Re: [LSFMMBPF TOPIC] Killing LSFMMBPF

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Fri, 2020-03-06 at 08:05 -0800, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
[...]
> 2. Charge attendees $300 for a 3-day conference.  This seems to be
> the going rate (eg BSDCan, PGCon).  This allows the conference to be
> self-funding without sponsors, and any sponsorship can go towards
> evening events, food, travel bursaries, etc.

Can I just inject a dose of reality here:  The most costly thing is
Venue rental (which comes with a F&B minimum) and the continuous Tea
and Coffee.  Last year for Plumbers, the venue cost us $37k and the
breaks $132k (including a lunch buffet, which was a requirement of the
venue rental).  Given we had 500 attendees, that, alone is $340 per
head already.  Now we could cut out the continuous tea and coffee ...
and the espresso machines you all raved about last year cost us about
$7 per shot.  But it's not just this, it's also AV (microphones and
projectors) and recording, and fast internet access.  That all came to
about $100k last year (or an extra $200 per head).  So you can see,
running at the level Plumbers does you're already looking at $540 a
head, which, co-incidentally is close to our attendee fee.  To get to
$300 per head, you lot will have to give up something in addition to
the espresso machines, what is it to be?

James