Conferences are absolutely insanely expensive to put on, unless you have a "building sponsor" who has rooms already setup with A/V, etc. You're not having even a single ballroom conference at a hotel for less than $20-30k, unless you're at the Motel 6 or something.

If you are not high-rolling, consider getting a university, trade school, etc to sponsor or participate, as they do have auditoriums with A/V already.

University conference, catering, and AV rates can also be pretty ridiculous, even at the internal / dept sponsored prices. They can have similar terms to hotels (ie, you have to use our tech people, our approved caterers, etc)

The trick is to find a university (or college, or technical college, etc) that has A/V and cafeteria but doesn't really have departments dedicated to those.

> If anyone wanted me to sign some contract with consequences if something came up I'd laugh.

Yeah, I'm surprised that was mentioned. The only way you'll get me to agree to consequences for no-show is if you pay me to show. I mean I already have consequences for no-showing -- my reputation. I've spent a long time building a reputation as a speaker who not only always shows up, but can do a talk with less than a day's notice. So I'm likely to show up so as not to ruin that reputation.

The 9th International Workshop on Plan 9 (http://iwp9.org/) took place in Ontario a few months back. It was free to attend, I believe the venue (a lecture hall at Waterloo) was free, and the t-shirts were donated. Now, it was a very small conference, and it was organized by the Plan 9 Foundation, but to the best of my knowledge (as a member of the Program Committee) it didn't really cost anything.

There are still costs though: streamed talks, presumably AV people, the university presumably pays people to clean up. Maybe some of this is volunteer labor but there are still some costs that presumably the university or the department is picking up. There are free events at universities in general but that's just the school picking up the costs.

Even FOSDEM (held at a university in Brussels for free) has sponsors as does Devconf.cz.

I mean I guess the university did pay the cleaning staff to go through afterward. AV was done by volunteers, and the streaming was free AFAIK (https://bsdtv-player.secdn.net was the host for the stream, I'm not sure who runs it but it worked fine).

So yeah, you could say the University of Waterloo sponsored it by allowing us to use their conference room. Somebody did have to empty the trash cans after the attendees left. But to the best of my knowledge the only money that changed hands was for the t-shirts, and as I said I think that ended up being a donation from a Foundation member.

Handmade, the conference that Abner, is explicitly sponsor-free.

Sponsorship is definitely a good way to save a lot of money, but it also makes you somewhat beholden to those sponsors.

> Sponsorship is definitely a good way to save a lot of money, but it also makes you somewhat beholden to those sponsors.

I've organised a couple of conferences here in Singapore.

I find the asks by the sponsors in the article to be a bit over-the-top. Organisers need to establish firm boundaries on what they're willing to give in to (booths, shoutouts), and what is non-negotiable (anything to do with programming and content), and put that in their sponsorship prospectus.

It's the job of most marketing people to push for more, and it's the conference organiser's job to push back.

Yeah, I definitely know conferences that have sponsorships but there are no sponsor talks or anything along those lines. Some free passes, shoutouts, logos on signage, maybe the right to have logo giveaways etc. Even when a company is providing a venue there are pretty much always other sponsors in my experience.

And, yes, companies will pretty much always want more for their sponsorship dollars and it's one of the jobs of organizers to push back which given a good professional relationship tends to work.

Pretty sure Singapore isn't the best place for more developer-centric, radical talks to take place given it's makeup of foreign workers afraid to rock the boat.

Have your speakers given a talk that's considered radical at your conferences?

I've spoken at a Singaporean Security conference and I'm not sure what you're saying entirely chimes with my experiences.

At the conference I spoke at there were plenty of local attendees and as the topic was hacking, there were talks I'd imagine could be considered radical (depending on your definition of that word).

As a speaker, I wasn't restricted in what I said, nor did anyone pre-review my talk.

> Have your speakers given a talk that's considered radical at your conferences?

Echoing what the other commenter said, as long as the talk doesn't involve politics (also, religion and race/ethnic group), the government doesn't care.

There are special visas for people in the above groups [1].

[1] https://www.mom.gov.sg/passes-and-permits/miscellaneous-work...

Singapore has only just (in the last 12 months) decriminalised being gay. Several of my colleagues have refused to go to the country in the past for that reason alone. Same with places in the middle east.

As long as your radical talks don't involve politics, the Singapore government couldn't care less.

I can't tell if this is satire.

I don't know what the parent meant by radical, but one reason my events are indie is because I'm biding my time as we grow.

If I want this year's conference to open with a keynote documenting all the ways Windows violates user trust, there's not a sponsor in the world that can veto it. We might even kindly point out the names of product managers and higher-ups who green lit those harmful policies.

This is all just a hypothetical scenario, of course... ! ;)