Agreed. I remember, back in the day, having to sneak our computers in because the "union method" was to leave the $50,000 of SGI workstations we were using for

Agreed. I remember, back in the day, having to sneak our computers in because the "union method" was to leave the $50,000 of SGI workstations we were using for our demo on a cart, unattended, for several hours, until someone could get around to rolling it to our booth. We'd already heard from some people about equipment getting stolen. The union guys were spending more time making sure people weren't sneaking their stuff into the conference venue than... moving stuff into the conference venue (and these machines were on loan to begin with.) If you wanted to hire labor, being forced to hire the union because they have a deal wit the conference center would be one thing, but being forced to hire them when you would prefer to do it yourself, is completely different. Plus, these days, you no longer need to all show up at the same place at the same time to transmit specialized information. This is why the conference industry is seemingly dying. I stopped going to WWDC simply because it was such a massive hassle, and WWDC is a fantastic conference. I started buying the Videos (which Apple now makes available for free)... it is much cheaper and less hassle to spend the $600 on the videos they charged when they were charging for them.