[contenttypegeek]

> That's a pretty good deal, in my humble opinion.

Dude, I wish some Europen CONFERENCES offered the same (and for 100s of €s, not for free). I'm not kidding - even big ones are shit compared to what you are talking about (they might have more booze, food, or other material stuff (as I said, there's a hefty entrance fee, so what) but I could only dream about networking like you described above.

You guys in the US are seriously spoiled compared to Europeans...

[aaronchall]

We have the same kinds of conferences in the US. (I'm not going to name names, though.)

The fact is that you can pay a lot of money to do just about anything, but running conferences (and meetups, to an extent) is, for some organizers, a business.

They're trying to create and capture value out of mostly thin air.

But as a community, we can create a lot of value for ourselves. It may not pay a lot of salaries, but we can create an awesome experience with each other.

We just have to get organized ourselves.

The same organizers of the groups I help co-organize run PyGotham, NYC's Python convention.

We are a bunch of unpaid volunteers for the most part, but we create an awesome conference year after year.

It takes a lot of our free time, and we do it on shoe-strings and through the kindness of corporations and non-profits. But we get it done. You can do it in Europe too.