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Some of us are lucky enough to attend marvellous conventions, made with love by amazing people. Great events with top-notch speakers, incredible venues, and amazing parties.
These conferences are run with huge contributions from volunteers, and financial support from sponsors, providing top-notch events at affordable prices.
But even then, they're not affordable for everyone.
We're building an alternative model: SquatConf.
SquatConf won't be your everyday conference, but we'll have good talks from amazing people. It'll be donation-based, and you'll get to contribute if you want to.
Conferences costs are huge, and ticket prices are often nowhere near the true per-attendee cost, even for a non-profit conference.
Fancy venues, transporation, hotels and food are really nice perks to have, but…
If you hold a conference in a squat… The speakers advance their travel expenses… Host in squatted spaces… Tell people to bring some food… And the wifi will be dodgy for sure…
You'll have a zero-cost conference made with love, but a little rougher around the edges.
November 15th 2014. A squat in Paris. For obvious reasons, we can't yet disclose where.
We are a bunch of crazy programers that believe in anarchy and decentralised systems, conferences included.
We will provide a space, we will provide a context, some talks, and the rest will be up to you…
The inception of SquatConf was at LXJS. It was a great conference, and the organisation did an amazing job, and after the final day of the event we ended up with dominictarr, joates and I talking about autonomous self driving boats when this idea came to life. Now the idea matured and some folks (mmalecki, nathan7, no9, substack, ...) are in the loop now.
What you'll get out of SquatConf is in the end exactly what you want to put into SquatConf.
Tickets will be donation-based. You want a cheap conference? Give us nothing. You want food? Contribute.
This won't be a 400-people event, but do you need that many people?
We already have speakers lined up you're probably prepared to pay for :)
You have ideas for improvements? Suggestions are always welcome.
We plan to make SquatConf zero-sum. We'll split any profits with attendees — ROI on a conference!
Please see our talks repository to propose a talk.