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by ValentineC 1100 days ago
> Over the years we got experience and we learn a lot from the people doing this event before, setting a schedule to start meetings, having a base of providers, having contacts to ask for space, etc. Our budget was 0 (yes it is a zero) and all cost should be paid by us, the organizers. So to recover that we made t-shirts, and souvenirs (that needed to be paid in advance) then maybe you didn't lost money when the event was finished. Because people didn't pay a ticket for it, it is a free event.

> It was a huge effort to make something like that. Months sleeping few hours, people going crazy to setup tracks for talks, approving them and talking to the people that gave the talk to accommodate the schedule. Having the t-shirts on time and the souvenirs, because if not, we will not broke, but we cannot recover the founds. Having the cables and the network ready, the software and servers to install was also a huge task.

> Food and water..? Yes, that is a crazy nightmare

Something to think about: maybe getting everyone to pay a token sum wouldn't be such a bad idea. It helps with guaranteeing attendance, which helps with knowing exactly how much food to cater.

You can give everyone a T-shirt or some other swag to make sure they get their money's worth, and offer free tickets (or volunteering opportunities) to those who genuinely can't afford to pay, but who would take the trouble to write in.

2 comments

Oh yes, we started doing the pre registration thanks to the software we made and crossing that with people that reserved t-shirts to have an amount of expected people that you know will be there, but it is open to everyone and we always expect "unexpected" people.

The catering was more to the volunteers and speakers so we knew (almost correct) how much people will eat. I cannot remember if we made something like "meal reservstion". We had coffee.

I'm doing another event (megagames) snd there you must pay in advance and that is the catch to be sure you are not saying: I'm going, and you not. Also, we don't make money from that, it is used to run the events and pay the costs to develop a megagame (prints mostly)

I know some smaller events that basically have a $15 (or so) fee just because of that.