interesting2007

Well, blimey, thank you all for your support and ideas on this whole conference thing. The Conway Hall folk now have the cheque in the bank so there's no going back. I've registered interesting2007.com as a placeholder domain for everything conference-related. (At the moment it's just pointing at the relevant posts from here but soon, no doubt, it'll be a cornucopia of delights.)

And though it's just a placeholder I quite like the simplicity of just interesting and the suggestion that there might, maybe, be an interesting2008. (And I like the idea of interestingnorth too.) But huge thanks for the ideas and enthusiasm, I'm mulling everything now and I'll catch up with everyone who's volunteered to speak (or volunteered someone else). And Lloyd, I'd love to talk about something Open Space. I'll get in touch.

And, I have to say thanks to Innocent for coming aboard as first sponsor, earning them official status as Platinum Fruit Refreshment In Bottles Partner.

Thank you everyone. This is exciting. (Anyone know if there's a dead simple, ordering, payment, ticketing, mailing system?)

Comments

[doug]

just an idea, but you could run it through ebay + paypal (buy-it-now, 1p payment, £19.99 postage effort to keep commission down). they have some pretty neat seller tools that may help manage it all and the purchase receipts could be used as tickets? also a system that i guess would be familiar to most...

[Sam]

You wouldn't have to do it through ebay, simply set up a paypal account and have people pay a fixed amount, the payer gets a receipt via email that can act as ticket.

Or for something a little more fancy Ticketweb (part of ticketmaster) have very simple html forms that you can embed ont eh interesting2007 website, they charge a flat rate per ticket to cover postage and ticket printing costs but as I did when I used them for a project I'm doing at work, you can pass that cost on to the ticket buyer and include it as ticket cost so you pay nothing, they just take their bit out of the pot of money that comes in. The advantage of ticketweb (and no I don't work for them) is that you get a physical ticket etc.

[doug]

i was thinking of ebay really for the seller management tools that come with it... but ticketweb sounds like a cool idea

[lauren]

ooh! please tell me that we can buy Interesting badges too! Maybe you can raise the ticket price to £25, which would include a badge and the ticket management system? i could still afford that, and i'll be travelling on AUD$!

[Lloyd Davis]

eventbrite is what we use for Social Media Club and Steve Moore has used for his policyunplugged events - I haven't used it personally for a paid event yet, but it seems to work.

I'm going to try hard to be at the coffee morning on Friday, so maybe we can catch up then.

[Northern Planner]

All good - including interesting North.

[tom armitage]

http://eventwax.com ?

[dan burgess]

what a lovely idea russell. i shall gladly donate a couple of cakes. maybe you could create a user contributed/generated conference bag with interesting or useful bits and bobs to take away.

[Oli]

I'd use Eventbrite mate, it what we use for the Connectors (http://connectors.eventbrite.com) and it plugs into Paypal. Happy to help you set it up if needed.

Also, i make a mean cake too, so perhaps i'll bring one along!

[James W]

This sounds like a great idea, congratulations!

wegottickets.com is supposed to be relatively easy to use. There are no physical tickets, just a reference number which is emailed to the person buying the ticket. They just print out the email and then you can check the number against the name. A friend of mine used it a while ago and found it OK, not sure what sort of commission they charge or anything like that though.