Re: GUADEC registration fee

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

On 20/04/2004 2:15 AM, Mark McLoughlin wrote:

>  4) Is the money being used to "make it a better conference" or "bring 
>     more people to the conference"? I think the former has to be the 
>     prime goal (at least, "more relevant people"). If the large
>     registration fee is ear-marked to make the conference better and is
>     meanwhile causing less people to be able to attend ...
>  
I've helped organise a similar conference in the past (linux.conf.au) 
where this was the primary reason for the registration fees.  We were 
charging AU$550 for a professional registration, which is quite similar 
to the fee set by the guadec organisers.

By charging registration fees the conference actually made a small 
profit, which was passed on to the following year's organising committee 
to help start things up.  This is in contrast to the way Guadec has been 
run in the past where it is essentially a money sink.  This also put us 
in a better position when dealing with sponsors too, since we'd still be 
close to breaking even if we lost a sponsor.

Most people seemed to find the registration fee levels quite acceptable 
(especially when you told them that 4-5 professional registrations would 
be enough to fly a cool speaker in from overseas).

To make professional registration more desirable for businesses, we did 
add a few perks: an evening was organised where they could talk with 
other professional delegates and speakers, and their company's name was 
printed in the back of the conference programme.

I'm not saying that Guadec should handle everything the same way as LCA 
does it, but I think it is worth seeing how they might help the conference.

James.

--
Email: james daa com au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/