Re: [guadec-local] Registration

[Alexandre Franke <alexandre franke gmail com>]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 11:41 AM, Oliver Propst <oliver propst gmail com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 11:10 AM, Christophe Fergeau
> <cfergeau redhat com> wrote:
> > Also, if there is a registration fee, do people get a receipt/invoice
> > regardless of their registration level, or is it limited to people
> > paying some kind of 'professional' registration fee. If you decide to
> > go with the latter, are companies who sponsor the conference expected to
> > also pay the more expensive fee?
> Good questions to have in mind once we discuss the details about a
> possible registration fee.

Just a bit of background on this topic:

In the past, there used to be a "professional event" on one of the
evenings and paying the professional level registration fee would
grant you access to this party. Sponsor packages would grant you a
given number of professional level registrations, this number
depending on your sponsorship level. Something along the lines of
bronze has 5 pro passes, silver has 15 and gold has 50 (these are made
up numbers, just to explain how it worked). Therefore you had one more
incentive to be a sponsor.

These professional events were meant as a time and place for people
that wanted to make business around the GNOME platform to do social
networking. It was a less casual party, in a nice place, where people
would were shirts rather than t-shirts.

Over time, it appeared that this was not such a good idea. People that
weren't invited felt excluded and people that got in didn't really see
the point as nothing prevents you to talk business in a bar while
wearing a geek shirt. So it was discussed and decided not to make this
event anymore, but then that meant one less incentive in the
sponsorship packages.

So at this point the question was "what do I get if I choose to pay
more for my registration fee?". That's a legitimate question since
people sent by their companies usually can afford to pay more, but
they want something in return. At the same time, they need a receipt
to be able to expense the fee. Hence we decided for 2014 that the
receipt was what you would get if you chose to go professional.

I still think it was a good idea, but some details were not really
well in place, so here's what should be improved if you decide to go
the same way:
* As was suggested in previous email by Christophe, we didn't really
clearly state if there was a relationship between sponsorship packages
and registration.
* We had a "set your own price" system and people paying more than
100€ would be considered pro and could claim a receipt, but it seems
that was not made obvious enough since some people decided to pay less
and still asked for a receipt. If I had to do it again, I would
probably go with a big red notice next to the price entry that would
print "Warning: you put less than 100€, you won't get a receipt under
any circumstance. If you intend to get a receipt for expense purpose,
change to amount to be at least 100€."

-- 
Alexandre Franke