Cheap bastards
: There was a minor stink over the pricing of Bloggercon, the Harvard weblog conference (I didn’t sniff at it; I’ve registered, with credit card). But that’s nothing compared with this:
I was asked to be on a panel about blogging at the Online News Association‘s conference in Chicago. Now, I avoid industry professional conferences like the plague — well, actually like I avoid memberships in professional associations — because I find they tend to be insular schoozefests that waste time and companies’ money. But this was about blogging and so I thought it was God’s work to go.
But I just found out that they not only want me to fly to Chicago on my dime and stay there on my dime (in a hotel with no Internet access — did they say this was the Online or Offline News Association?) and ruin my weekend (why would anyone have a conference on a weekend? — I smell a trend here and I don’t like it) and participate in creating the very content that is the conference … but then they want to charge me $475 for the privilege. That’s nerve.
Here’s my first object lesson about blogging for the ONA: Whatever you do to a blogger is likely to be blogged, with snark.
I’ll give you that advice for free.
