completely different approaches. I wonder why, when the one formula was so successful, they immediately abandoned it.
I'm not sure what you mean, there? I suppose there's bound to be different approaches because the US is such a large country. I expect Americans are more comfortable travelling between states than Europeans are travelling between countries.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Odd that they take the opposite tack as in the US. In the US they chose a low cost, non-IT, small, easy logistics city to make the conference cheap, easy and low stress.
What do you call small? The Spiceworks conference is in Austin, isn't it? According to wikipedia that's the 11th largest city in the US. It's hardly small!
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Odd that they take the opposite tack as in the US. In the US they chose a low cost, non-IT, small, easy logistics city to make the conference cheap, easy and low stress.
What do you call small? The Spiceworks conference is in Austin, isn't it? According to wikipedia that's the 11th largest city in the US. It's hardly small!
800K. It's the fourth largest just in Texas. It's definitely a smallish city. It's only about 20% the size of the next largest city in Texas. And that one is much smaller than the two big ones. It's not "small" but it is extremely small for a conference city. It is so small that you can't get direct flights to it. It has one tiny airport and you have to hop through "real" cities to get there. It's a great town with a nice downtown, it's my favourite US city, in fact, but large it is not.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Completely different approaches. I wonder why, when the one formula was so successful, they immediately abandoned it.
I'm not sure what you mean, there? I suppose there's bound to be different approaches because the US is such a large country. I expect Americans are more comfortable travelling between states than Europeans are travelling between countries.
Not sure that that is true. I rarely meet Europeans that have never left their country (except a little with the UK since you are surrounded by water and leaving is a bit of a pain) but meeting Americans, even affluent ones near a border, that have never come near another state is really common.
