360Flex Atlanta On A Budget From Canada
Out of the two North American Flex conference offerings this year, I’ve committed to going to 360Flex Atlanta. The line up of topics and speakers look to be very promising. The price of a 360Flex ticket, flight and accommodations can add up to be very expensive experience. The following is my recent success in reducing the impact on my wallet.
Conference Ticket
Price: $480
Paid: $480
No savings here. However based on what I’ve read from previous 360Flex conferences comments and other conferences I’ve attended, I am placing this at high value as I believe it will help me with my day to day in the future. I couldn’t convince enough people to get in with a discount pack of 4 so I’ll be representing Toronto by myself at the expense of regular admission.
Accommodations
Price: $567 @ $189 each night for 3 nights at 4 star Omni Hotel at CNN Center
Paid $215 @ $71 each night for 3 nights at near-by 3 star Holiday Inn
Priceline for the win, baby! It’s not exactly on-site but it is in Downtown Atlanta. Coupled with a $12 4-day bus pass, I should be good getting back and forth from the OMNI.
Flight
Price: $617 from Toronto, ON to and from Atlanta, GA
Paid: $199 from Buffalo, NY to and from Atlanta, GA
Flying out of Pearson International Airport is ridiculously expensive. Driving a little more of an hour saved me more than $400!!! Why go international when you can go domestic.
A grand approximate total for my 360Flex experience is about $906. That’s like 54% off the regular price relative to where I am. Not bad but expensive for my tastes. As for food, I believe the organizers are catering lunch for all 3 days. Certainly that helps a lot.
Looking forward to Atlanta!
February 6th, 2008 at 1:02 am
You know, I was considering going, but when I did the math, as a fellow near-resident of Toronto myself (hi false! ;), it came to close to $2000 CAN. Which would have been fine if I didn’t leave it until the last minute to make up my mind. If I had thought it through like you did I might have gone. Oh well. Thanks for the tip: next time I need to go to a con in the States I’ll just drive to to Buffalo first, and consider cheaper accommodations. See you at FITC dude.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:28 am
I will see you in Atlanta - this one is easy on me (just a 4 hour drive) - but Adobe Max this year will be another story.
February 6th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Hi Mark,
We’re certainly glad to have made the cut. We thought about doing a similar post like yours for our website. Tackling many different cities to show the true cost of conference. However, we felt it was a bit too self-serving and were unsure of how many cities to provide the info on, not to mention how many hotel prices to list, etc.
All that said, John and I will most certainly strive to make this conference worth every bit of money you spend. We hope you’ll leave the conference thinking that you got even more worth than you paid for.
See you soon!
February 10th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Thanks for the post Mark. I was thinking of going to 360Flex, but similar to Joe calculated it as around $2000 for a trip from Toronto. For 3 Flex developers at my company, I thought that was a bit of a stiff price, especially after I had just finished getting them to pay for a bunch of tickets to FITC. Speaking of which, flying to a conference has seemed to me a bit much after being spoiled all these years of having FITC in Toronto. I’m still hoping that we might eventually see a Flex conference to happen in Toronto (maybe through FITC? or perhaps the New Toronto Group?).
Still next year I’ll look at going to 360Flex, trying to keep in mind how money can be saved to keep the price down.
February 19th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Make sure to say hi when you pick up your badge, “Toronto in the house!” So we’ll know it’s you
See you there!
February 20th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Haha, this is some awesome pre-conference customer service you guys are providing. I’m sure it will be a blast =)