Yeah, it’s like, 8 people, and they’re all available to the attendees directly via a conference-specific Slack channel (and other points of contact too). When the objections to this policy were brought up in that Slack channel, the immediate response was: “this is why we went this route, but we recognize your concerns and are working to address them.”
Like, sure, the whole thing could have been handled better, but this isn’t some conspiracy to harvest tracking data and sell it. This isn’t the kind of conference that is raking in big bucks or having huge amounts of floorspace dedicated to vendors. I’m skeptical that they’ll do much better than “break even” on this conference. (I don’t have any knowledge of their finances, but as an outside observer with a vague sense of what goes into projects like this, I’m making a guess)
And yeah, the 2016 con was great. Awesome set of speakers, very chill vibe. I think that, in this case, the reaction is out of proportion to the offense, but then again, I know and like the people putting on the conference and trust them because of years of positive interactions.
