It's been a while, but there was a period of time where it seemed like I was getting fairly regular invitations to be "qualified" to attend educational conferences for "free" -- just get to the venue and the education, lodging, and meals were "free". (You'll note that I keep putting quotes around "free".)
Most of these conferences had a technology or legal angle. Most of them held no interest for me. Finally, one came my way that actually looked pretty good. I did a little research on the organization that sponsored the event and didn't find any big red flags. Some people complained that the organization didn't pay for transportation, but that didn't seem to be a big deal.
The "qualification" process was pretty extensive and, in retrospect, boiled down to whether or not I have some authority to buy stuff and whether or not I was in the market for various things associated with the focus of the conference. As it happened, I was looking for a solution and also wanted to look across the marketplace. So I qualified. Apparently it also didn't hurt to have "Director" in my job title, as this was an "executive conference". The contract (wait, what?) came and I found out that not only did I have to commit to be there, but I also needed to have sit downs with something like six or seven vendors. (Uh. oh.) The sit downs were supposed to be for no more than ten minutes each and I could actually find the required number that I wanted to talk to. The fine print in the contract indicated that if I didn't show or failed to make the requisite number of vendor meetings, I'd be on the hook for the full price of the conference, lodging, and meals (multiple thousands of dollars). Had the lawyers take a look at the contract and sign on behalf of the company and I was good to go.
So off I went to some faux chateau winery setting an hour out of Atlanta. The venue was nice, the accommodations were fine, and there was a good crowd. The sessions were good enough, if not memorable. The meals were heavy. The days were long. The vendor sit-downs were... interesting. Think speed dating with vendors. In my itinerary, I had a schedule of vendor meetings. There were dedicated times during the day where you had to take the meetings. Picture a ballroom full of curtained 8 by 8 spaces consisting of a vendor name, a small table, and a few stackable banquet chairs. First you had to find your "date", then a chime or something started the conversation. Awkward introductions, a quick outline of what the vendor could do, then you got to talk about what you needed. Then a chime and you were off to find the next one. After the first day, the vendors were looking pretty ragged. They talked to a lot of people and I got a sense that a lot of the attendees were not planning to buy anything, so there were lots of very forced conversations. The funny thing was, while I got the usual post conference blizzard of mail and phone calls, the people I talked to generally had done a really bad job of taking notes and recalling what I was interested in. Wasn't a very effective sales process.
The lesson that I learned, though, was that when you're offered a "free" conference, you're probably paying for it in some way.
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