The View From Kalamazoo

I can’t say I’m joining the ranks of those who greatly dislike Dave Winer because, well, I don’t bother to read his blog and my husband pretty much has the anti-Winer thing all sewn up.

I am, however, totally amazed at this conference this guy is running at Harvard I’ve run across.

It’s a con on blogs. Simple enough. It was originally one day, recently, it appears, expanded to two (sort of – the second day is made up of “Birds of Feather Meetings” (basically chit chait space and time to finish any conversations started the previous day.) Again, small conference, only US speakers (it was originally billed as international, but that has been changed as well), cozy. Simple enough, yes? Well they’re charging an unbelievable $500.00 for this con. Honey, they can hire Alan Rickman to orate the damn thing and one day (and change) is certainly not worth a half grand of precious spendolas.

Winer’s explaination is hardly convincing. I’m the coordinator for a conference, albeit not on blogging, held at a university. It’s *4 days*. Our registration fee is less than a *quarter* of his. We have a couple of special speakers (of the paid variety), we’re nickle-and-dimed to death by the university, but more importantly we’re frickin huuuuge. My point here isn’t to blow my own horn – yeah, the Congress (or simply Kalamazoo, as it is known to a world full of medievalists) is big, both academically and logistically complex, well WELL over a year in the making, and a SIGNIFICANTLY better deal…so much so that I can’t fathom what the heck requires a $500 reg. fee.

Truly amazing. We here in lowly Kalamazoo must be damn near miracle workers…or, uh, something…