Steve Jones - SSC Editor (7/29/2016)

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I don't like limiting events, even in close proximity, to enable speakers to go to both. Make a choice. I always contact one or both events if there are two on the same day.

My opinion is these events are for people that struggle to otherwise get training, not for organizers or speakers.

I mostly agree (allthough I also consider especially the user groups and SQL Saturday as a breeding ground for fuiture speaking talent, but that's s secondary target - audience comes first, always).

What I apparently didn't explain well enough in my previous post is that I believe that the audience, too, suffers when two conferences are held at the same time within a relatively short distance. Take a look at the schedules of the Iceland and the Dublin events. In Iceland, some of the speakers were (in random order) André Kamman, Oliver Engels, Mark Broadbent. In Dublin, I see Chris Testa O'Neill, Jen Stirrup, Neil Hambly. I selected these speaker names (and there were a few more I could have selected but I wanted to limit it to three per event) because they are all European, they are all greaet speakers, and I have seen all of them at many events - so they are willing to travel at least in Europe. If the events had been planned on different dates, then chances are that all six of them would have been to both events, giving the audience an even wider selection of top-notch sessions from top-notch speakers.

That's why I believe that the audience also loses out when events coincide like this.