| 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. |