Tickets are £100, which is used to pay for panelist travel expenses and a few minor things like lanyards and badges. All remaining funds will be donated to charity.
The organisers of Edge have a lot of conferences under their belts, and didn't want to just start a new conference that was the same as all the others. One of the experimental aspects of Edge is that we open for registration for a period of time before tickets go on sale, and then we send ticket invites to delegates based on how much we think they have to contribute to the conference. As experienced developers we find that the gap between the entry level and the cutting edge gets wider every day, and conferences need to move with the times. Edge has made a decisive move to the cutting edge end - that means we want delegates who have unsolved problems, new solutions or interesting use cases to discuss.
Does this create a sense of self-importance and exclusivity? Well, we don't think so - we don't expect to know most of the attendees, the open registration process is just that - open to everyone, and the selection process is anonymised. We're certainly no more exclusive than the many many many conferences that cost upwards of $1000. Edge is a hundred quid. Unlike other conferences, we're not interested in your money. We want your brain, and we don't think it's unreasonable to try and get the best 200 people in the room.
If you are a web developer using technologies that you can only find in pre-release versions of browsers, and you are finding that they don’t quite work as you think they should, we want to see you at Edge. Or if you have developed intricate workarounds, shims or polyfills to make up for the deficiencies of web standards or differences in implementation between browsers, you should come too.
Edge is supported and funded by the organisations behind the event: London Web Performance Group (via its year-round sponsors), Facebook and the Financial Times (via FT Labs).
Some of the panelists are employees of the conference organisers and invited participating companies. They are paid to attend Edge, represent their company, and participate in the discussion as part of their job. They were nominated by their respective employers. The remainder come from exploring the networks of the organisers (a small group of employees of the FT and Google). We also reached out to spec authors, relevant industry leading organisations, and organisations that promote the interests of underrepresented groups, looking for panelist suggestions.
We particularly make an effort to solicit panelist recommendations from people who seek to promote the participation of women in technology, in order to correct any unintentional selection bias.
The makeup of each panel is designed to offer a balanced range of different perspectives and expertise.
Each delegate is asked to provide a short summary of what they would bring to the event. We look at the summary and the name of their organisation (to avoid having too many delegates from the same organisation), and rank prospective delegates on a 1 to 5 scale. When we have more applications than we have capacity in the venue, we start sending invites out, starting with those with the highest score. We keep sending invites until all seats are taken.
Our conference is a place for free discussion and open exchange of ideas. We can only truly achieve that if everyone involved feels that they are warmly welcomed and valued participants and that they are in a safe environment. Although we may disagree with each other’s opinions, we should be able to do so without upsetting or being upset by others.
We therefore do not tolerate verbal comments or presentational material that makes inappropriate use of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion. We require participants to respect others' boundaries and do not tolerate deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, disruption of sessions, inappropriate physical contact, or unwelcome sexual attention.
If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the conference with no refund. If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact a member of conference staff immediately.
Organisers are also bound by the codes of conduct of their respective organisations, which are available to view online:
If you registered, received an invite, and went on to purchase a ticket, you can cancel and get a refund up to 7 days before the conference by clicking the register button again and logging back in with the same email address you used to register in the first place. You will see cancellation options on screen.
If there are less than 7 days to go we would still very much appreciate knowing if you can't make it (since we can then allocate your place to someone else) but we do not offer refunds unless the event is cancelled.