Hi,
we’d like to hear some opinions on why people didn’t join the conference.
e.g.
Content might also be worth asking about…
Of course, but we have not so many choices for content.
It’s not like XDC where you pick 30 sessions out of 40 or 50 proposals.
Too far and Im too busy
I would have thought one contributing reason is ‘do you work for yourself’?
(I often marvel at the plots of novels or movies where someone can just ‘decide’ to go off on some adventure without ‘booking some time off work’ or talking to their boss…)
I live in the UK, but (for example) even a conference in London mid week would be hard to attend for a number of related reasons. And the distance between me and London is way shorter than Geoff Perlman and Munich. (Good on you Geoff for attending!)
So self-employed people who can decide to spend the time, and offset the expenses against tax can justify the travel, the hotel, the registration etc.
Probably ‘only’ have their families to consider.
The hobbyists among us would have little reason to attend.
I do sadly feel that there is a tendency now to ‘keep the goodies for the conferences’, meaning that useful information is ‘behind a paywall’.
I’d love to know what was said about Android, and the rest of the presentations.
[quote=404694:@Christian Schmitz]Of course, but we have not so many choices for content.
It’s not like XDC where you pick 30 sessions out of 40 or 50 proposals.[/quote]
No, no, I fully understand. I was think more a long the lines of, tutorial type presentations, versus show and tell type presentations or even not technical ones.
Personally I like to see what everyone one else is getting up to.
Too busy… maybe next time
not too far, but too busy, and as part time developer, don’t have much money to invest on events…
a) I hate travelling
b) there were only a couple of conference sessions that sounded interesting
c) was at another event
From contact with some hobby developers mostly not active on this forum, I know that some of those consider the conference costs beyond their financial limits.
In this case, I can only encourage anyone to contact Christian directly. He does everything to make it possible though in these cases. In fact, I sometimes fear he would rather pay your bills with his own money but being the gentleman he is, he would never tell you.
And as every attendee can tell you, the MBS conferences are non-profit events. If the balance should be positive, Christian transforms the event into an all-inclusive 1st class holiday. Better have some oversized clothes in your luggage!
Reducing the conference to the sessions would deny the importance of the evening events and break talks. Even if they might come at the price of losing your ability to articulate during the session and finding yourself sounding like full drunk later the evening. Development usually is a rather quiet time, so mind your vocal capabilities! 
Ulrich: your explanation is far better than the sentence I had in mind and that is the reason why I do not express myself prior now.
This is my answer: thanks to Ulrich.
For me, it is not a matter of time.
Nota: Strasbourg-München = 365 km (* 2) plus hotel, etc.
I would like to have gone but unfortunately had other commitments.
I hope to make the next one Christian.
Munich was all inclusive conference. We even included wife/husband for free for the dinners.
Ticket prices ranged from 0 to 699. Like we gave away a free ticket for a student and an unemployed guy for example. And we had some group pricing.
We thought about wether a future conference should focus on low ticket prices instead and not include so much. And to pick a cheaper hotel to get room rate below 100.
I even saw macoun has pricing for private attendees vs higher price for company attendees.
I would stay with the prizes and see if I could convince some of the top speakers at XDC to come to Europe and to support them in doing so.
Christian, I would love to have come and am sure I would have learned a lot but I’m afraid I don’t think I am your target market.
I am a retired academic who develops software for personal use in my astrophotography hobby. I was able, via various discounts, to get a Xojo pro license for a little over $400. I doubt I will be able to renew it when it lapses.
Personally I love Germany and would relish the chance to visit again (it has been well over 10 years since I was last there). My wife and I plan to travel to Europe again in the next few years (it is a 16,000km journey) and if our travels happen to coincide with one of your conferences I would be happy to take part.
I’ve never seen this but I wonder how well something like ‘remote attendees’ would work out where folks could live stream sessions with a web form to ask questions that a moderator could read to the speaker when appropriate?
I’d pay something reasonable for that depending on the content!
Well, the value of the conference is to have time to talk a few minutes to each attendee. Just streaming the sessions would be only 30% of the conference. At the conference you can after the session come with questions to the presenter, maybe try something on the computer with them.
If you are retired, you can always ask for a discount.
Now I travel home and await the bill from the hotel.
The prizes were not that good, cannot see any of the XDC speakers getting excited about them.
30% of the conference price seems fair!
We offer speakers 50% off the full rate (same as Xojo Inc. for XDC).