Writing articles on conferences

BodToAWriter

Me and the boss want to cover conferences this year. We attended Wikimania last year and discovered a great project there that we went on to write a few articles on.

However, does anyone know of a good article or have any advice on how to approach getting commissionings before attending a conference?

Also, does anyone know of any good resources that advertise up and coming conferences? As the boss writes on a vast array of topics an all in one solution would be great but I doubt that exists.

What are your experiences of conferences?

Baggy Books

I'd look at any magazines that cover the topic of the conference you attend.

Carol

Didn't you ask this before?

Have you searched for your previous thread to see if there were any answers on there?

Liz

I think this s a tricky one as conferences would and could be on every subject under the sun and would be listed under subject rather than conference... there are lots of writing conferences, for instance ones run by various writing and educational groups. Nawe have conferences, The Society of Authors etc. Would they even be listed anywhere but on the relevant websites or in their magazines or other writing magazines, like 'Writing Magazine'?

Liz

And - what Baggy said!

Baggy Books

I'm a bit confused by why you want to target this subject, it's not really a market. If you want to write about a convention you have to know something about the theme. Hotel & Caterer Magazine will expect anyone writing about the national catering exhibition (the Hospitality Show at the NEC) to know their stuff - and these events are on the calendar years in advance.

If you're thinking of targeting events for writers, it's unlikely a writing mag will cover anything other than big events - like the London Book Fair (which Writing Mag did via an article by an attendee). Pieces about residential courses and events are similarly written.

Local literary festivals will only have limited interest - depending on who attends. The Purbeck Lit Fest in February is being supported by Writers' Forum who are publishing the winning story in a comp run by the festival. But WF are a Dorset-based mag and the editor lives in the area, so he won't pay anyone to write content. Dorset Life (nothing to do with the Archant group of 'county' magazines) might run something, but their content is very localised and if the editor needed something but didn't have a contributor to provide some copy, he'd drive the ten miles to the festival's base and do it himself.

I don't know how any writer can 'specialise' in these events - you need to pick your specialty and then locate associated events. You could do that via magazines about the subjects - but if there's a magazine, there's already writers that are ahead of you.