We have the same kinds of conferences in the US. (I'm not going to name names, though.) The fact is that you can pay a lot of money to do just about anything,

We have the same kinds of conferences in the US. (I'm not going to name names, though.) The fact is that you can pay a lot of money to do just about anything, but running conferences (and meetups, to an extent) is, for some organizers, a business. They're trying to create and capture value out of mostly thin air. But as a community, we can create a lot of value for ourselves. It may not pay a lot of salaries, but we can create an awesome experience with each other. We just have to get organized ourselves. The same organizers of the groups I help co-organize run PyGotham, NYC's Python convention. We are a bunch of unpaid volunteers for the most part, but we create an awesome conference year after year. It takes a lot of our free time, and we do it on shoe-strings and through the kindness of corporations and non-profits. But we get it done. You can do it in Europe too.