By now, I have become familiar with the signs that something that I receive via the phone or text or email is a scam but once in a while something new comes along that gets past my first layer of skepticism and gets me to go deeper.

This happened when I received an email that said that I had been nominated for an education award that would be presented at one of a series of conferences that are held twice a year. I looked into it and it seemed legitimate. The locations of the conferences were impressive, consisting of luxury hotels such as the Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, the Intercontinental Hotel in Dubai, and the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. The website for the organization Education 2.0 Conference that was behind these events was flashy. That was, however, a red flag that something was not quite right. Education academics (like me) are a stodgy lot and their conference websites reflect that ethos. They have static pages that feature the key speakers and topics and conference agenda. This website, however, had dynamic wallpaper showing floor shows and cabarets and the like. But it looked like these conferences had actually been held.

I have retired from the field of education for a decade so awards have no value to me other than the flattering one that suggests that my work had been noticed. But I still like to spread my ideas on education since I feel that much of current educational practices are not conducive to learning and speaking at a conference on education would provide an opportunity for me to promote alternative ways..

In the email I was invited to schedule an online discussion with someone to learn more about this. I decided that there was nothing lost in doing so and set up a time. As the call began there was another red flag. The young man on the call had the kind of practiced chumminess that one recognizes if one has ever answered a call from a telemarketer. He told me that I had been nominated by others as a potential honoree. When I asked what area of my work had been singled out for recognition, he was not specific but provided a list of about a dozen conference topics that were broadly labeled and said that I could choose which area to participate in and could, during the presentation of the award to me, talk briefly about my interests and promote my books. He kept flattering me about my achievements in the field of education, though he was not specific.

When I asked about speakers at past conferences, he let me view his screen as he scrolled through a list of participants and that was the third red flag. I have been in the field of education for over three decades and am familiar with many of the leading figures in the field and even know a few of them personally. There was not a single person I recognized. Very few had academic titles and even those few academics were not affiliated with any institution or educational organization that I was aware of. Nearly all of the others had affiliations that said that they were consultants or CEOs or had similar positions at private companies.

At this point, I had pretty much decided against taking part but began to be curious as to what this was all about. So I asked him what the next step would be if I wanted to pursue this further. He said that the first step would be to fill in an application and send it in with a $50 fee. He said that the fee was merely for processing and that if I were to not selected for an award, it would be refunded. He said that the basic conference fee cost $3,000 but that if I were an honoree, that would get reduced to $2,000 that would cover my hotel costs as well. I would have to pay for my own travel. But if I wanted more time to make any kind of formal presentation, there would be additional fees depending on how much more visibility I wanted.

This was, of course, another warning sign, a huge flashing one. I have never been to any conference that first requested an application fee. Also, you never apply for an award. That process takes place behind closed doors and only after the winners have been selected are they notified. In addition, if they invite you to be a keynote speaker or are giving you an award, they will often cover the conference fee, hotel, and sometimes even the travel. So this looked like I was paying the organizers to give me an award that no one had heard of.

In typical telemarketer style, the man kept pushing me to send in the fee in order to get the application form but I said that I needed to think about it first. I think he sensed my skepticism and that there was going to be no sale and we parted amicably and I never heard from him again. Interestingly I got the identical solicitation a couple of weeks later under a different person’s name, again asking me to make an appointment, without any mention that I had already spoken to someone. I looked up the snail mail street address on the email and it pointed me to a small building in a Las Vegas business park that did not list the organization on its roadside sign. I suspect the suite number on the address listed is just a mail dropbox.

I concluded that this is not technically a scam since conferences are actually held at the advertised venues. There are sessions but those seem to consist mostly of panel discussions. (These are easy to organize. You just put a few people on a stage and give them a topic to discuss and the people who go to such things are usually able to talk easily.) They will very likely give you a plaque saying that you won some award. But plaques are cheap to produce and many organizations strew them around like candy. (I received a whole lot of them from legitimate education groups during my working life that I stacked in a corner on a bookshelf in my office and did not even think it worth bothering to hang up.) But while it is not a scam, it also seems like a colossal waste of time and money since there seems to be very little new knowledge that is presented. These conferences seem to be similar to predatory journals that look like real academic journals that promise rigorous peer reviews but in reality will publish pretty much anything provided you are willing to pay the fee. They are merely resume-padding mechanisms.

I looked around to see if anyone wrote about their experience with attending these conferences and found a person who, despite having similar reservations to mine, had decided to go ahead anyway. This person did attend a very similar conference except that it was titled “Internet 2.0 Conference” and his experience (reported here and here) confirmed my suspicions about the whole thing.

It looks like they organize a whole range of conferences on topics targeting different audiences, all held at the same location at the same time, and thus can get a large number of people to sign up, as the above observer noted.

Looking at my schedule, I assumed lunch was next. Instead we were told a “Show Stopper” session would be held in one of the other rooms and this would include all attendees from the other conferences (There were similar scams…I mean conferences for different fields held in the same space. e.g. Health, Law, Education, Marketing). I had a feeling this is where the real story was.
…

These Show Stopper sessions were really just another paid advertisement disguised as motivational speeches. This conference managed to pull together enough people gullible enough to buy an award for themself, and then were able to sell these Show Stopper sessions to people whose target audience is a bunch of gullible people to be further scammed.

I started to feel sick during this first one. To paint a bit of a picture, it was kind of like those televangelists. Except instead of religion being peddled, it was some mildly culty business courses being pushed on everyone.

So what might be the business model here? Who are the people who might attend such an event and why? Apart from the purely gullible, it seems like it would appeal to those who mainly want to network. It might also be attractive to those who can get their institution to pay for all or part of the expenses as a business expense so that it becomes a free or subsidized vacation, staying at a plush hotel in an popular holiday location, and they can show the award to their institution as making the cost worthwhile. I suspect that all the attendees get awards and the audience for each person’s presentation consists of the other people getting awards. There must be enough people out there who can be persuaded to take up this offer to make this financially viable.