This article in today’s New York Times questions the fairly common practice of selling sponsors an opportunity to pay to get one-on-one time with conference-goers, in this case, people who had no choice but to attend. From the article:

The setting for a conference of university, school and hospital officials could not have been more luxurious: a resort in the high desert north of Albuquerque, with a championship golf course, swimming pools, a spa and views of distant mountain peaks.

And for companies wanting to do business with the 200 or so officials attending the gathering, the Sustainable Operations Summit, there was an added benefit.

For $18,500, a vendor was guaranteed 15 one-on-one sales meetings with officials at the conference, held here in June. A company that sent two representatives paid $25,500, with each promised 15 private sessions. The university officials and others who were attending were told flatly that they were required to go to the meetings.

“We’re just organizing an opportunity and a format to encourage discussion and relationships among people,” said Craig Lehmann, a co-founder of the company that organized the event.

But on the heels of the student loan scandal, some higher education officials — and even some consultants seeking access to them — called the conference’s format deeply troubling. How, they asked, could university executives tolerate having access to them bought and sold so overtly?

This happens all the time in the “marketplace” events we see in the meetings industry, among many other types of professional events. Is it just business as usual, or is it a breach of ethics? Does it make a difference if attendees pay to attend or not? If they are required to do the one-on-one with sponsors or not? If that particular industry had undergone a recent scandal, as this one had?

You have to check out George Meyer’s New Yorker May 28 column, My Undoing. Now here’s a guy who really, really loves conferences! From the column:

I have been called a voluptuary, a sybarite, a hedonist, a creep. I am all of these things. I cannot live without pleasure. It is my oxygen—though I must also have regular oxygen.

Our existence is but an eyeblink. Why, then, should a man not chase down his passions, wrestle them to the dirt, and ride them like ostriches? He should, and I have.

Speedboats have been a lifelong diversion. Scotch, a serious problem. Yet no vice bedevils me like my one desperate fixation, my shameful ravening itch: I simply must attend conferences.

The sheer number is embarrassing—more than eight thousand. Did I make a pig of myself? Of course. What have I learned from all this conference-going? Everything, and nothing. Tout, et rien. It is the conferences themselves that I crave, in all their bewitching varieties.

He goes on to rapturously discourse about seminars, roundtables, etc., in a way that is, well, just go read it.