We’re pleased to announce that the final night’s dinner and entertainment at Webstock will be presented in association with Google. You already know that there’ll be great food, lots to drink, scintillating company and stupendous entertainment. Well there’s now more.
Google’s Chris DiBona will be bringing over three Chumbies to give away as door prizes. Chumbies are very cool, very hard to obtain and, most important, if you’re one of the lucky people to win, it will mean you can taunt Russell Brown that you have a later model Chumby than he does!
You do, of course, need to be at the dinner to be in the draw to win. Oh, and if there’s a special person you’d like to bring along to the dinner and entertainment, you can buy extra tickets for only $85. Just send us an email at [email protected] for more details.
We’re delighted to announce the speakers and topics for the 8×5 sessions at Webstock. One of the highlights from the last Webstock, this session has 8 people talking for 5 minutes each on a wide range of topics. We think you’ll enjoy it!
So, along with everyone, and most of all Heather and Derek, we were really sad when they told they’d be unable to make it to Webstock. However, that did leave us with an opportunity to invite some more speakers to Webstock.
If you’ve been holding back on coming to Webstock, then the three speakers we’ve got lined up should be the tipping point! Tell Santa you really need a ticket so you can see Molly Holzschlag, Cal Henderson and Chris DiBona.
We’re really excited to welcome them to Webstock and can’t wait to see them and the rest of our speakers in February!
In what some are hailing as the single most important factor in their return to Webstock, organisers are pleased to announce that You Can Has IceCream! Yes, those divine tubs of ice cream will once again be freely available for your culinary and psychological pleasure.
The free ice cream was one of the true highlights of last year’s Webstock, with speakers Steve Champeon raving about the Hokey Pokey flavour and Rachel McAlpine seen returning again and again to the Lemon and Gin. Attendees marveled over the freezers seemingly filling by magic during the breaks and this feature is sure to be appreciated in the heat of February.
In related news, Red Bull will not be freely available during Webstock. Organisers are tight-lipped about this decision, with Mike Brown only saying that, “It’s for health reasons”, and that, “We’re seeking to avoid another ‘Amanda Wheeler incident‘ caused by excessive Red Bull consumption.”
A few people have written to us asking about sharing their ticket to Webstock and querying our policy that we’re not allowing that. So we thought it would be a good opportunity to explain.
There’s the logistical reason that it’s just a pain in the butt to administer. We’d rather spend our time on things that make a difference to the conference as a whole. There’s the “value for money” reason in that we think Webstock provides the best value for money of, well, just about any web conference, anywhere. We regularly get brochures (Brochures! Yes, print is still king in the corporate conference world) about web-related conferences charging $1,995 early-bird price for a two day conference. Webstock is less than half the price of that and we’ll stack our line-up of speakers up against any other conference in terms of value.
Those are important reasons, but in a sense they’re kinda trivial. It really comes down to one reason why we don’t allow ticket sharing at Webstock. We’re committed to providing you with the best experience we can.
We believe everyone at Webstock benefits from people being there both days. It makes the experience better all round. The chance to “step away” from work for a couple of days and immerse yourself in a supportive, educational and inspirational environment is one with immense benefits, both to you personally and to your employer. But this only works if everyone commits to it – we don’t want a situation where people are flitting in and out of the conference. It makes everything feel much more rushed and less meaningful. It makes it so much harder to form those connections and networks that you leave the conference enriched by. And it devalues, just a little, the time and effort and money those people who are there the full two days have put in.
As Nat Torkington said in his interview with us, “The best part of every conference is the hallway track – the people you run into between talks, the people you talk with at lunch, the people you go drinking with after sessions end for the day.” This is absolutely true, and it’s why Second Life and virtual conferencing, though they both have their place, won’t replace the shared experience of something like Webstock. But it doesn’t work so well if the people you want to hang out with aren’t there, or someone else is wearing their nametag!
Webstock isn’t a cult, honest! But we do want you to drink the kool-aid while you’re here, and to get the best from the Webstock experience really does mean being here for the full two days.
Oh, and of course, like piracy, ticket sharing funds terrorism!
