John Roling is not a happy camper
by Volker Weber
At Lotusphere 2006 John paid a conference fee of $1195 $1395, because IBM offered a discount for CLPs (yes I know that has been rebranded, but I prefer CLP). For Lotusphere 2007 IBM offers a "discount" for everyone. Which means, the price goes up from $1695 to $1895 to $2095, depending on when you register.
Do I smell "buy one, get one free" towards the end of January? ;-)
Comments
As I posted on John's site, I think this is weak (lame, pathetic, etc). I don't like it at all, and I think IBM deserves any grief they take on the issue.
That being said, I wonder if it will make any difference in attendance statistics. How many CLPs will stay away because of the extra $500? I know I paid it, unhappily, but nevertheless. And CLPs tend to be the most devoted Lotus Geeks. So I'm curious what the effect will be. We'll see...
What makes you think Lotusphere is necessarily targetted to the most devoted geeks? Seems like if you're doing a show, you want corporate users backed by IT departments with money spend; and then as a subset of those you'd prefer those still on the fence about the product to those already sold, given the choice.
@Andrew: Fair enough. That would be an interesting reason for the change.
I could counter by suggesting that devoted geeks are opinion leaders who have an effect on many more people by speaking and/or blogging about relevant topics. This brings back the earlier discussion (here, I believe) about the relatively small size of the blogosphere vs the overall number of Lotus professionals. But this is debatable, and certainly not a given.
In any event, if there is a real and logical explanation, I'd like to hear it from IBM, but I won't complain overly much if their logic matches yours. Well, I reserve the right to grumble about the extra expense, but I'll be good-natured about it.
See my comments and stay tuned...
Already mentioned this on Rocky's and John's blogs, but my CLP discount for both LS2005 and LS2006 was $1395 (which matched the "early bird" discounts anyone could get by registering, uh, early enough). Here's the fee breakdown for the last few Lotuspheres:
LS2003: $1695
LS2004: $1395 / 1695; $1195 CLP
LS2005: $1395 / 1595 / 1795; 1395 CLP
LS2006: $1395 / 1595 / 1795; 1395 CLP
LS2007: $1695 / 1895 / 2095; ???? CLP
Not sure what $500 discount we're feeling entitled to here...
That said, I'd like to see the CLP/Certified Community "discount" brought back as it came with a later deadline than the Early Bird variety. Course if the CLP version actually packs a discount this year--say $1595--so much the better. Here's hoping...
- Rod
$500 was the difference from regular price to CLP price in 04, and I had mistakenly gone with that number when looking through old emails. You are correct that the last two years were $1395 which was $400 less than the top end price.
So it was $400 instead of $500. My bad. And yes, I still feel entitled :-)
That said, I still thought that CLP was less than early bird these last two years by $100 as well, but I very well may have just used that argument with my boss these last two years based on my 2004 experience and didn't verify it. I checked old emails and I was making that assertation the last two years, and cannot find anything that says what the actual early bird rate was though. I could have been mistaken.
But like you said, having the CLP discount allowed us to wait until December to sign up at those rates though, which was also a perk that allowed us to not outlay the cash so early. So I agree with you... having that would still be nice.
-John
Looks like there will be no discount this year :-(
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