Consensus 2018, held in New York City, was the largest blockchain gathering in the world this year. The three-day conference featured a series of flashy events highlighting blockchain projects, ICOs, partnerships, venture funds and many other things.
Owing to the intense media hype created by the conference’s host, CoinDesk, conference attendees arrived with extremely high expectations but most ultimately left disappointed, which translated into a disappointing market performance this week.
Here are a few critical points that this summit got wrong:
Exorbitant Ticket Pricing
A ticket for Consensus 2018 would have set you back roughly $2,000 this year. The outrageous ticket pricing limited the attendees to largely high-income individuals, like Akon, alienating the general public. Even Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterian slammed the high ticket prices saying,”I refuse to personally contribute to that level of rent-seeking.”
Inefficient Management
The ticket sales alone resulted in upwards of $17 million in revenue for CoinDesk. One would think the company would utilize this capital to properly organize the event, but this was simply not the case. For example, attendees were forced to wait over an hour to collect their entrance badges.
Jacob Donnelly, Director of Marketing at CoinDesk, apologized for this inconvenience by saying, “Whilst we apologize for any delays, Consensus 2018 has received overwhelming interest and is the largest blockchain-focused event ever held in the United States. We are working to reduce the wait time.” Not exactly apologetic.
Source/More: Consensus 2018: How Not to Host a Blockchain Summit
