In reply to Morten Rand-Hendriksen.

I agree with much of what you're saying. At this point, I'd like to see more WordCamps, especially larger ones try their best to bring in people to speak from outside of the WordPress bubble. I think this requires more effort on the organizers part as they have to go out and search for speakers instead of waiting for them to submit session ideas.

If WordCamps start bringing people in from outside the bubble and who are not local to the area of that particular WordCamp, I think it starts to muddy the waters and now the events look more like conferences.

I want to see diversity in the range of topics, ideas, and WordCamps/Conferences. $800 is expensive compared to a WordCamp but as you said, LoopConf is not a WordCamp but its own entity, a conference. In that sense, $800 is probably on par if not cheap for a conference.