Win Tickets to the FlashForum Conference

While Adobe cancels their European MAX 2009 event, the FlashForum Conference is close to selling out. The list of speakers is now finalized and if you want to attend one of the best European conference events, you'll need to hurry. There's only 40 tickets left. We give you a chance to win two Tickets in our FFK09 competition.

There has been a few cancelled Flash conferences this year. This may be due to the economic downturn, but the FlashForum Conference (FFK09) goes against the tide. With more than a month left till the event kicks off, there's now only 40 tickets left and the workshops are filling fast! It's now only 5 days left for early bird pricing at 300 Euro, so hurry up if you want to go. After the 31st, the tickets will be 400 Euro each, so the competition prize is worth 800 Euro! Click here to see images from the former FlashForum events and read our report from the 2007 event here. Also - don't forget that this is a rare chance to see DJ Andre Michelle spinning records at the Hobnox party!

Competition

To win the tickets to FFK09, just answer these two questions:

1. The most popular section on FlashForum has more than half a million posts. What is the name of the section?
2. Why do you think it is important that YOU take part in FFK?

This competition is now over and the winners are Danny van Geel and Radu Chiriac. Congratulations and see you both in Cologne!

Note that FFK09 is a German event, so while there are a some international, english language sessions, most of the sessions and workshops are in German language. You must be able to understand German to get the full value out of your prize, so keep that in mind when submitting.

What is FFK doing right?

Now that Adobe MAX Europe has been cancelled, it's interesting to see what the smaller and successful conferences like FFK are doing right. Below are some of the key differences:

Consistency - MAX and FlashForward have tried to put on "american conferences" in Europe several times without realizing that there are cultural differences. Launching a successful European conference is seldom done by marketing alone and you don't want to start big. FFK is based around the FlashForum community site, the largest european community site with 100.000 members and more than 1.5 million postings. They started the event small and have gradually expanded. They have never cancelled an event and most attendees return.

Price - It may look like the downturn prevents people from splashing out on expensive conferences and rather sticking to the smaller ones that provide better value. The FFK tickets start at 80 Euro for the super early bird and end at a modest 400 Euro. By comparison - the Adobe MAX events are so expensive that Ted Patrick offered a $400 rebate before the Chicago event. The MAX pricing has been consistently high and they start at $1295 and end at $1695. You do get more from your MAX pass in terms of swag, food and sessions, but to many it's not worth the $1000 premium. The FlashForward conference has also been quite expensive over the years, whereas smaller events like 360|Flex have taken a much more modest approach.

Sessions - FFK offers only two tracks of very high quality, whereas MAX offers so many sessions that it's hard to choose what to see next. While the organizers do their best to organize the sessions it's hard to make a program without conflicts.

Food - MAX offers you both breakfast, lunch and drinks, whereas FFK will let you buy the food you like in the local restaurants. This generally gives you a much better price / quality ratio and it's also a great way to get to know people you meet at the event. Events like FFK also usually have sponsors providing coffee, tea and other drinks for free, so it's mainly the lunch that make the difference. In many US event locations, buying your own lunch wouldn't work but it would be a good way to lower the price by a few hundred dollars.

Parties - all good conferences offer something extra for the attendees and this is usually paid by sponsors, even at events such as MAX. It's however much more difficult (and expensive) to organize a good party for 4000 attendees. Not everyone likes to disco and if that's the offering, many will not care to attend. At events such as FOTB, there are organized parties, but there's also lot's of smaller sub-parties that pop up by themselves. The city of Brighton is perfect for this with all it's pubs and party parlors, so organizing the conference at a place that can offer more than one party is a good idea.

Attendees - There is a solid difference between five hundred and four thousand attendees. There's always a line to get into the good sessions, but the sheer number of sessions at MAX forces more sessions to be held in small rooms than any other event. It's a constant race to get into the sessions you like. At these events you usually have to pre-register so you can't just attend a session you heard was good. Other conferences has fewer tracks, but in bigger rooms so while it may happen that you can't see your favorite session, it won't happen as often as on MAX.

Let's hope Adobe will compensate for the lack of it's own European event by bringing more employees over to the other European events? I know quite a few Adobe employees that wouldn't mind going to Brighton this September, so maybe some of the money saved can be used for that?

Bookmark this article

Get new stories first

Comments

Submit a comment