Re: COMMON Virtual Conference

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 5:38 PM, Sam_L <lennon_s_j@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If you hadn't told me, I would have assumed that this cost money, and it
isn't until you are well into the registration that you actually find it
is free.

The link Pete provided goes to a page where right up top, in big
letters, is "FREE to EVERYONE". I don't know if they put that up
extremely recently (in response to reactions like yours?) or if you
happened to have gone to much less clearly marked pages (it sounds
like maybe you knew about the existence of the conference before Pete
gave the link, and perhaps looked into it via some other route).

And I missed any publicity about it. Presumably I got something in an
e-mail, but I've gotten quite a few recently and assumed it was about
early bird registration and probably ignored it.

I don't remember seeing anything whatsoever about this until Pete's post.

I am not a COMMON member, and I long ago tuned out anything having to
do with COMMON since it has a reputation for high-cost membership,
high-cost events, and restriction of useful information and resources
to members only. I am not saying COMMON isn't worth the cost. I am
just saying I am used to everything COMMON costing money, and I (like
many others) work in an environment where it is extremely difficult to
convince the decision-makers to spend money.

So it's a real shame that this free, virtual, open event was not more
heavily promoted. There are probably people who would have been able
to make a case to their management that carving out some time in their
day for this conference is worth it, had they known about it a couple
of weeks ago, but now it's too late and their time is "already
accounted for".

John