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MBS Xojo Conference done

Our Xojo conference is done and everyone left the hotel. This was a great conference. We had 50 people signed up for it, but only 44 showed up on the conference as 2 did training only and 4 had to cancel. The highlight of this conference was certainly to have four xojo engineers there including our special guest Norman Palardy from Canada. I think everyone appreciated having Trisha and Norman here and thanks to Xojo Inc. for paying part of the airfare.

For next conference a few things may change. For example the pricing will be much more aligned to give you an incentive for signing up early. Depending on the exact hotel contract we have a deadline 2 or 3 months before where we can cancel the conference in case we have not enough people or we can at least reduce to the numbers we need. Luckily we reduced to 40 a months before, so we hit the numbers quite well. It is always easier to add a few people than to reduce. For the evening program we may switch to make it opt-in so we only reserve space for people who want to join. It's a pity if you throw away a lot of food because people stay in the hotel.

Our free tickets for young people offer was well received and we had two students to join us for the conference. Getting young people to join the community will be a thing we have to do better in the future. On our conference a few people looked for young talents and senior developers to hire. If you look for a job, going to a conference is a good possibility to find employers and employees or for self employed to find clients or contractors.

Finding the best week for a conference is difficult. Some people couldn't join this year due to school holidays in that week and already booked family vacation. For others this week was perfect. If you are a teacher, you can only join conferences in school holidays. For the next time we have to see which week fits best and what days we use.

Scaling the conference is a thing to keep in mind. For the next conference we probably look for a place to hold 80 people and an option to reduce to maybe 40. Depending on the final numbers we may take some options or not. Like with 50 people we could get speakers and microphones, with 60 we could add invitation for a second Xojo engineer.

Later this year we will run a survey to find interest for conference next year. Currently we check options. Moving to another location is a possibility, but for the convenience of a bigger city with subway and airport nearby may result in a higher ticket price. A quick check reveals that Berlin as location with a nice hotel would approximately cost 100 Euro more per ticket.

See you soon in Houston, Texas for the XDC 2016.
25 05 16 - 14:45