Long ago I mentioned to Dana how we’re all geeks and don’t need fancy. My comment wasn’t valued… Seemed to be more important to look fancy just like the fancy edited videos.
As have I. I said it would probably increase attendance. But they know best.
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That’s the error of it. We have such events for our customers. What do they pay? Simple, their hotel room. The rest we pay. Why? Simple. Cause we want to get more customers. And it is more interesting to speak for 200 instead for 10. And I can invite new customers also. Working together. Streaming it also. And on top of that we have also nice times together with our customers, getting their situation, analyzing their problems to improve products.
The location I love to use most. NAture around and silence. Working there makes fun. And it’s inexpensive at all
Needs For a 5 star hotel? No. Not at all. But an environment for the soul. And Not a Las Vegas Casinostyle hotel.
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Careful there! I happen to make a lot of money working in the theaters. 
I don’t have to be careful. My events are done in this castle. It is near to my house (2 minutes to drive) and it is a really nice location. What I said is related to my company. Not to others. When we do events like that we will always be there. It is - for me - the best solution. And it is a question of the targets. Is it needed to represent in a 5 stars hotel or is it more needed to have an environment where working and a location in the middle of the nature are fitting best together. That is something everybody has to answer himself. For me the answer is: I don’t want to send my customers for a conference a bill of a thousand $. But that everybody has to decide by self. And yes, also my staffs are all there. That is nothing the visitors of the conference have to pay. It is more effective for me to work with them instead to let them pay my hotel, the conference location and the hotel for my employees and so on. But: everybody has to decide what fits best for his company.
Just the last one, Pay for some expensive “Developer Retreat” event just to be limited to half of the session because one of the days was lost with an escape room WTF? 
Thanks for completely misunderstanding my comment.
I was referring to the insulting way people refer to ‘Las Vegas Casino/Hotels’.
For one thing, Las Vegas has one of the best convention and seminar support infrastructures in the world.
Also, I happen to make a living in several of those ‘hotel/casinos’.
It was meant as a joke.
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Yeah neat. What that has to do with the too high prices for the seminars and why they don’t do them in tx? For what they travel so far? I guess you misunderstood what my critical words wanted to say. A conference for two hands if people can be done in another location. The companies office for rxample
LV is fun
But for a conference the size of the one Xojo holds most hotels are way too big
For instance in Orlando, and most other places, when the conference sessions ends & everyone congregates the attendees could pretty much take over the bar area & sit & talk endlessly
In Vegas hotels had such huge areas that this wasnt quite as possible so it seemed to be less conducive
Not that Vegas isnt fun
Vegas is fun but conferences are a problem. We have a bar here and we serve the conference visitors nice drinks and that’s it. No need for anything else. Most people don’t want to spend until the end of the night. They are need to travel home next day and so most people are in their hotel room at 11pm.
It depends on whom you ask and when. I have fond memories of conferences where we spent quite a few hours at the bar or in a nice restaurant and had a great time. If one visits the same conference/convention/exposition every year, those nights tend to become shorter (this may also be related to one’s age).
Since Covid, I have lost the habit of joining large gatherings and technology now offers online participation. In many cases a pricy in-person event is no longer justifiable.
XDC is usually multiple days so sitting & talking “tech” into the wee hours of the night wasnt uncommon
But Las Vegas was too big for XDC to manage to “take over” a hotel or they needed a different smaller hotel where they could do that
XDC is minuscule, it offers only one track, one has to suffer the keynote and it is quite pricy for what it is. Online is the only way out. Just let’s hope that they understand that it is a true marketing event and not a money squeezer 
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Oh you mean it is not a privilege to hear the words of our stable genius? 
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The down sizing to only one track is something that occurred after my last conference possibly due to Corona and lowered attendance
I dont know if the Miami XDC had one or two tracks
But previous XDC’s had 2
The last one I attended had 2
But its never been huge
I think 100+ attendees happened the first year in Orlando (not including staff)
If you’ve watched the keynotes they are almost always
- recap the last year (# of releases, bugs fixed, growth of the community, etc)
- new stuff or maybe new plans
- MAYBE a demo of something in progress (ie/ android, web etc)
- thanks !
after a while that same formula gets … tired ?
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ja the real genius always had “one more thing” but our stable genius is there… uhm… more stable…
Certainly. Away from the central hotel ‘strip’ there are a couple of nice hotels that would work for what XDC used to be. They would be better off with an much smaller venue for live attendees and a hybrid/streaming offering. Until the product catches up with it’s own bugs, even that is too big.
Yeah the Monte Carlo, now the Park MGM, was much too large to do what we’d done in other venues
And some were far too loud with music etc
But I dont arrange these things so … what do I know 