In the end, we had 124 people show up, which was right in the range of what we had planned for. We had bagels, coffee, & juice for breakfast; lunch with sandwiches, salad, & drinks; wifi; and there were no invited speakers and thus no honorariums. We also got the library to pay for these custom printed notebooks (which were surprisingly affordable) as swag for the attendees. I don’t think every unconference has to be done this way, but like Joshua Neff notes, it is possible to do an unconference in a way that does not require registration fees yet still manages to get the expected number of people show up.

I like Kathryn Greenhill’s suggestion of asking registrants to volunteer for some task and making it less likely that they’ll blow off attending. One of the three organizers of Library Camp NYC, Rachel Watstein, tirelessly reached out via email to the registrants to confirm their plans, which I think also helped keep our attendance numbers up.

Peter, a small clarification about the unconference that will be held at ACRL. It’s not actually sponsored or organized by ACRL but instead by Radical Reference.

I think any unconference that charges should be transparent about the costs. The Library Camp@Syracuse charged in order to cover the cost of food. We had two organizations that were able to cover the cost of the space. (No good large space with wifi, etc., in SYR for free.) And we were transparent about that. (I don’t not remember if our two speakers on day 2 received an honorarium. If yes, that was paid for by one of the organizations.)

LITA is trying something new and wants to be sure that people come, hence the keynote speakers and registration fee. Let’s hope that they learn from this experience and think of lower cost ways to provide great content at unconferences.

http://wiki.radicalreference.info/index.php/ACRL_Unconference_2009

Voluntary donations to cover the cost of food, presumably donated space at the public library, set up as an adjunct to the ACRL conference, and no honorarium costs for keynote speakers.

Yes, the organisers put in a lot of their own time, and the venue was donated – but I would guess that it was less time and energy than an organising committee puts in for a regular conference of a similar size. Overall the organisations that sponsored the event got as much value as they would have if they paid the same amount for their staff to attend. It’s a different business model.

The organisers of a two day “masterclass” with Helene Blowers here in Australia are charging $2600 per head. I don’t think this is merely covering costs.

Again, it may be different in the US, but there are a group of conference / seminar / workshop organisers across all sectors here in Australia who deliberately charge large amounts, aimed at the corporate sector, and are doing so to make the users think it is a “high class” kind of event.

It follows the same logic as the recent study that showed that if people think a placebo is more expensive then it will work better than one they think is cheap:
Waber et al. Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy JAMA. 2008;299(9):1016-1017.

And I don’t think you can put a conference on for a song. But I know that you can put an unconference on without charging any attendance fees at all. I know because I’ve done it.

Kathryn, I’m unfamiliar with the logic that organizers charge large amounts to attend workshops solely so your funding bodies “will think it’s legitimate”. In the workshops in which I’ve been involved there have been very real costs that need to be covered, such as speaker expenses and fees, venue rental, food (if provided), handout duplication, equipment rental, etc. (these of course may not apply in all cases). Plus, if the organization putting on the workshop is trying to make a little money off of it, then their cut as well.

I happen to have it on good authority that (believe it or not), LITA is losing money on that unconference, because of the costs of putting it on (partly for speaker fees which many unconferences don’t have — I suppose LITA thought it couldn’t possibly hold a conference of any type without having paid speakers).

In any case I think we should be reluctant to rush to judgment on the motives of conference organizers without more information. While you may think that a conference can be put on for a song, it could just be that a particular organization is choosing to eat a lot of the cost (as we did for the WorldCat Hackathon, despite charging our excessive $30).

Maybe that had an effect in making people “value” their place more??

We had five libraries from five sectors each chip in to pay for morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and a door prize. Another library provided venue and free wireless.

We could have charged $30 per head and provided the same. Personally I wouldn’t have minded paying that – *if I knew why*. But – I would want to also know that the organisers to have ensured they had done *everything* to keep the costs down beforehand.

Maybe instead of a “commitment fee” it would work to ask for some other kind of pre-commitment. Part of registration for our unconfs involves going to a wiki and putting your name down to do a job – either present, cut up fruit, do some accounting, collecting gourmet pizzas for lunch etc… People know that if they don’t turn up, part of the unconference will not run smoothly.

To me a $30 commitment fee smacks of the same logic that makes organisers charge large amounts to attend workshops – just so our funding bodies will think it’s legitimate, or we “value” what we learn. I think unconferences are an attempt to get away from this untransparent…as Josh says… bullshit.