Perhaps next year you can make the purchase process easier for virtual tickets.
I tried buying ahead of one of the earlier deadlines, and felt there were too many hoops to jump through to register. I just want to give you money to access the videos
I did recently pay for the ElixirConfUS videos, which were easy to buy.
Thanks for the feedback! Would you mind sharing more about your experience?
With virtual attendance we’re following the same registration process as it’s not just about the videos:
you get access to the event app, where you can watch all talks live, participate in Q&A sessions, hang out with other virtual attendees, chat with everyone, get in touch with sponsors and have a proper Code BEAM experience.
I would propose taking name, email and credit card details only. And then to sign up for all the benefits of the conference, like contacts from potential employers, you can optionally fill out more information on your current job status, etc. I wouldn’t even mind a handful of questions before access to the online videos or community features if it’s just a bunch of basic “State of Elixir” questions like location, employment status, years of using Elixir, etc.
Another “complaint”, which is something I see at many conferences. The hotel deal for the conference was well-priced. But you had negotiated limited dates, such that one would have to check out on the morning of the last day of the conference, and would have to move to another hotel or book separately to stay for any of the workshops. The workshops are a key reason, if not the key reason, to fly in for Code BEAM Europe.
I did consider flying in for the conference and for the Gleam training. Flight prices to Berlin from Asia were cheap. Flight prices out were reasonable if I left on the morning of the workshop, but for some reason flights after got really expensive. So that €500 euro workshop fee doubled. That’s completely out of your control but I do generally prefer to have workshops before and not after a conference.
I’m not seeing the Gleam training listed anymore in the Ticketing section. Does that mean it was canceled or that it was sold out? If the latter, that’s fantastic. Anyway, for all three reasons above, it just felt that Code BEAM Europe wasn’t for me this year. Best of luck with the success of the event. I’d still be happy to buy the videos (conference and workshops) if offered at a reasonable rate after the conference.
Thank you for taking the time to write a detailed explanation, it certainly helps to know the decision-making process.
We will look into how we could simplify the purchasing bit with Eventbrite. Regarding the hotel we understand and agree that this is unfortunate. We tried to secure rooms for longer - for ElixirConf EU in Kraków on 15-16 May with training on 17 May, we secured the rooms from 12 to 19 May. Sadly, this time with Estrel it was not possible due to a large congress taking place at the same time - these were booked almost two years in advance.
What would you consider to be a reasonable rate for a 3-month access to the conference videos (from the date of the conference)? We hope to see you at the next one, the conference is on 5-6 Nov with the tutorials on 7 Nov, also in Berlin.
I paid $100 for the ElixirConfUS videos in a sale after the event. I’d propose a maximum of somewhere between €100-150 for Code BEAM. Maybe keeping it to €99 including VAT would make it more of an instant purchase for many.