On Fri, 2020-03-06 at 10:23 -0800, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > On Fri, Mar 06, 2020 at 09:37:59AM -0800, James Bottomley wrote: > > 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? > > I was basing that on https://www.bsdcan.org/2020/registration.php > which is a ~200 person conference, charging $200 for 2 days. They > provide morning & afternoon snacks as well as lunch and coffee. I didn't say you couldn't run a conference for this low, I was just point out what Plumbers currently costs. FOSDEM clearly manages in Europe for free, but what they have to give up is huge: No tea/coffee/lunch/breakfast at all. Doing it in a University helps with A/V, and venue rental, but you're severely constrained by their timetable (Ethan Miller did offer us UC Santa Cruz one year for LSF/MM but we eventually concluded that date constraints and logistics would just be too difficult). James
