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by rubeng
5788 days ago
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I already bought my ticket so I obviously don't qualify but I'll tell you how I turned from someone that couldn't afford it into a paying future attendee. I decided that I'd have sponsors for a project that would get me there. I actually had a couple of people confirm sponsorship if I decided to go this route -- I won't mention who they were specifically but they were very helpful in thinking it through. The concept was: a video project of behind-the-scenes footage of BoS and sideline interviews of many of the speakers. I'd put up a site and ask in places like answers.onstartups.com for people to suggest questions for me to ask the speakers and I would mention their startup while video recording the short interviews ("So and so from X startup asks..."). I'm a bootstrapper with a day job and a relatively young product; so while I'm cashflow positive, I'm carefully watching expenses and reinvesting it back into the business. This is why I was making plans for this project. Ultimately, after much back and forth (and discussing it with my wife), I decided that if it was that important for me to go I should just take some of my profit and reinvest it in myself by going (which is an investment in my business). If I took on the project, what I'd gain in money I'd lose in valuable time that I could spend working on my product. So, basically my thought here is that people that win free tickets should earn them in some way that gives back value to the entrepreneurs that can't afford to make it. |
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However, it would be a different story if the free tickets were going to people that are associated with some sort of media/publishing company (update: meant to say such as austintechgeeks.com). In that case you could get these individuals to do live coverage of the event in exchange for a ticket. Something like a "live blog" that Gizmodo does for big events. These individuals would have the skills needed to effectively cover the event and allow all of us at home to feel like we are a part of the live event. We wouldn't get the benefit of the networking experience, but at least we would maybe get a chance to participate real-time. Also, these individuals would hopefully be talking about it on their own publishing sites and broaden the reach of the conference - making it stronger for the years to come.