Perhaps we should abolish tutorials as extra-pay events.
This will require a major upheaval in the budget. However,we could then have more 1.5 hour events and fewer 3 hour events.
Insiders would be more likely to go to these special events.We could call them tutorials and require people to register,
but registration would be because attendance would be limitedand not for the purpose of gettting money.
We'd have to raise the regular conference fee. This won't
bother people from industry, who are getting tutorials forfree. But it will bother academics.
Academic Pricing? Yeah!. As a academic from outside both the EuroZone and DollarZone, I heartily aprove of this idea. The Academic housing scholarships went sone of the way towards this (are they back this year?)
Agile Development Conference has one high fee that buys you a pass to any tutorial. (Academics and students get a big price break.) I thought it would be a disaster, but it worked well. There was not gross misalignment of space and attendees, people didn't stay away because of the high price, and the end-of-conference retrospective (2003) showed people liked it.
I've only ever paid for one tutorial in my life because I'm a cheapskate. I was glad I went to the ADC tutorials. - BrianMarick
Raising the regular registration fee WILL bother many industrial participant. mdv
Is the point to change the "pay structure" or to abolish tutorials?
I'm infavour of the former, but not the later since tutorials attract both new blood (those who want to learn), and experienced professionals (with best-practices to share in return for a revenue/marketing opportunity).