We decided that we're not going to have a separate BriForum conference in Europe anymore. It's just too much work for our little four-person company. BriForum is such an awesome event that takes so much energy and so much time, and we realized it's just not realistic for us to do two each year.

In fact, we're almost getting more attendees from Europe to the US BriForum than we get to the European BriForum anyway. And people perceive the US BriForum to be the "main" BriForum each year with more content than the European BriForum. So instead of distracting ourselves with the monumental effort required to conduct a second, smaller BriForum in Europe that not many people come to anyway, we realized that we'd be much better off just focusing on creating the best single BriForum we can each year.

That's the marketing spin reason. What about the "real" reason?

I have a feeling that if I post this information, a lot of people will email me and say, "Is that blog the truth? Come on... let's go have a beer and discuss the REAL reason that you canceled BriForum in Europe?" So instead of having five thousand conversations over five thousand pints of beer, I'll just share the absolute honest answer here.

BriForum is a lot of work. I mean A LOT of work. For me. For Gabe. For Emily. For Lara... It's a LOT of work. And doing two BriForums each year is exhausting. The bottom line is that we just don't get enough attendees and enough sponsors in Europe for it to justify the effort that goes into creating a whole separate conference, and in some ways having a BriForum in Europe distracts us from the main BriForum. Let's look at what I mean from a few different perspectives:

Sponsors

We had about 230 attendees last year at BriForum in Amsterdam. The conference was very international, with people coming from sixteen different countries. The challenge is that most vendors in Europe are organized by country. So the "Europe" group of a vendor doesn't buy a sponsorship--it's bought by the "Germany" group or the "Netherlands" group within the country. So here's the conversation that I've had over and over:

(Talking to my primary contact at a vendor)

Me: Do you want to sponsor BriForum in Europe?

Vendor: Sure! What country is it in?

Me: The Netherlands

Vendor: Okay, I will get you in touch with our Dutch marketing manager

(Talking to the local Netherlands marketing manager)

Me: Do you want to sponsor BriForum in Amsterdam?

Vendor: How many people from The Netherlands will be there?

Me: 230 overall. Maybe 100 from The Netherlands.

Vendor: Hmm.. Sorry. That is not enough people from my territory. We cannot sponsor.

This conversation is repeated again and again.

We've been doing BriForum in the US since 2005, and we've sold out of our sponsorship opportunities every single year. In Europe, we only sold less than half of the total sponsorships each time.

Attendees

The second challenge we have is with attendees. The first BriForum Europe conference in Germany in 2006 was attended by about 100 Germans and maybe 40 Dutch. The second BriForum Europe conference in Amsterdam in 2007 was attended by about 120 Dutch and only 25 Germans. (So you see those numbers flipped. In other words, most people only attend a conference in their own country.) Neither BriForum was attended by more than a handful of people in the UK, and my email box had dozens of messages from people from the UK saying "Please bring BriForum to the UK. I cannot travel to the mainland."

Presenters

One of the things that makes BriForum unique is that all of our presenters are members of the community. Anyone is able (and encourage!) to submit a session proposal about any topic they want. We don't pay our presenters, although we do pay for their airfare, hotel, food, conference admission, etc. The idea is that a presenter should not have any "out of pocket" expenses associated with coming to BriForum. The bigger expense for the presenters is their time. BriForum is a three-day conference, and by the time you factor in travel, we're basically asking each presenter to give us a week of their time.

Many of our presenters come to both the US and European BriForums each year. But more-and-more we're learning that presenters cannot afford two "BriForum weeks" out of the office (which is totally understandable!). So what this means is that presenters start having to choose which BriForum they go to. And the net result of that is that each BriForum gets dilluted, as the best speakers don't attend each event.

(And by the way, Australia, I have some bad news for you. I know that you folks want us to bring BriForum to Australia. But I'll tell you, I just don't see it happening. I'm not trying to be harsh here; I'm just trying to set a realistic expectation.)

Our plan moving forward

Our new plan is to just have one single BriForum each year, most likely somewhere in the geographic center of the US. We'll continue to focus on new and innovative ideas, and we'll continue to get the best and most brilliant speakers. But we're also going to move forward with a plan that we've been talking about for a long time: "Virtual" BriForum attendees.

The idea behind this "virtual" attendee package is that you'll be able to buy an attendee ticket that lets you attend BriForum virtually over the Internet. It will use our own custom-built Flash-based conference guide and video player, and you'll be able to flip back-and-forth in-between the various breakout sessions that are going on at any given time. You'll also then have instant access to session archives, and you'll be able to watch and re-watch sessions as often as you like. (You'll also be able to receive a DVD set by mail a month of so after the conference so you can watch the content offline.

Unfortunately we will not have this virtual attendance package online for this year's BriForum. (We are just putting the final technology piece in place this year that we need before we can do this, as Gabe blogged about a few months ago.) But we fully intend to have the virtual attendee package in place for BriForum 2009.

The worst part of this

The worst part of canceling BriForum in Europe is that the hundreds of people who attended BriForum in Europe were giving us the support we needed. (After all, they were coming to BriForum!) And those are the people who are hurt by this decision. The reason we canceled BriForum is because other people weren't coming. But those other people are not affected at all by this (since they weren't coming in the first place). It's kind of a Catch-22 I guess.

It makes me sad to cancel BriForum in Europe. But it's a bit of a relief as well because that event was just draining us: financially, emotionally, and physically. But now we can put 100% of our focus on BriForum in the US, which is only about six weeks away! Most of the breakout sessions have been announced, with the last ten or so going online today.