Invitation-Only Conferences: Necessity, Or Social Ill?

Lee Wilkins, a friend based in London, pinged me via Gtalk Sunday, asking if I could wheedle an invitation for him to the upcoming Web 2.0 conference in November. “Huh? You mean getting comped? I don’t think so” I responded. He clarified that the conference — wildly successful and over-crowded last year — had gone over to invitation-only:

[from Web 2.0 Conference 2006]

Save the Date for the 2006 Web 2.0 Conference! It’s happening November 7-9, 2006 at the Palace Hotel in downtown San Francisco. Registration for the 2006 Web 2.0 Conference will be by invitation only. [emphasis mine]

I haven’t asked the organizers, yet, their thinking about making this move, but I have a few off the cuff observations:

The demand for Web 2.0 conference tickets is likely to be high, so it’s possible that going “invitation only” is a way to counter the negative consequences of market dynamics. Imagine what might happen when the registration would open for the conference, in the absense of other controls, in a laissez-faire model:

1. Insiders, knowing about the timing, or becoming alerted to it, would buy blocks of tickets, and hoard them for themselves. For example, PR firms might buy dozens, and allocate them to their clients.
   
   
2. A secondary market might arise, given the scarcity of tickets, enabling high tech scalpers to make money on reselling.
   
   

The result? Only connected insiders or the very wealthy will get into the show.

On the other hand, what happens when it is “invitation only”?

1. The organizers decide what sort of blend of people leads to the desired conference experience, which hopefully could include all sorts of people, but is certain to include well-connected insiders.
2. Instead of a land grab by intermediaries, such as PR firms or scalpers, the organizers maintain control of prices, and access.

But in both cases, there is little chance for random outsiders to show up.

My recommendation is to take at least some percentage of the tickets, say 10%, and put them aside for distribution — at full price, mind you — via lottery. This ensures that at least some random DNA will get in and infect the show. This may also counter the likely backlash to the “walled garden” feeling that the “invitation only” model radiates.

Prominent invitation-only events in the recent past, like Tim O’Reilly’s Friends Of O’Reilly (FOO) Camp, have led to spontaneous reactions against the closed-circle, elitist mindset and society that they appear to represent. The entire Bar Camp movement, which has led to unconferences around the world, is the outgrowth of this anti-elitist sentiment: a reaction far grander, and in fact, more interesting, than a bunch of folks acting out because they weren’t invited to FOO Camp, or perhaps — to give them more credit — because they disliked the gated community vibe.

So, in the final analysis, I think that moving to an “invitation-only” basis for hot-demand events like Web 2.0 is actually beneficial for all attendees, and the greater community, and will likely lead to a better event that a purely laissez-faire market would.

Now the only trick is to get an invitation.

[Update - 8:33am : Dave Winer informs me that it has always been invitation only. My bad. But my analysis still holds, I think.