I keep seeing posts about a new 2 day tech conference that happened last week in London.
Apparently it was so terrible that there are now a number of blogs alleging behaviour on the part of the organiser(s) which was downright unprofessional at best, and fraudulent at worst. Only one organiser has been identified and I'm disappointed to discover it's someone I know tangentially through the London tech scene.
The conference promised 3k+ attendees, 150 speakers, tickets were in three figures.
The event space as well as AV requirements, etc are locked down months in advance.
Budgets are one of the first things that get looked at, we work hard to make sure that we have a realistic budget and ensure that we can adhere to it.
This is a minimum standard.
Every year I go into a self-critical cycle as I examine the latest event delivered and wonder where we could do better. I try to implement changes each year from the learnings.
I suspect, being a new conference, the organiser(s) have bitten off more than they can chew.
I can only hope the organiser(s) will take the criticisms on board and scale back their ambition for next year as the feedback to date has been pretty damaging.