[OSDC Israel] Pricing for OSDC::Israel::2007

[Gaal Yahas]

On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 04:26:29PM +0300, Gabor Szabo wrote:
> The current issue is pricing.

Instead of suggesting a bottom up scheme, let's assume the last one was
pretty good and fix it incrementally where it didn't work.

How much revenue did the company extra actually get us? If only a small
number of attendees payed company rate, say ten, then that's between
2,500-3,500 NIS. Maybe ditching the company fare completely can save
on enough administrative and moral headache to find one more silver
sponsor, which covers this sort of money. (Of course, there may have
been more corporate attendees, I don't know the real numbers.)

We don't want to sell out to sponsors wholesale;[1] can we raise the
individual fee? I think we can, especially if we do add a concession
rate. Commercial conferences can cost five times as much easily. (OSCON
anyone? That's an Open Source conf costing over 1,000 *dollars*!)

We *do* need single-day passes. We *cannot* worry about any kind of
distribution over talks, no matter how we arrange things some people
will be unhappy with it. If they want to hear something that's on
another day so bad, let them come another day. I doubt the ticket fee
is what's stopping them anyway: for most people with jobs the vacation
time for this conference is more expensive than the entry. But
arrangement is unsolvable. If everything were in one day you'd still
have people complaining about interesting things going on in different
tracks.

We *must not* permit latecomers to get the early-bird discount. (OSCON
makes you pay $100 *extra* on top of late fee for walk-in registration,
which they in fact start counting a day before the conference starts!) But
the only way for this to work is if the conference is advertised well
in advance to give people to prepare. You know, there's a bus company
in the States that sells you a ticket for a 300 mile ride for $1 if you
book three months in advance. But we have to let people plan ahead by
making the important information available well ahead. We can pick dates
today if we want, then seek a venue that's clear for these dates. If we
can do that then a 6-8 week non-early period can work.


The biggest expense in the conference--assuming we find a generous venue
donation--are the international guests. But they are vital to the
conference's success. We need to decide how many people we're bringing
from where because that's going to be the largest influence on how much 
we need to charge.


[1] I thought OSDC::2006's sponsorship presence was well-behaved, not
    at all too aggressive (and I hate ads and commercialization).

-- 
Gaal Yahas <gaal at forum2.org>
http://gaal.livejournal.com/