SpiceWorld London Canceled
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@katie had her tickets already. I'm sure a number of people did.
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Latest update just posted (hours after it was written thanks to the Level 3 outage that Level 3 claims never happened.)
Apologies for this post not coming sooner but we had a Level3 outage which meant that when I was ready to post I couldn’t.
First, let me thank everyone for the feedback, we’re listening. Second, we’re humbled by your words, your concerns and your passion for Spiceworks. I, and much of our team, have read and re-read your posts over the last 24 hours. There’s no doubt we could have communicated and handled this better and I’d like to take some small steps in addressing that. We’ve had some fumbles and have made some bad decisions before and we’ll get through this one as we have in the past – by listening, having a discussion and coming up with a better solution. I’ll start by giving you some more insight as to why we’ve done what we’ve done and what we’re going to do next. Here are the things we’ve heard in multiple posts:
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You all believe there’s more to the decision than what we’ve articulated, and that London isn’t a problem from a cost standpoint.
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You wonder why we had to cancel ’17 vs doing it and then doing something new in ’18.
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Several of you have pointed to issues with SpiceCorps.
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You wanted to see more of the plan of what we’re going to do vs. the vacuum of information.
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And most importantly, you really value getting together with your peers, the vendors and the SpiceWorld team.
Let me start with a mea culpa – I should have articulated more of what I’m about to tell you earlier, some of these things, particularly #1 and #2 you just don’t typically share in a public forum, but we’re not typical and I should have been more transparent with all of you. I’m sorry.
Is the real reason financial? Finances of SpiceWorld London certainly don’t help. In short, we break-even on the Austin event but the London event costs twice as much to produce as we bring in for revenue. Each year as the event scaled, the problem got worse. So, we have an event that doesn’t attract a pan-European audience and it costs us money that we could invest in our product and in engaging the community in other ways. If we want a vibrant, scalable, and sustainable pan-European community, we need to find cost-effective ways to do so.
Why not do ’17 and then change? SpiceWorld London takes about half the Spiceworks marketing team to put on and it takes them several months of dedicated effort. Of course, once the London event is done they’re on to Austin. Last year we tried – and failed – to simultaneously execute the event, and to think about its evolution. We have to give the team the space and time to think about a new European-specific model and try out some new things that are engaging, scalable, and sustainable.
I hear the issues on SpiceCorps, and maybe they’re not the answer. We recognize that the current model isn’t working as well as it could in Europe, and as I said in the original post our intention is to evolve the European model to make it better for all of you. We know there’s interest in engaging locally, but clearly have more work to do to crack that model.
Why didn’t we have a more baked plan? The reality is that we didn’t want to come up with a plan in a vacuum; frankly, we need you involved in helping us to craft where we take Spiceworks in Europe.
So what are we actually doing next?
Now – Please continue to post your ideas on how we can evolve this, we’re taking all of this information in even though we’re not responding to each post.
11/24 - Laura and John Webb (EMEA GM) are meeting with 10 or so community members to listen to feedback on what we’re doing well and not well.
12/15 - We’ll announce plans for what we’ll do on May 23rd and 24th.
Finally, I hope that what I’ve shared gives you additional insight about why we are doing what we’re doing. We stand by the commitment we made in the original post to invest in Spiceworks across Europe and it starts with sharing more with you this year, not just about how we engage, but about all our investments that directly impact all of you.
We all want the same thing -- a vibrant global Spiceworks community and know that as we move forward, right or wrong, our decisions are rooted in the desire to create a place for all of you that is around for years to come.
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Another person that booked ahead...
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I'm not sure of the point in posting that people were already booked?
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@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
I'm not sure of the point in posting that people were already booked?
Because a lot of people were saying "who would have booked this early."
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@scottalanmiller said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
I'm not sure of the point in posting that people were already booked?
Because a lot of people were saying "who would have booked this early."
Aww.. well if I was going I definitely would have booked this early, but then again, I'm flying internationally.
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@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@scottalanmiller said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
I'm not sure of the point in posting that people were already booked?
Because a lot of people were saying "who would have booked this early."
Aww.. well if I was going I definitely would have booked this early, but then again, I'm flying internationally.
