Re: [guadec-list] Registration fees

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 08:57 +0100, Quim Gil wrote:
> What were the registration fees applied in Stuttgart? Can't find them in
>  http://2005.guadec.org/ nor http://live.gnome.org/Stuttgart2005
> 
> We started talking about registration fees and discounts in yesterday's
> meeting and today user treitter has asked about them in #guadec.
> 
> We need to decide if we follow the same scheme as in Stuttgart or
> improvements need to be made. Also if the price base is the same, if we
> are going to offer a single registration for 7 days or there will be
> different prices for attending just i.e. core GUADEC... (I'm for a
> single fee for the whole week, leaving the door open to free entrance
> during the Warm Up weekend).

On the last day of GUADEC Stuttgart, I reduced the price for people who
paid on arrival. It seemed silly not to.

However, most people will be attending the whole thing, and we should
encourage that. I wouldn't have wanted to complicate things by having
per-day registration.

> We can review the Stuttgart schema and prices according to the opinion
> of last year organisers. Also in the feedback got from last year
> participants, of course. Did we get feedback about registraton fees in
> the poll/survey made in Stuttgart?

The poll survey wasn't very useful. However, in general the response to
the Stuttgart Fees, even after we'd fixed the communication problems
was:

1. Enough speakers complained about paying (or even the suggestion that
they might want to pay) that it's clearly very bad PR to even suggest
it, so we shouldn't do that in 2006. However, a completely separate
Donation button would allow speakers to support the event financially
without being able to complain that they were being asked directly to do
that.


2. Quite a few people complained about paying for anything. We need to 

2.1 Make it very clear where the money goes. In general it goes on
financial support for other attendees, (probably higher-class)
travel/accommodation for key note speakers, and on rent/equipment costs.
It might be different this year, but if you don't tell people, they will
wonder "why do you need so much money just to have us all sit in a
room".

2.2 Aim for free registration. Try to budget for this and try to get
enough sponsorship for it, but don't promise it unless it's likely.


3. We must make it very clear that support is available for
registration, travel, and accommodation for GNOME Foundation members.
That's never been offered enough, and even the board doesn't know who
actually got financial support in the past, though we know that it cost
us tens of thousands of Euros. Transparency would be a big PR win.

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com