"Ross Ching is awesome, but that's not Carmageddon. That's a year-old video with the cars digitally removed, which he re-released last week. Here's how he did it: http://rossching.com/running-on-empty"

"Thanks Jason and Manuel for weighing in, I'm excited to hear from more conference organizers. Here's an update on the restructured Aspen Design Summit from AIGA. While not technically a conference per se, it falls into the "Do something for a change" bullet: "The next iteration from the Aspen Design Summit is Designing Water's Future, challenging every design college in the world to assign a fresh water assignment for the fall, to be presented at Aspen Environmental Forum, possibly Davos and at the World Summit on Climate Change. No swag. No venue other than nature. [and not a lot of people!]" http://www.aspendesignchallenge.org/"

"Besides the unconferences I named, I didn't find any conferences that had been successful in lowering their registration fees---most organizers are trying their best to keep their prices down but costs continue to rise. I think the key is smaller or regional conferences, or, like Prescott said, to make those high costs more "worth it" with meaningful interaction. Some conferences do offer scholarships or discounts, and if you're a diligent writer or blogger, many conferences give out press passes. SXSW is extremely affordable (not quite $50 but if you register now it's just $375 for an interactive badge), but it's also part of a much larger and (I assume) well-funded program that's a year-round operation in Austin. But I'd love to know how they do it, too."