@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:
@a_c_green The (non-refundable) $25 for the Live Event is to give you incentive to actually show up--- no one wants to lose 25 bucks.
Oh, I don't doubt that; I was thinking much the same (that making an actual payment was a showing-up incentive). The last one I attended in Chicago was back in 2019 (on 9/11, oddly enough), and I thought it was worthwhile, as well as well-attended.
The keynote dog-and-pony show covered multiple topics, beginning with a talk about Managed Payments, which was just coming into mainstream awareness around about then. It was not popular at the time, since it represented the end of PayPal for seller use, and I remember the audience sat in stony silence for the first 20-30 minutes while they explained the whole thing.
Finally they transitioned into talking about the new Item Specifics functionality, and that got people more enthusiastic, as it seemed to fulfill a seller need at last. (I'm not saying it's problem-free today, just telling you my recollection of how the presentation went in 2019.)
After that we broke into various topic-specific groups to which you could attend at your preference, and I'm not going to relate all that now (for one thing, it was four years ago), but I did have the opportunity to network with others and collect a few business cards.
So, getting back to my point at last, I was a little surprised on my way out to see the conference staff double-stuffing the swag bags with a second package of eBay shipping supplies, in addition to the one bundle already placed in each. I was told that due to a quantity of no-shows, they needed to reduce the mountain of leftover goodies. I can't remember now whether we had to buy tickets for the event in 2019, but I can definitely see where they're coming from this time around.
