On Fri, Mar 06, 2020 at 09:37:59AM -0800, James Bottomley wrote: > On Fri, 2020-03-06 at 08:05 -0800, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > [...] > > 2. Charge attendees $300 for a 3-day conference. This seems to be > > the going rate (eg BSDCan, PGCon). This allows the conference to be > > self-funding without sponsors, and any sponsorship can go towards > > evening events, food, travel bursaries, etc. > > Can I just inject a dose of reality here: The most costly thing is > Venue rental (which comes with a F&B minimum) and the continuous Tea > and Coffee. Last year for Plumbers, the venue cost us $37k and the > breaks $132k (including a lunch buffet, which was a requirement of the > venue rental). Given we had 500 attendees, that, alone is $340 per > head already. Now we could cut out the continuous tea and coffee ... > and the espresso machines you all raved about last year cost us about > $7 per shot. But it's not just this, it's also AV (microphones and > projectors) and recording, and fast internet access. That all came to > about $100k last year (or an extra $200 per head). So you can see, > running at the level Plumbers does you're already looking at $540 a > head, which, co-incidentally is close to our attendee fee. To get to > $300 per head, you lot will have to give up something in addition to > the espresso machines, what is it to be? Yes, I can confirm this from another smaller hotel-style conference I've been involved organizing on occasion. $600-$800 is required to break even without major sponsorship $$ for the ~100 people mark, and that is without the usual food and venue perks we see at plumbers/lsfmm. Jason
