Andy Budd, a UK designer and web industry figure, writes about UX, design careers, conferences, and product practices like the minimum viable product.
HN links it for his posts on conference speaker fees and design topics. Commenters discuss whether his example conference was badly run or too expensive.
http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2011/09/theres_a_lot_of_nonsense/
This conference listed that they paid each speaker $2000, plus travel and hotel.
I understand the dilemma they're trying to avoid. By paying this rate, they're trying to ensure professional speakers of presumably high quality. They contrast this with other options:
"Should all conferences be a single day long and only feature unpaid and inexperienced speakers? Should they all take place in second tier cities in low cost venues and force attendees to bring a packed lunch? Or should they be scrapped altogether, in favour of paid for content on a tutorial site..."
There's definitely room for middle ground in there. Personally, "second tier" cities are probably better choices for many people, due to lower costs, but why mention "packed lunch"? You can certainly have great food provided in 'second tier' cities, and at a lower cost to boot compared to 'first tier' cities.
Paying $2k for each speaker is certainly a nice gesture to the speakers, but they're setting up some extreme options here (basically spending $5k+ per speaker, vs nothing). Best value for all parties will probably be in between those extremes in most cases.
I think it's important to separate the question of whether _this_ conference was badly run, and too expensive, from whether all conferences are.
This conference sounds like it was terrible. A well run conference, though, costs a lot more to stage than you might expect. Andy Budd wrote an illuminating article on the subject last year: http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2011/09/theres_a_lot_of_nonsense/
This whole story that Europe suffers from overregulation is just in parts true, and mainly lazy thinking.
In fact there was a study by an American law school that came to the conclusion that the US has more bureaucracy than many European countries…
Recommended read: https://www.andybudd.com/archives/2026/04/the-lazy-myth-that-europe-regulated-itself-into-decline