The problem of "overpriced" conferences is that conferences are really expensive to put on. Everything from from the location to the food costs a lot, and every place has it's particular rules about what you are allowed to bring in versus what they force you to use. And then you have to pay speakers...

We are just putting the finishing touches on ProductCamp Utah, and with no profit and no paid speakers, it is still extremely expensive.

There's a large number of experienced conference runners and planners who will disagree, and collectively have been running inexpensive but good conferences for DECADES.

They're called "SMOFs." They run science fiction conventions. (Not "Star Trek" conventions but "science fiction" conventions - books.) And the conventions are not for profit membership organizations typically with hundreds or thousands of members attending over a weekend at a cost of a few tens of dollars each.

The SMOFs are generally willing to help others run conferences by giving them advice, doing (paid) consulting work, or even fully (paid) managing conferences. A great example is Expotech, who ran MacHack.

I was co-chair of Python 2006 & 2007, and in preparation I went to SMOFcon. SF con issues have some relevance to tech cons, but only partially so:

* SF cons don't usually provide food for all attendees, which is the big cost driver for tech cons. For PyCon 2011, catering was 54% of the budget.

* Tech cons mostly don't have to worry about people in costumes, keeping under-18s out of certain events, or as much rowdy late-night behaviour (e.g. room parties).

* Tech cons really, really have to worry about the WiFi network. Recording every presentation may also impose more A/V requirements.

Going to SMOFcon was somewhat useful to me, but the differences are significant.

"SF cons don't usually provide food for all attendees, which is the big cost driver for tech cons. For PyCon 2011, catering was 54% of the budget."

Isn't the catering cost a catch-22? The only reason to expect food at a tech conference is because you (or more likely your employer) is paying out the wazoo for a conference ticket to begin with.

I'd be much more likely to go to a tech conference that was $99 and gave me no food than go to a tech conference that cost $500+ and was fully catered. I can take care of my own food needs for far less than $400 over the space of a couple of days.

That could certainly be done, though I didn't convince myself it would work for PyCon. I suspect catering is definitely optional for small events or unstructured things like BarCamps, but for large events it becomes a necessity.

If the conference has 500 or 1000 attendees, the hotel restaurant probably can't handle that many people, so there have to be several restaurants or a mall food court nearby, enough of them so that they don't get overwhelmed by the attendees. That rules out venues that aren't downtown, because suburbs may not have that density of restaurants within walking distance, but such central venues have more expensive room costs.

Another tradeoff: The lunch break would probably have to be 2 hours, because 1 hour is a bit tight for walking time + waiting for service + eating, which means less time for conference programming. Attendees like lots of programming, the more the better; in fact, PyCon attendees asked for breakfast as well as lunch, so it's easier to attend an early-morning event.

And the monetary risk of running an event is large, so like Hollywood film producers, you quickly stop wanting to tinker and try something new; it's safer to stick with a format that's worked in the past.

Oh yeah, and if you're paying speakers, You're Doing It Wrong. The speakers should be drawn from the attendees/members.

If a speaker is a "guest of honor" (say a major keynote) you should comp them their conference membership, and possibly cover their hotel room and travel (which you'd arrange). That's it.

No paid speakers. No "sponsors," either. Just members. Hundreds of conventions with a great many thousands upon thousands (potentially millions) of members make this work every year in sci-fi and the areas that have branched off from it like anime and comics.

An unconference (like us) can get away with that. A "real" conference often cannot. While certainly not every speaker should be paid, having known names for keynotes is important. Even just comping travel gets very pricey for small conferences.

Also remember in the scifi, anime, and comic con worlds, many of those people who offer to speak for free are doing it as a marketing expense. Nothing wrong with that, but it should be recognized because, depending on your conference, it can alter the flavor. We've been very explicit: no direct marketing.

Have you been to a BarCamp? They're usually free to attend, they happen all around the world (so you hopefully don't have to travel too far) and the quality of the sessions can be incredibly high.

They can be incredibly high. I've found our local barcamps to have been a mixed bag, and it really depended on the quality of the people who showed up that day. They used to run it where everyone pitched during the morning, then self organized around the pitched sessions. That made the sessions totally up in the air - you had no idea when you woke up if it was even worth showing up. Later ones set up early pitching/voting on the web, which seemed to help some, but because there was no ticket cost, the organizers were still on the hook trying to determine food cost and such in advance, when just a little bad weather might keep away loads of people.

The area ncdevcon.com (next week in Raleigh) started charging for tickets this year - a nominal $60 for 2 days - precisely because when it was free, people wouldn't show up on the day because they had no real investment.

For indieconf.com, we've charged - both for last year's even and this year's event - and are posting speakers/sessions well in advance so people know what they're getting.

There's room for all styles of events, certainly, and perhaps I have bit more invested emotionally than others, being an organizer myself, but the barcamp self-organizing doesn't always produce great results. This may also have something to do with geography as well, but I don't think anyone's done an actual study of barcamp attendee satisfaction around the globe. Maybe that's something you could add to lanyrd :)