Lots of people have to, the UK is a small place. Even people from just two hundred miles away are flying internationally.
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@scottalanmiller said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@scottalanmiller said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
I'm not sure of the point in posting that people were already booked?
Because a lot of people were saying "who would have booked this early."
Aww.. well if I was going I definitely would have booked this early, but then again, I'm flying internationally.
Lots of people have to, the UK is a small place. Even people from just two hundred miles away are flying internationally.
Not the same, as you said, inside EU, flights can typically be had for well under $100 ea way.. so waiting for the last min to book means paying 2-300, not 600-1000 like it can in the US.
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@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@scottalanmiller said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@scottalanmiller said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
I'm not sure of the point in posting that people were already booked?
Because a lot of people were saying "who would have booked this early."
Aww.. well if I was going I definitely would have booked this early, but then again, I'm flying internationally.
Lots of people have to, the UK is a small place. Even people from just two hundred miles away are flying internationally.
Not the same, as you said, inside EU, flights can typically be had for well under $100 ea way.. so waiting for the last min to book means paying 2-300, not 600-1000 like it can in the US.
That's true. Intra-EU flights are super cheap. Generally.
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The reason for booking this early if you live in EU would be to prepay things.. and setup vacation with work, school, etc...
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@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
The reason for booking this early if you live in EU would be to prepay things.. and setup vacation with work, school, etc...
Yes, we are already trying to book internal flights ourselves for February. Not nearly as far in advance, but it can mean 1/3rd the price on flights.
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Yes, it is very disappointing - particularly because I've been a few times and look forward to it as a venue to see all the UK and Euro friends I've made through the Spiceworks community.
Booking way in advance I am able to save $500 - $700 on my plane fare. I was asked to email the event organizers because I had already made travel bookings, so I did. We'll see what they end up doing to help folks in my situation. -
@Katie said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
Booking way in advance I am able to save $500 - $700 on my plane fare. I was asked to email the event organizers because I had already made travel bookings, so I did. We'll see what they end up doing to help folks in my situation.
I've heard that they are refunding or helping out with that stuff. I'm sure it's only a handful of Spiceheads affected in that particular way, so won't be a big problem for them. I'm guessing less than half a dozen people actually were already booked, or booked without refunds available. Most hotels can be canceled at this point without penalty.
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We had done some arranging of our plans to at least make attending possible, luckily for us it was not too impactful and we were able to adjust quickly.
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@Katie said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
Yes, it is very disappointing - particularly because I've been a few times and look forward to it as a venue to see all the UK and Euro friends I've made through the Spiceworks community.
It gives me the unique benefit of now being locked in as the sole person to have done the "make up" for the missed Austin events. I'm now forever the only person to have ever pulled that off. @Grey would have joined me but didn't attend Austin this year and now has no means of catching back up.
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Hopefully the upside to this is that more people from London and the area end up traveling to Austin.
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@scottalanmiller said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
Hopefully the upside to this is that more people from London and the area end up traveling to Austin.
You're joking, right?
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@Katie said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
Yes, it is very disappointing - particularly because I've been a few times and look forward to it as a venue to see all the UK and Euro friends I've made through the Spiceworks community.
Booking way in advance I am able to save $500 - $700 on my plane fare. I was asked to email the event organizers because I had already made travel bookings, so I did. We'll see what they end up doing to help folks in my situation.Unitrends isn't paying for you to go?
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@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@scottalanmiller said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
Hopefully the upside to this is that more people from London and the area end up traveling to Austin.
You're joking, right?
No, it's a very real thing. When they started London the number of people from the core group going to Austin dropped. It split up the "group" and hurt Austin to some degree. I'm not saying it did it enough to justify getting rid of London, only pointing out that there are positives to the cancellation as well.
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@Dashrender said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
@Katie said in SpiceWorld London Canceled:
Yes, it is very disappointing - particularly because I've been a few times and look forward to it as a venue to see all the UK and Euro friends I've made through the Spiceworks community.
Booking way in advance I am able to save $500 - $700 on my plane fare. I was asked to email the event organizers because I had already made travel bookings, so I did. We'll see what they end up doing to help folks in my situation.Unitrends isn't paying for you to go?
Why would Unitrends pay for @katie to go? She is not associated with them.
